Woods makes driver change

Tiger Woods has made another change of driver in advance of his return tomorrow after a month-long lay-off.

Woods, who is in Atlanta for the defence of the American Express World Championship he won at Mount Juliet in Ireland last year, has been practising for eight to 10 hours a day for the past week.

And in his bag now is a new Nike driver which will not be available to the public until next spring.

The world number one switched from another Nike club to an old Titleist favourite earlier this season, but while ranking 12th in driving distance on the US Tour at the moment with an average hit of 299.3 yards he is 148th in driving accuracy.

“I’ve had a lot of success with that old Titleist, but I wanted to take advantage of the technology advancements,” he said. “I’m pretty excited about it.”

He still believes it is the swing rather than the club which is most important, though.

“If you have a solid swing and can make contact in the centre of the clubface you could play a persimmon (wooden) driver and hit it as far as you can hit a titanium driver.

“But if you mis-hit a persimmon driver you might as well hit a two-iron off the tee.”

Woods’ last victory was the Western Open at Chicago in early July and he missed out on all four majors although he has enjoyed four wins and is third on US Tour money list.