Tiger Woods began to lose some of his swagger back in 2007 as he chased Jack Nicklaus’s all-time record of 18 majors, former swing coach Hank Haney writes in his new book.

In “The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods”, Haney says Woods’s pursuit of Nicklaus was taking its toll and that the former world number one also toyed with the idea of leaving it all behind and joining the United States military.

Woods, who tees it up this week at the PGA Tour’s Honda Classic starting today, now has 14 majors while Nicklaus has 18.

“There was more urgency and less fun. He never mentioned Nicklaus, but it started to weigh heavily at every major,” Haney wrote.

“And Tiger’s actions indicated he believed he had less time to do it than everyone thought.”

Excerpts of the book were released yesterday by Golf Digest magazine.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.