- published: 21 Feb 2016
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Bernhard Langer (born 27 August 1957) is a German professional golfer. He is a two-time Masters champion, and was one of the world's leading golfers throughout the 1980s and 90s, being the first official number one ranked player in 1986. After turning fifty, he became one of the most successful players on the Champions Tour.
Langer was born in Anhausen near Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. He turned professional in 1976 and has won many events in Europe and the United States, among them The Masters in 1985 and 1993. He was the inaugural World Number 1 when the Official World Golf Rankings were introduced in 1986. He was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2001 (but deferred his induction until 2002). He ranks second in career wins on the European Tour, with forty and has also played regularly on the U.S. based PGA Tour, especially in the late 1980s and since 2000. He has shown great durability, finishing in a tie for fifth at The Open Championship the month before his forty-eighth birthday and regaining a place in the top hundred of the rankings three months before his fiftieth birthday. He is one of the game's most successful globetrotters, being one of only a handful of players to have won sanctioned professional tournaments on every continent on which the game is played: Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. He played on 10 Ryder Cup teams (1981, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995, 1997, 2002) and was non-playing captain of the victorious European team in 2004.
Hank Haney (born August 24, 1955) is an American professional golf instructor best known for coaching Tiger Woods and two-time major championship winner Mark O'Meara. A graduate of the University of Tulsa, Haney owns and operates four teaching facilities in the Dallas, Texas area.
Haney says, "My philosophy as a teacher is to teach my students to become their own best teacher by getting them to understand the flight of the golf ball and how it relates to the swing, with emphasis on swinging the golf club on their own correct swing plane".
Haney has changed Tiger Woods' swing from an upright to a flatter golf swing. His wrist cock is much less obvious than it was with his old coach Butch Harmon. Woods' swing is much more around his body, Haney tries to get his students to swing on the same plane angle which the golf club is on at address.
In 2008, Haney started working with former NBA star and current NBA analyst Charles Barkley on the Golf Channel's The Haney Project: Charles Barkley, in an attempt to fix Barkley's infamously bad swing. Haney was quoted as saying that "Charles' swing looked worse than Helen Keller trying to read." Haney's show continued in 2010, this time with comedian Ray Romano. The third season, in 2011, featured talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.