Tiger and Haney Now Helping Barkley With His Swing

Eleven days ago, this was news: Tiger Woods and Hank Haney were working hard to fix his driver. Actually, that's been the story for most of Tiger's career, but it was especially relevant because he was coming off an uninspiring performance (as uninspiring as another top-10 finish can be, I guess) at Quail Hollow, and the Memorial and the U.S. Open were the next two tournaments on his schedule.

Tiger went out and hit 84 percent of his fairways at Jack's event, won convincingly, and now that the golf universe has righted itself, we're all able to get on with our lives. For Woods that means preparing for Bethpage Black, and in his spare time, trying to fix the unfixable: Charles Barkley's golf swing.

Appearing on Dan Patrick's radio show Wednesday morning ... Barkley said that he's been working on his game with Woods and instructor Hank Haney. The garrulous Barkley was surprisingly circumspect about it though.

"I'm not a name-dropping guy, Dan," Barkley said before admitting he got some help from Woods and Haney. "[Woods] and Hank worked with me. Hank has spent hours and hours and hours working on my swing and I don't ever want to take their friendship for granted."

Hey, at least Chuck is being realistic. I'll admit it: when I heard about The Haney Project it seemed like a swell idea: take the coach of the world's best golfer and let him work his magic on the worst thing to happen to the sport since John Daly thought it would be a fun idea to dress up like Ian Poulter in a fat suit every day. The show would be a ratings boon, and it would be good business for Haney, too.

Didn't work out that way; Barkley improved, but the progress was slow and sporadic. And at times, when Haney looked into the camera and talked about the state of Barkley's swing, you got the sense he was thinking, "Jesus Christ, what just happened here?"

The Haney Project just kind of ended without any real resolution, but Charles did promise that he wouldn't give up the game. So there's that. And now, he's getting help from Haney and Tiger. And it doesn't sound like Barkley's expecting much.

My advice: drop Woods and hit up Ben Roethlisberger for some tips on mental toughness. I'm only sorta kidding. The Steelers quarterback fired an 81 at Bethpage Black yesterday, and this was after Tiger called him to say there was no way he'd break 100.

Big Ben actually scored pretty well on the Wonderlic, but he strikes me as a guy who plays better when he's not thinking about much. Take that however you want it, but it's meant to be a compliment. And it might serve Sir Charles well. At this point, why not? Short of actually killing somebody, I don't know how this gets worse.