Insider: Langer efficient even in making swing fixes

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Chris Condon/PGA TOUR

After an indifferent start to the year, Bernhard Langer addressed some issues and -- voila -- won in tournament-record fashion.

Preparation has always been the cornerstone of Bernhard Langer's approach to winning golf.

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Nearly 40 years after Langer turned professional, that hasn't changed. What has changed is how the groundwork is established. This being the technology age, it should come as no surprise that the method is dramatically streamlined but no less efficient.

When Langer cruised to his first 2011 victory at The ACE Group Classic, it was vintage. Efficient and professional.

That Langer would rebound from two largely indifferent -- for him -- performances to open the year comes as no surprise. Few golfers have ever known their games better than Langer. He knows what he must do to play his best and he does it.

Langer acknowledged that his game needed attention as he headed to Naples and he carved out time from a busy schedule to address it.

"I worked really hard the last two weeks on my game," he said. "I had a couple of charity events to do as well in between on both Mondays so I was pretty tired, but I knew I had to work on my game extremely hard to sort out what clubs to use, what putter to use."

Langer had several new sets of irons to sort through, and issues to deal with on putter specs. To help him through the process, he kept in daily touch with his swing coach, Willi Hofman.

"I was on the phone with my coach just about every day explaining what it feels like, what's happening, and he gave me a couple tips, so it all came together at the right time," Langer said.

Hofman didn't take the calls in Germany. He wasn't far away in another corner of Florida. That's where the technology comes in.

"I can e-mail my swings," Langer said. "I have an iPhone. I just take a picture of my swing and 10 seconds later it's in his computer and he can look at it. It's pretty neat. I don't have to fly him in all the time and go through all that trouble, so modern technology really works well.

"It's not just looking at the swing, because he's looking at one swing on the driving range or two swings. Sometimes the tempo's a little different or whatever, so it's good to just talk through it and tell him, I pull it a little bit or I block it, could it be this and that, and then he would say yeah, I think it might be this or it might be that, and I go out and try it."

Langer, 53, took his first swings with a golf club as a 7-year-old growing up in Germany. He turned professional at age 15 and soon afterwards he began working with Hofman, who was an acquaintance at the club where Langer was a young assistant pro.

"We were already playing tournaments together in Germany for about three years and that's when he became my main coach," Langer said.

An area of focus for Langer in advance of The ACE Group Classic was putting. He adjusted from a 46 ½-inch putter he had been using by lengthening the specs to 48 inches and also tweaked his grip. When he originally went to the broomhandle putter, it was 48 inches long but over the intervening 13 or so years, he shortened.

He adopted what he calls a pencil grip for short putts and others for longer, lag putts. The changes came two days before the Naples event and paid instant dividends.

"I had one or two putters that are still 46 and I had one putter switched to 48, so I practiced with both of them and I felt I was going to give it a go with the 48," Langer said.

And if it hadn't produced the desired results, Langer would have switched again. His putting and putters are constantly subject to change. Over the years, he has become a master at knowing what it takes for him to be successful on the greens. The lessons were learned the hard way, through a series of encounters with the dreaded yips, which would have tormented a less resolute golfer and forced him out of the game long ago.

Langer credits his survival to "changing grips and a lot of prayer, a lot of perseverance."

There's more, of course. Langer is among the most methodical, focused competitors in the game's history.

"He doesn't beat himself, that's probably the biggest thing," said Fred Funk, runner-up at The ACE Group Classic. "He just goes out there and stays with the game plan. I don't think he ever varies from it.

"He picks and chooses his green light/red light areas where he's going to play aggressive, where he doesn't play aggressive. He's always been a solid ball striker, but when he gets that putter going, it's, 'See ya.'"

Champions Tour Insider Vartan Kupelian is a freelance contributor for PGATOUR.COM. His views do not necessarily represent the views of the PGA TOUR.