Tiger Woods has spent decades refining his golf swing that produced 82 PGA Tour wins and 15 major titles. During a recent range session filmed for Sun Day Red’s Inside the Pursuit series, Woods revealed one of the most important pieces of his ball-striking education. The unconventional lesson came from a teacher whose advice sounded backward at first.

Woods, working with Karl Vilips, Sun Day Red’s first outside ambassador, broke down the philosophy behind that lesson: swing directly at danger instead of away from it.

“So one of my old teacher was always adamant that you swing into trouble. So if trouble’s on the right, you swing into it to draw it away from it,” Woods explained.

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Most golfers staring down a hazard try to steer away from it. Woods’ old coach taught the opposite: aim toward the hazard and trust the ball’s natural shape to bring it back to safety.

Most importantly, the coach encouraged an aggressive swing rather than a tentative one. A draw, for instance, starts right of the target and bends left. So swinging toward the right side of the danger with a draw sends the ball moving away from it as it flies. The same principle flips for a fade.

“Trouble’s on the left, like water left, swing into the water, and it’ll make it bleed away from it,” Woods added.

Woods has used the approach in competition before. On the water-lined 18th at TPC Sawgrass, most players lean on a safer fade away from the hazard. Woods started the ball toward the water and let it curve back to the fairway.

After working through tee heights and ball flights, Vilips nodded in agreement.

The lesson reflected a broader theme in how Woods talks about shot-making, which is commitment over caution, and over time it became one of his biggest weapons.

From meeting Tiger Woods as a junior to joining his brand

Tiger Woods and Karl Vilips had more history than a single range session. The two first met around 2010, when a young Vilips was introduced to Woods at the Australian Masters, where Woods had returned to defend his 2009 title.

Vilips has said he was 8 years old — “I just remember not saying a word, really… I was super intimidated.” They met again at the 2017 Presidents Cup.

Vilips turned pro and won fast. He took the Korn Ferry Tour’s Utah Championship, claimed Rookie of the Year, and graduated to the PGA Tour for 2025.

On February 18, 2025, Sun Day Red made it official. Three weeks later, in just his fourth career PGA Tour start, Vilips won the Puerto Rico Open by three shots. “It’s a dream come true for me and my dad. This is what we dreamed of as kids.”

He sits 127th in the FedExCup standings this season, without a win or a top-10 finish, and his strokes gained off the tee ranks 147th on Tour. Those numbers point to the same tentative swing Woods’ old teacher used to warn against. Vilips already has the lesson. What he needs now is to actually swing at the trouble instead of away from it.