Perhaps one of the most noteworthy aspects of his third British Open title and 11th major championship victory -- but also one of the most overlooked in the aftermath -- was that Tiger Woods expended little energy talking about his golf swing.

Granted, the intrinsic and most intriguing storyline of the 135th British Open at Royal Liverpool Golf Club had been percolating since May when Earl Woods succumbed to cancer and his famous son had to find his way back to preeminence without the physical presence of his most ardent supporter, friend and mentor. As Tiger, 30, forged ahead to that emotional flashpoint, it was easy to overlook the fact that his dominance was achieved with a swing that no longer invites scrutiny or curiosity.

It was only last year, after he won the British Open at St. Andrews that Woods finally put to rest the hard questions about the swing changes he initiated in 2003 under the tutelage of methodologist Hank Haney. Even after winning the ’05 Masters -- where he bogeyed the final two holes but then dispatched Chris DiMarco on the first sudden death playoff hole -- Tiger had not gotten out of the woods with critics, knowledgeable and otherwise, who detected flaws in a swing wholly different from the seemingly bulletproof motion constructed with the help of Butch Harmon.

The scene in the media center at St. Andrews was illustrative of the fervent interest in Woods’ transformation. Haney stood surrounded by a global contingent of reporters, feeling vindicated by helping the era’s most dominant player regain his mojo, not the mention his No. 1 ranking, which he still holds -- his 406th week at the top.

“Now, of course, I’m smart,” Haney remarked last July with a grin.

The switch from Harmon to Haney didn’t appear to be all that good of an idea in 2004 when Woods won only one PGA TOUR event and saw Vijay Singh overtake him in the Official World Golf Ranking. But Tiger had his reasons for undertaking such a dramatic project in the prime of his career.

Like every player in the game, Woods thought that he could get better, despite having won eight majors (including an unprecedented four in a row in 2000-01) and 39 TOUR titles with Harmon. Harmon had assisted in making Woods plenty good, just as he had helped Greg Norman to be the No. 1 player in the world in the 1980s and ‘90s.

When Woods turned professional in 1996, his swing already was mature but undisciplined. His distance control was spotty, as was his accuracy, but he could generate otherworldly club-head speed with a wide arc and pure athleticism, most notably a rapid hip turn. His dominating ’97 Masters victory, when he won by 12 shots and set the tournament scoring record of 270, was mostly the product, he admits, of a serendipitous week of tempo and timing.

Harmon’s refinements, which were incorporated fully in 1998 even though the two had commiserated since ’93, helped Woods achieve an efficiency that defied the difficulties inherent in the game. In 2000, Woods won nine times, including the final three majors, and he never shot over par in any of his 20 TOUR starts. He set or tied 27 TOUR records, including a 68.33 non-adjusted scoring average (67.79 adjusted) that broke Byron Nelson’s 1945 mark.

That Woods would depart the Harmon camp in favor of Haney made little sense, except when one takes into account the physical toll the swing was taking on arguably the game’s most fit athlete, a toll manifested in a ailing left knee that required surgery in late 2002. Childhood skateboard and bicycling accidents had already compromised the health of the knee, but Woods put inordinate strain on it when he went for an extra 10-20 yards by snapping the knee into hyperextension. By ’02, the compensations he was making for an increasingly achy joint initiated a laundry list of bad habits deleterious to his consistency. Such circumstances also threatened his longevity, a necessity if he is to reach his goal of passing Jack Nicklaus’s record 18 professional major titles.

Enter Haney and his one-plane swing theory. The longtime teacher of Mark O’Meara, Woods’ closest friend on TOUR, Haney believes that the best swingers of the golf club maintain symmetry from start to finish on one plane angle. The application of this theory to Woods’ swing made it more rounded and flat, and as Woods tried to incorporate this new method while fighting old habits, his accuracy and confidence waned, though he still continued to extend his record cuts streak through the alterations, a testament to his overall golf abilities and strength of will.

While the questions piled up in ’04, Woods maintained that he was satisfied with his decision. "Have I ever second-guessed it? No," he said in early ‘05. "I took some steps backward to go forward, to make some giant leaps forward."

Tiger Woods has won 52 PGA TOUR titles in his career. (WireImage)

Under Haney, Woods has alleviated stress on his knee and works primarily on putting his backswing and downswing on the same place, which should produce a tighter and more connected swing that fires in sequence rather than requiring an extra move by the golfer. It also is designed to create a longer “flat spot” in the bottom of his swing, a key to accuracy espoused by classic rotational ball-strikers like Lee Trevino.

Five wins and two majors last year vindicated the decision, and Woods has six more victories and two more Open and PGA titles to hang on his mantel in 2006, a year in which he missed his first cut as a pro in a major, at the U.S. Open, due almost entirely to the emotional trauma still tugging at him after his father’s death.

“I had plenty of time to get ready,” Woods said of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club. “I just didn’t execute.”

He sure executed at Hoylake, hitting 85.7 percent of his fairways, best in the field and the highest percentage in his career, and 80.6 percent of his greens in regulation. Like his 2000 victory at St. Andrews, his steady ball striking and his adherence to a game plan that left his driver virtually unused resulted in Woods avoiding Royal Liverpool’s bunkers all week.

"I didn't miss-hit any shots today," Woods said of his final-round 67 Sunday that enabled him to hold off DiMarco by two shots. "I hit every shot flush. That's a pretty neat feeling.

"I knew that my game was pretty close to where I needed to have it for a major championship. When I got here, my game got better and better each day. It's just one of those things where you develop a game plan and stick with it," added Woods, who was 53rd out of 71 players in average driving distance (290.9) after hitting his driver once over 72 holes. "This golf course, you had to really control your ball in order to have a chance."

It’s the control, not his famed power game, that makes Woods so indomitable. And it’s control that drives Woods to continue to tinker with his swing, with Haney now his guiding influence. Wins are the measure of a player, and Woods has 60 worldwide titles and 12 majors, second only to Nicklaus ahead of him. But there is more to the Woods plan.

"Only two players have ever truly owned their swings: Moe Norman and Ben Hogan,” Woods told Jaime Diaz of Golf Digest. “I want to own mine. That's where the satisfaction comes from."

In other words, Tiger Woods is still a work in progress.