Sean Foley's goals for Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods had the worst week of his life at the Bridgestone Invitational. After hitting his all time career low score, Woods sought advice from Canadian swing coach Sean Foley, who also works with Sean O’Hair and Bridgestone winner Hunter Mahan. After an audition at last week’s PGA Championship practice rounds at Whistling Straits, Woods not only saw his name a top the leaderboard, briefly, but he broke 70 for the first time this year. Now it seems that Woods is considering giving Foley a full time job.
Tired of fruitlessly working on his swing alone since the split with Hank Haney back in May, Woods is taking a step in the right direction by reaching out for the help of another professional. And when you’ve been playing as poorly as he has, there is nothing wrong with getting a few pointers here and there. Woods is stuck in a rut, and for whatever reason his old techniques aren’t working for him anymore.
Though nothing has been set in stone yet, both are interested with a partnership.
Foley will give Woods new concepts that will oppose Haney’s and hopefully give Woods a newfound confidence once the results start coming in. After a practice round meeting between the two on Tuesday before the PGA championship, Woods opened with two consecutive birdies. A T28th place finish wouldn’t have been anything worth getting excited about a couple years ago, but it was an encouraging turnaround considering he was second to last in the previous tournament. Now all he needs to do is keep up the good work.
If Woods doesn’t start improving now, he has no shot at reaching his unchanging goal of beating Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major championships record. Wood’s game at this year’s four majors has been spotty, sometimes putting brilliantly, sometimes driving horribly and suffering from rally-killing mistakes.But all in all Woods said he felt positive after working with Foley.
“I like some of the things he had to say about my golf swing and where I needed to go," Woods said. “I like the direction because I was able to hit some of the shots I used to be able to hit feel-wise. When you get that kind of contact again, it's good. As far as working down the road, I'm sure I'm going to see him a little bit more. I still want to pick his brain. I don't really have all of his whole concept yet. But I would like to get to know him more before I fully get into it."
Foley, a 35-year-old Canadian currently residing in Orlando – another good sign for a partnership – has said that “we are literally in the sharing ideas state. There’s nothing official,” but wasn’t tight lipped about his plans for a Woods training regime:
"I want to get Tiger back to a place physically that he has been before, but with a new understanding. If he had understood what was so good about what he did before, he wouldn't have changed it. At the same time, I want to give him a better awareness of what he is doing now. The reason he has been hitting it where he has is that he didn't understand. As good as he is, as much work as he put in, the stuff he was working on couldn't have been right, or it would have worked better."
Foley‘s other employers, who include Stephan Ames and Justin Rose, don’t have a problem with the two pairing up. At least not yet, if Woods starts winning a whole bunch of events their opinions might change, but for the time being it seems everyone wants to see Woods get his groove back. Foley is just the man to help him do this.
At Whistling Straits Foley gave Woods two simple exercises. First he had caddie Steve Williams hold a club shaft against the right side of Woods head as he swung. The affect is to prevent Woods from moving his head laterally on the backswing, something he had been taught to do since he started playing as a junior.
Secondly Foley instructed Woods to keep a golf glove tucked under his right armpit. Woods had to keep it there to the top of the backswing which would teach Woods to keep his arms closer to his body, and preventing them from dropping behind him during a forward swing.
"I was really pleased with Tiger's openness to ideas that are extremely different to what he was doing," said Foley. Ultimately Woods wants to simplify his game, to stop stressing over putting and recovery shots and start getting the ball in the fairways more often, the same way Nicklaus fashioned his winning rounds.
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