Tiger Woods speaks with Canadian swing coach Sean FoleyCharlie Neibergall
The question about whether Canadian swing coach Sean Foley is about to take on Tiger Woods is heating up again following an encounter they had during a practice round Tuesday at the Whistling Straits course in Kohler, Wis., where the PGA Championship will start Thursday.
Foley walked nine holes Tuesday with Woods and his pals Hunter Mahan, one of his star pupils and the winner on Sunday of the Bridgestone Invitational, and Sean O'Hair, another Foley follower. The golf world was abuzz, as it was when a similar situation occurred at the Players Championship in May.
Woods asked Foley, who also works with Stephen Ames of Calgary, and Justin Rose, a two-time PGA Tour winner this year, to film his swing.
He did so on two holes, from front and back.
"I wasn't doing anything with him today," Woods still told reporters after his round. "He was watching Hunter and Sean, and I did ask him to film a couple [of shots]I would like to take a look at, which I did look at, so I'm heading in the right direction. So I'm pretty excited about that."
Woods went a little further when pressed about whether it's a possibility that he and Foley could work together.
"Certainly," Woods answered. "Certainly it's a possibility. No doubt.
"But there is a lot of other coaches out there that's a possibility, as well, that I've talked to. So I just got to - I wanted him to have him take a look at it today on video and so I can take a look at it and that's what we did."
The situation is getting almost farcical. Every action is being parsed. Soon analysts will be examining how closely to one another Woods and Foley walk down a fairway. They'll be reading lips, if they haven't already.
It's time to hear from Foley.
"I have just given him some advice at this point," Foley said in an e- mail Tuesday. "We are not getting ahead of the situation. Just some suggestions at this point."
Foley could be taking a risk should he work formally with Woods, but that's part of the high-stakes game. It would be hard to resist the invitation should Woods offer it, but what if Woods doesn't make progress? Who takes the fall?
Foley did not respond immediately to an e-mailed question as to whether he would accept responsibility should Woods not improve if they do work together. He also did not immediately respond to a question about whether he believed a golfer's personal problems can affect his swing. Butch Harmon works with Phil Mickelson and worked with Woods for many years. He said at Whistling Straits that Woods's swing will improve when he sorts out his personal problems. The heart before the horse, or something like that.
No swing coach has helped every player with whom he or she has worked.
Foley worked for a while with 2008 Masters champion Trevor Immelman, who has since returned to his former coach David Leadbetter. Foley also started at the end of 2008 with Parker McLachlin, a PGA Tour winner that year who felt his swing wasn't solid enough to contend regularly.
McLachlin's scoring average was 70.75 in 2008. It's 73.34 now. He's won just $53,291 (U.S.) this year. He wanted to develop a swing that would get him into the top 50 on the world ranking. McLachlin is No. 203 now.
"We worked hard on changing his swing and he's done a great job of it," Foley said Tuesday by e-mail of his work in progress. "The problem is he lost his playing confidence in doing so. Which unfortunately is par for the course when doing things like that. He has no regrets and is soon to be a father. The future looks good for him, I believe. He is only 29."
McLachlin has time to reach his goals. Still, there are no guarantees in the coach-player relationship, even if, as Mahan said, Foley knows how to talk to players as individuals and that he's the best he's ever talked to "in-depth about the golf swing. He knows more about it than anybody."
Foley and Woods aren't working together formally. But Foley has already given Woods some advice. Assuming Woods takes Foley's advice, his ideas for helping him are on the line, starting Thursday when Woods tees it up in the PGA Championship.
Also read: Woods practises with Canadian swing coach
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and, most recently, he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 11 books, including The Natural Golf Swing, with George Knudson (1988); Links: An Insider's Tour Through the World of Golf (1990); The Swing, with Nick Price (1997); The Fundamentals of Hogan, with David Leadbetter (2000); A Season in Dornoch: Golf and Life in the Scottish Highlands (2001); Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); and his latest, This Round's on Me (2009). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca .