Category: Instruction

Canadian Sean Foley, 46, has been sheltering-in-place with his family — wife Kate and two sons — in an Orlando suburb of Florida not far from the Golden Bear Club and his neighbor/student Danny Willett.

Foley is best known for working with Tiger Woods, but has enjoyed his greatest success with Justin Rose, who he has coached since 2009 and helped reach World No. 1 in 2018. Foley is much more than a swing instructor; he’s a life coach and a philosopher as you’re about to find out.

Golfweek: Who are your heroes?

Sean Foley: Mother Teresa; Nelson Mandela; Malcolm X; my father, Gerald Foley; and my real mentor on golf was Ben Kern. Let me tell you why. I think the most full life would be one of kindness and compassion and I don’t know anybody who acted upon that more than Mother Teresa. For years and years in the streets around the world she held people with contagious diseases and never got sick. That’s trippy, by the way.

Mandela simply for realizing the only way he could deal with prison was educating himself and reading a lot and being able to forgive and have love for the people who put him there. What an evolution in one man’s life. I love his quote, It helps me to remind myself that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. That’s pretty dope, right?

I was going to have Malcolm X’s face tattooed on my back, but my wife stopped me. Just his evolution as a man and how he regenerated himself into a better version each time. I believe if he wasn’t assassinated and lived a long life he would have been pivotal in America. He spoke truth and power and all he was trying to do was create love and educate people and was willing to die for it, that’s impressive to me. He was painted as anti-this-and-that, but if you get some time, go to YouTube and type “Malcolm X speeches,” the guy was out of this world. He makes the hairs stand up on my neck. It’s doesn’t mean I agree with everything he said, but I just admire his conviction, most of all.

My dad because he’s such an upstanding person. I’ve never heard him complain in his life, never seen him be rude to anyone, hardly seen the man be frustrated. He’s just an all-around good human being.

Ben Kern because at a young age I watched him at The National (Golf Club of Canada in Woodbridge, Ontario). He was the first Canadian to be first-team All-American, played the Tour for eight years and then became the quintessential club pro. The guy in America I’d equate him to is Bob Ford. At 14, I worked at The National in the summer and filled divots for my membership. I was in awe of this guy. He was dressed so well, remembered everyone’s name, just a pro’s pro. Ben was kind of my father figure in golf and I wanted to be like him. I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up.

GW: Who most shaped your thinking on the golf swing?

SF: Craig Davies. He’s like my road roommate. He’s a chiropractor and an expert of human movement and he helped form my understanding the most. As a kid, the coach that I gravitated towards was Chuck Cook. I always felt like he had more answers, more proof behind what he was saying.

GW: What adventure most changed your life?

SF: Going to East Tennessee State. Going to a historically black university. I think that’s going to top anyone’s adventure.

GW: What was the last thing you cried about? (And when?)

SF: Yesterday. I cry a lot, actually. I watched the documentary Unstoppable about the surfer Bethany Hamilton, who, when she was 13, was headed to be the female version of Kelly Slater until a Tiger Shark bit her arm off. It’s fantastic. She had to learn to surf with one arm. But she still kept the goal of being the best. She came back and won Hawaiian Nationals with one arm teaching herself a completely different way to surf at the highest level.

I cried because of the beauty, just the beauty of it. I guess because inherently I see what a quitter I am. I’m not quite sure, but I just cried because it is an uplifting story. If it is that uplifting a story, I shouldn’t cry. Like when a guy makes a putt to win on the PGA Tour and the announcer says those are tears of joy, not really. When I’m joyful, I don’t cry. So, I think it’s more of them standing there in disbelief that it happened through all of the struggle, pain and hardship. I’m kind of getting to the point in my life where I can look back and remember the time when nobody believed in me and told me I couldn’t do it and I guess I see some of myself in her. I guess the tears come because I realize what she’s accomplished and how incredible she is.

GW: What’s your greatest extravagance?

SF: My BMW M5, maybe. Based on the fact that it has 671 horsepower and I live in a place with a 35 mph speed limit, you could say that. Let me call BS on myself, I like it.

GW: How have you learned to handle criticism?

SF: I’ve tried to deeply understand it. If it is your job to write an article about me, I think a lot of times people haven’t been there and they don’t really know what it is like. They’re criticizing something they don’t know. It doesn’t matter than it is me. I mean, look at the criticism Butch got when Tiger left him, or that John Tillery is getting from Brandel (Chamblee) because Rickie Fowler has left the Harmons for him. I don’t know if that is merited because Kevin Kisner will tell you that John saved his career. Some other player would say he did a good job but he’s just not for me. It doesn’t mean the guy isn’t good at his job. There’s way more parts to the wheel, right?

Out of everyone who has criticized me, I’m not sure I’ve spent more than 5 minutes with any of those people. When I started working with Tiger and he wasn’t playing well and he was getting hurt, that’s going to happen. At some point, we lost our way together. He’s not the first and he won’t be the last. It’s tricky. I don’t feel like I’ve ever been criticized by anyone who does what I do. There’s going to be criticism that I pay attention to, and that’s going to be my own criticism of myself, which is quite healthy. There’s a level of insecurity that’s very important to have because it avoids you from moving into a place where you’re arrogant. When you’re arrogant, you make all kinds of mistakes.

GW: What fear do you most want to conquer?

SF: I don’t have any fears and I’ll tell you why. I mean, fear is in our DNA. If it wasn’t, we’d be extinct. If the elders didn’t tell us the really scary stories about the saber-toothed tiger we’d have walked right up to them and we’d be done. So there are those subconscious fears. But when I was like 21, I was really struggling with my life and I went to go see a therapist for one session, and the therapist asked me, What would be the scariest thing in the world for you? I said, well, a lot of things, but the scariest would be to dance at a night club with a girl that was taller than me. He said, all right, that’s your homework. Go do it. So from a very young age I learned that all the fears I had were created in my mind and how much those fears got in the way of my life because the first time I did it I went on to date that girl for 6-7 months.

I thought that girl would never ever have had interest in a shorter guy like me, or however I saw myself in all the terrible ways I thought of myself. But then to buy her a drink and start talking to her and I made some comment where she asks, What’s that from? I tell her it was from Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and how I really like to read the Russian novelists. She’s like, I major in Russian literature. I realized that by being in my comfort zone I felt OK, but the problem was growth only comes out of that zone. I do believe within all of us that there is this desire to grow and over time we deaden that. We have these preconceived notions, but all that does is take away from the abundance that life has to offer. What I learned that night and continued on thereafter is I thought everyone else had the same judgment of me that I had of myself. I thought because I was short and not good enough and girls liked tall, muscular guys and this and that, I limited my ability to realize that was not true. When we started talking Russian literature I had her right there. That was it. I never thought a girl might be interested in my intellect. So, I don’t really have any fears because I’ve exterminated the flames of my fear from my understanding of where they come from.

GW: What’s the one goal you want to accomplish this year?

SF: I know I’ve been trying to accomplish it for like 15 years, but I just want to get to an incredible place of inner tranquility. I know what it feels like. I get there from time to time and I’ll tell you what, man, you couldn’t put a price on it. It’s such a great feeling to be completely cool with yourself regardless of what’s going on around you and all those things you used to identify with that you thought made you who you are and cut the shackles off of my self-oppression. As I get closer to understanding it and what that is, my career two years from now could look completely different, and I’m OK with that. It’s just about getting to a better place.

Q: What’s the best advice you ever received?

SF: It came from my dad, but it was really the words of Gandhi and that is to be the change you want to see in the world.