PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Justin Rose treats his body like a temple.
The 42-year-old Rose has battled nagging back injuries in recent years, including having to pull out of the British Open at St. Andrews in July. It has led him to take extreme measures to keep his body healthy enough to perform at the highest level.
But Rose isn’t just eating a salad instead of a burger and fries. He purchased his own traveling gym that travels from tournament to tournament and allows him to work out and recover. It’s no stretch to say that it played an integral role in his victory two weeks ago at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, his 11th career PGA Tour victory and 23rd title worldwide. It also snapped a winless drought that had stretched back to the 2019 Farmers Insurance Open
“It’s made a massive difference, I think,” Rose said. “It’s a stripped-down RV with hot and cold plunges, steamed shower and infrared sauna and all those other modalities. It’s a place for me to go. It has a coffee machine and all the creature comforts.”
Rose has returned to living full-time in London with his family and his kids are attending schools there. But this isn’t a RV that he lives in on the road as other players such as Jason Day and more recently Jordan Spieth do. Rose believes he’s the only player on Tour with his own gym on wheels, something he invested in and began using on Tour in June 2021.
“I realize there are certain things I’ve done in my life that don’t make my professional career easier so how do I combat that?” he said. “Those are steps I’ve taken to continue to fight the curve. The RV has everything to do with health and wellness. I’m not getting any younger.”
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Cold, blustery conditions forced the Pebble Beach tournament into a Monday finish. When play was suspended, Rose retreated to his personal gym.
“The ice bath after a 50-degree day is less appealing,” he said. “There are days when I feel a little banged up.”
In addition to monitoring his health and wellness on the road, Rose has benefited from the wisdom of swing instructor Mark Blackburn. They started working together in November when Rose became fed up with a run of middling performances far below his standards.
“I figured there had to be something I’m missing,” said Rose, who worked with Sean Foley for the bulk of his career, including when he won the 2013 U.S. Open, 2016 Olympic gold medal and won the 2018 FedEx Cup as World No. 1. “I was very aware that I didn’t want to be a player that goes from coach to coach to coach. The most important thing is he’s given me clear boundaries in which to operate. … My brain likes to know the whys and the hows and he does that through metrics and through some technology and makes it very believable for me. He hasn’t tried to change my pattern so much as re-introduce some things that have worked well for me in the past.”
“All I’ve done is given him a pattern that works based on his body designed to protect his back,” Blackburn said. “He was just a little lost and I’ve given him some clarity. Here’s what you’re doing, here’s what you need to do to fix it and holding him to task.”
As for Rose’s one-of-a-kind gym, Blackburn said, “He’s taking care of himself, his body and where it needs to be. That’s huge.”
Lydia Ko noted that she and Sean Foley decided to go their own ways for “logistical reasons.”
Lydia Ko parted ways last month with instructor Sean Foley. The former world No. 1 took to Instagram to make the announcement, noting that they decided to go their own ways as a coach and player for “logistical reasons,” but that Foley will always remain a close friend and mentor.
“When I first met Sean, I was in a place where I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself and in my game,” Ko wrote. “Over the past two years he has helped me evolve as a better player and person. Our time together was full of so much learning, laughter.”
Ko, 25, recently won at the BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea for her 18th career title, calling this her most consistent year yet. A two-time winner this season, Ko leads the LPGA in scoring, and she leads the Rolex Player of the Year race with 11 top-5 finishes in 20 starts.
Currently No. 3 in the world, Ko was ranked outside the top 50 when she began working with Foley during the summer of 2020.
“I’ve been looking at lots of my videos or swing videos,” she said a month after starting with Foley. “Kind of weird to Google or YouTube yourself, but I’ve been doing that to just see my swing as an amateur.
“He’s, I think, gotten me not to think too much about the lines of everything. I’ve tried to change my mindset of not trying to take a video of my swing every single time I’m on the driving range.”
And then this kicker: “It doesn’t need to look like a perfect swing for me to just play golf.”
Foley urged Ko to look inward, reminding her that the ingredients that led her to be the youngest to ever reach No. 1 were still there.
She snapped a 1,084-day victory drought with an absolute dart show at the Lotte Championship in April 2021. There’s no question that Foley helped resurrect Ko’s confidence and changed the trajectory of her career. Ko won three times on the LPGA and once on the LET while working with Foley.
Now, with a chance to become No. 1 again for the first time since 2017, she continues a new chapter with only a handful of events left in the season. Ko’s sister and manager Sura told Golfweek that Ko has been casually working with instructor Ted Oh again, but nothing is yet full time. Ko first started working with Oh ahead of the 2018 season.
Ko worked with Jorge Parada prior to Foley. Her list of former instructors also includes David Whelan, Gary Gilchrist and David Leadbetter. As an amateur, she worked with New Zealand’s Guy Wilson.
Birthday boy Danny Willett celebrates in style with his eighth career title.
Happy birthday to Danny Willett.
The 34-year-old Englishman celebrated another trip around the sun in style with a two-stroke victory at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on Sunday. Willett shot a 4-under 68 and finished 18-under par overall to defeat fellow countryman Tyrrell Hatton (67) and Sweden’s Joakim Lagergren (66).
“It’s magical,” Willett said. “On British soil with everyone here, it’s been a great week. It’s been a couple of years of average stuff again. I seem to do this a lot actually, go up and down.”
The former Masters champion rose again, adding a victory at the Old Course at St. Andrews to previous titles at Augusta National Golf Club, Wentworth and Crans-sur-Sierre among his eight career titles.
Willett had endured a challenging year, failing to finish in the top 10 in his first 11 events on the European Tour as he dealt with COVID-19 and ailments ranging from wisdom teeth to appendicitis and a hernia.
The Dunhill Links is played over three storied courses in Scotland – at St. Andrews, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie — from Thursday to Saturday with the final round returning to the Old Course, where Willett has long excelled. He is now 77-under par for his career there, including finishing second at this event in 2010 and placing sixth at the British Open at St. Andrews in 2015. He won the Dunhill Link’s 2017 team title alongside caddie Jonathan Smart, who returned to the bag for him this week.
Willett entered the final round with a three-stroke lead, but he was caught by Richard Bland, who finished tied for fourth with Shane Lowry, temporarily. Hatton, a two-time champion of the event, rallied with a 67 to finish tied for second a week after playing in the Ryder Cup. But Willett wouldn’t budge, finishing with a string of pars to seal the deal.
“It made me focus a little bit more,” Willett said of having challengers hot on his heels.
“We’ve been working hard, people don’t see it behind the scenes,” Willett said. “Obviously my wife does and other people do but it’s a good one.”
Willett’s work ethic has never been questioned. During the pandemic, he moved to Florida just down the street from his swing instructor Sean Foley so that they could work on retooling his game.
“The guy is a beast,” Foley said. “If you ask him to do something 100 times, he’ll do it 500 times because to him that’s 400 times better.”
Willet became the first player to win a European Tour event on their birthday since Ernie Els at the 2004 HSBC World Match Play Championship. The birthday boy said he wouldn’t have time to celebrate the occasion or his victory properly as he was catching a flight to Las Vegas for next week’s PGA Tour event. When an interviewer referenced his birthday, Willett smiled widely and cracked, “Just don’t tell people how old I am.”
Justin Rose went on a blitz to finish his round Thursday at Augusta National to hold a four-shot lead.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Justin Rose was just another name in the middle of the leaderboard late on Thursday afternoon, his score of 2 over through seven holes as dull as the gray skies above.
Then the Englishman who has been so close to slipping on the green jacket lit up the famous white scoreboards with plenty of red numbers.
In a 10-hole stretch ignited by an eagle from short range on the par-5 eighth, Rose was 9 under on a firm and fast course that was causing fits for most everyone else and he soared to the lead after the first round of the 85th Masters.
Rose went eagle-birdie-birdie-par-birdie-birdie-par-birdie-birdie-birdie-par to finish his round of 7-under-par 65 and left the Augusta National Golf Club’s grounds with a four-shot lead.
It was his career best by two shots at Augusta National in 59 rounds and 9.5 shot better than the field average.
“I kind of knew 2 over through 7 is not the end of the world, but also knew you’re going in the wrong direction,” Rose said. “I didn’t hit the panic button, but I reset just prior to that and thought if I can get myself back around even-par, that would be a good day’s work.”
Well, it became a great day’s work.
“I just got on a great run and was just trying to stay out of my own way and just try to get it to the clubhouse and keep doing what I was doing,” he said. “I putted the ball beautifully and read the greens unbelievably well. If you had said to me walking up the eighth hole (I’d shoot 65), I’d have said no chance, this course is playing a little too tricky for that. But it’s incredible. It’s a good reminder that you just never know what can happen out there, just to stick with it on the golf course.”
Four shots back in second were Brian Harman and Hideki Matsuyama, who is trying to complete a Land of the Rising Sun major double at Augusta National. Last week, 17-year-old Tsubasa Kajitani of Japan defeated Emilia Migliaccio on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff to win the second Augusta National Women’s Amateur. The 29-year-old Hideki Matsuyama, the best golfer from golf-crazy Japan who is a five-time winner on the PGA Tour and eight-time winner on the japan Golf Tour, could become the first male player from Japan to win a major.
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Two women from Japan have won majors – Hisako Higuchi (1977 LPGA Championship) and Hinako Shibuno (2019 Women’s British Open).
In at 70 and five shots back were 2018 Masters champion Patrick Reed, Will Zalatoris (who was ranked 483rd exactly one year ago), 2012 U.S. Open winner Webb Simpson and Christiaan Bezuidenhout.
Defending champion and world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, who shattered scoring records en route to winning the Masters in November, opened with a 74.
Johnson was joined at 74 by four-time major winner Brooks Koepka and two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson. Others over par included Lee Westwood (78), Jason Day (77), four-time major champ Rory McIlroy (76), reigning U.S. Open champ Bryson DeChambeau (76) and 2017 Masters champion Sergio Garcia (76).
Rose, 40, who finished in a tie for second in 2015 and lost in a playoff to Garcia in 2017, took the first-round lead at the Masters for the fourth time. He did so on a windswept day when the scoring average was north of 74.5. And he did so in his first tournament since back spasms forced him to withdraw in the third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational five weeks ago.
Rose has been struggling with his form since golf returned in June following a 13-week break due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. In 19 starts worldwide, he’s mustered just three top-10s. The 2013 U.S. Open winner at Merion, who has 10 PGA Tour titles and eight European Tour victories, has fallen to 41st in the official world golf rankings, his lowest mark since 2010.
Justin Rose hits his tee shot on the 18th hole during the first round of The Masters golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Michael Madrid-USA TODAY Sports
But he’s gone back to coach Sean Foley and there were few struggles in Thursday’s first round. In his 10-hole blitz, he made an eagle putt from 10 feet and birdie putts from four, 25, six, three, eight, 20 and four feet.
“I didn’t know where my game was coming into this week,” Rose said. “I’ve been working hard, seeing a lot of improvement on the range. The start was slow. But experience kicked in. I knew it was a tough day.”
Now he has to deal with having the lead, but his expectations will remain the same.
“That’s going to be the trick the rest of the week,” Rose said. “Hopefully you can just run off instinct a little bit. I’ve competed in these big tournaments quite a few times, and I’ve got one of them to my name, but we’re looking for more.
“I think to keep the expectations relatively low even in this situation is not a bad thing for me for the remainder of the week and just keep it one shot at a time, keep committing on this golf course.”
Justin Rose, trying to stay patient amid a massive slump, is ready to bounce back at the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek this week in Las Vegas.
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Justin Rose hasn’t won since the 2019 Farmers Insurance Open, has dropped to No. 23 in the world and finished 100th in the FedEx Cup just two seasons after winning the whole ball of wax.
So, when asked ahead of Thursday’s opening round of the CJ Cup at Shadow Creek if he was doing anything special to try to hit it as far as Bryson DeChambeau these days, he answered, “I’m just trying to hit it straight again, to be honest with you, before I think about hitting it far. I’m just trying to get my technique back to a sound position.”
Rose, 40 and a 10‑time winner on the PGA Tour, is amid a period of great change in his life. First he switched caddies, parting with longtime sidekick Mark Fulcher in May 2019. Then he ended his short-lived endorsement deal with Honma (officially in May but had made the switch back to his longtime sponsor TaylorMade in March) and finally split with instructor Sean Foley in June after 11 years. For someone who had so many long-term relationships in his professional life, it had the feel of being a mid-career crisis. Rose noted that he also is in the process of moving his permanent residence from the Bahamas back to England, where his son, Leo, is currently attending school.
“We’re just trying to suss it all out at the moment,” Rose said of returning to his native England. “It’s always been our eventual long‑term plan, but like I said, just the way of the world right now feels like it’s forcing the hand a little sooner.”
Rose is making his first starts at the CJ Cup this week and Zozo Championship next week, and after missing the cut at the U.S. Open and finishing T-37 at the European Tour’s BMW Championship last week he knows he’s got his work cut out to prepare for the Masters in November.
“I have no form coming in here, but certainly I’m looking at using these sort of next eight rounds to trend into Augusta,” Rose said. “That’s definitely important for me these next couple of weeks to start to feel like I can make improvements and progress with my game.”
As funny as it may sound, Rose’s ballstriking, the backbone of his game, arguably has been the biggest cause of his frustration. In 2015, he ranked fifth in Strokes Gained: Approach and has slowly backed up all the way to ranking No. 66 last season, which is still better than average but not up to his usual high standards.
“For me that’s just technical, there’s nothing mental about that. If I was yipping it from four feet, I’d be worried about that, but I’m not,” he said. “It’s nothing crazily wrong, it’s just a little bit of technique and once I get that technique figured out, then normal service resumes.”
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Indeed, his “normal services” had become a thing of beauty as he ascended to World No. 1 in September 2018. The view from the top of the mountain was glorious. The road back to the top will require renewed dedication. Rose has a pretty good idea of what that will take.
“Consistency I think is what got me to world No. 1. I don’t know what it was, but it was like 24 top‑10s out of 30 events run, so obviously the consistency that I was playing with is what I was looking for,” Rose said. “I think at the moment I feel like there’s flashes of it. I’m seeing moments on the range where it’s really, really good, but then day to day it’s not quite as consistent. I’m trying to sort of drill down into I know what I’m doing wrong, I’m just not entirely sure of the quickest line to fix it.”
Rose, who played with TaylorMade gear for most of his career before signing with Honma before the 2019 season, is back using “a baseline of what I knew was comfortable for me,” along with some Titleist Vokey wedges and the Axis1 putter that he has used to great effect ever since he switched to the claw and committed to the putting principles of putting coach Phil Kenyon. Rory McIlroy, who went through his own struggles when he switched equipment manufacturers, can relate to what Rose has endured.
“I think sometimes it takes a while to get used to different equipment and you’re so used to playing something for so many years,” McIlroy said. “You can get into bad habits and your swing goes off a little bit. I think that’s maybe something that Rosie struggled with this year is sort of trying to almost make his swing fit the clubs other than the other way around. But I played with him at the U.S. Open and he didn’t seem that far away. He seemed like he was pretty close. Wouldn’t surprise me if he played pretty well the next couple weeks.”
Indeed, it was just two weeks ago that another former major champion and European Ryder Cup stalwart broke out of a slump with a victory at the Sanderson Farms Championship. Could Rose pull his version of Sergio Garcia in Sin City? He is confident that better golf is ahead of him.
“I’m enjoying the struggle in a sense, I’m enjoying the work,” he said. “And I don’t think you can always be in a performance phase, I think sometimes there’s work phases, sometimes there’s performance phases and I’m definitely having to grind it out at the moment, but kind of still weirdly enjoying my golf and I feel motivated and hungry. Yeah, I’ve just got to kind of be patient.”
Lydia Ko, a 15-time winner on the LPGA, is on a quest to gain muscle and take her game to the next level.
Lydia Ko’s quest to gain as much muscle as she can has her looking to buy new pants.
“I want her screen saver to be Serena (Williams),” said instructor Sean Foley.
Ko emerged from the LPGA’s 166-day quarantine with noticeably more muscle on her petite frame. It hasn’t been easy keeping it on while traveling, particularly with the restrictions of COVID-19. The former No. 1 tries to keep her jumping workouts to a minimum in hotel rooms when she’s on a top floor.
The KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, pushed to October due to the pandemic, is being played this week at historic Aronimink Golf Club, a 124-year old Donald Ross design west of Philly. Ko said she doesn’t feel like it’s a course that favors any particular player, but even the longest players on tour are keen to talk about its length. With Aronimink playing especially soft in the fall, hybrids have been overworked early week. The official scorecard has the par-70 layout at 6,577 yards. Tees will likely be moved up throughout the competition.
Ko, who ranks 53rd in driving distance at 256 yards and drinks one protein shake per day, has taken up rock climbing to increase her grip strength and arm strength.
“Men apply way more force into the grip than women do,” said Foley. “It’s not really force into the ground, it’s force into the grip.”
She plays tennis at Lake Nona with Ariya and Moriya Jutanugarn, Lindy Duncan and Jennifer Song. Goes running too, even though she’s not really a fan.
“I don’t like running,” said Ko, “but I like the feel of after a run. You sweat it out, and I feel like some of the stress or things you kind of keep in are expressed out. I like that bit.”
Ko is longer this season, by nearly 11 yards according to LPGA stats, and Foley said that’s also a result of changes they’ve made to her technique.
When Foley first began working with Ko, he told the 15-time tour winner that the reverse move that caused her to hook the ball reminded him of a tippy canoe.
“Lydia is a pure rotator,” he said. “Over the way she stopped turning, so she had to find other ways to generate energy, which aren’t really good for face control and path. When she hits her shot that she hates to the left, I just said stop tipping the canoe.”
Much of their work together has been focused on answering the many questions she now has swirling in her head. Foley tells her to dig a hole, pile all her bad thoughts in it, cover it up and never think of it again.
For so many great players, the game came naturally, he said, and when it grows difficult, they suddenly become contemplative and intellectual about it, when it was never that way before.
“So that’s the tricky part,” he said. “How do you go back to something you don’t remember building?”
In the case of the tippy canoe, Ko actually went out to her backyard with a “canoe tombstone,” put it in the ground and snapped a picture for Foley.
“We’ve all been playing the game for so long, so sometimes (you say), ‘Man, where did that come from?’ ” said Ko. “I think it’s just as important to kind of clear those questions in your head like mentally and philosophically, and I think he’s really helped me in that aspect, where I just kind of bury it and then just walk away and try and not think about it again.”
Ko lost 15 pounds in 2018 in an effort to gain more speed and has put on about 10 pounds of muscle since then.
Bryson DeChambeau’s physical transformation was a hot topic in 2020, even before he overpowered Winged Foot to win the U.S. Open. Ko calls DeChambeau’s efforts that week incredible and is quick to point out that he didn’t win that championship on strength alone.
“I don’t know personally, how much muscle gain I can have,” she said. “My trainers and I are working hard to hopefully get stronger.”
This quest isn’t a race either, Foley notes. In their 10 years together, Justin Rose gained 35 yards over time. Problems often arise when the search for distance leads to momentous change overnight. DeChambeau’s changes, he said, are highly-engineered.
Lexi Thompson joked last week at the ShopRite LPGA Classic that of course she wouldn’t mind hitting it farther, but that she wouldn’t want to put on 40 pounds to get it.
Most LPGA setups don’t reward exceptional length anyway, notes Golf Channel analyst and major champion Karen Stupples.
Current No. 1 Jin Young Ko won two majors last year and swept the LPGA’s season-long awards while ranking 76th in driving distance at 258 yards. When Ko won five times in 2015, she averaged 250 off the tee, about 6 yards shorter than she is now.
Plus, it’s more difficult for most women to pack on muscle.
“Naturally, we don’t have the same chemicals in our body that allow us to build the same way that a guy does,” said Stupples. “To even gain 10 pounds of lean muscle is a huge thing for a woman to do.”
When a woman dramatically changes her physique, it can open up the door to unwanted criticism. It takes an especially single-minded and determined approach, Stupples noted, to not take harsh comments personally.
“That’s the problem,” said Foley, “the vanity, the social unconscious biases of how a woman should look, and how many people walk around with that as their idea and that’s their comparison. Whereas to me, you’re an athlete. Be an athlete.”
Lydia Ko has been known to shake up her team a time or two, and she has done it again.
TOLEDO, Ohio – Lydia Ko has been known to shake up her team a time or two. That was the case again over the LPGA’s extended coronavirus break when about a month ago she started working with swing instructor Sean Foley.
Ko said Foley “hasn’t ripped anything apart.”
“He asked me the question, ‘Hey, if somebody asks you what are you working on, what are you going to say?’ ” said Ko. “I was like … we’re just getting into a position at the start of the swing to make sure that I can hit it freely and not, like, manipulate it.”
Ko’s list of former instructors is nearly as long as her caddie list. She was with Jorge Parada prior to Foley. She told Golfweek back in May of 2019 that she’d asked Chris Mayson and Foley to take a look at her swing. She ultimately went with David Whelan. Prior to that she’d been with Ted Oh, Gary Gilchrist and David Leadbetter. As an amateur, she worked with New Zealand’s Guy Wilson.
It’s a dizzying list for a 24-year-old who once made everything look so effortless.
Lydia said she played a lot of golf with Lindy Duncan & @Annevandam at Lake Nona. Loser had to drop and do push-ups after each hole. Outdrove Anne once during the break. Took a picture of it. pic.twitter.com/yyFbVMv2O5
Karen Stupples, an LPGA major winner who has followed Ko’s entire career both as a player and broadcaster for Golf Channel, weighed in on Ko’s swing coach carousel before the start of the LPGA Drive On Championship.
“We talked so much about how great she is around the green,” said Stupples, “how she visualizes how she’s feeling shots that not everybody has. She’s just magnificent with a wedge in her hand.
“My fear, and I think we’ve seen it over the last few years, she’s lost a little bit of that skill that she has because she’s so concerned with technique… If you make changes in your swing, it’s hard to not have those thoughts go through your head even on the shorter swings and the shorter shots because it just takes a while to work everything through the whole bag.”
Stupples will be pleased then to learn that Ko has recently taken a trip down memory lane.
“I’ve been looking at lots of my videos or swing videos,” she said. “Kind of weird to Google or YouTube yourself, but I’ve been doing that to just see my swing as an amateur.
‘He’s I think gotten me not to think too much about the lines of everything. I’ve tried to change my mindset of not trying to take a video of my swing every single time I’m on the driving range.”
And then this kicker: “It doesn’t need to look like a perfect swing for me to just play golf.”
It’s been more than two years since Ko, a 15-time winner on the LPGA, hoisted a trophy. She’s a two-time champion of next week’s Marathon Classic. At the opening round of the LPGA Drive On Championship, Ko carded a 3-under 69 at Inverness Club to sit three shots back of leader Danielle Kang.
Ko, who like Foley is based in Orlando, Florida, played quite a bit of golf over the LPGA’s extended break at Lake Nona with fellow tour players Lindy Duncan and Anne van Dam. Instead of playing for money, they’d make each other do push-ups after a lost hole.
“We used to play for 10 push-ups,” she said, “but now we play for five because we were like, ‘Man, we can’t do like 40.’ ”
A drive for trophies and money won’t help fuel a long golf career, according to PGA Tour rising star Cameron Champ.
Practice is a necessity. Talent needs to be obvious.
But a drive for trophies and money won’t help fuel a long golf career, according to PGA Tour rising star Cameron Champ, who spoke with longtime coach Sean Foley on an American Junior Golf Association Instagram Live feed this week.
Champ, who grew up in Sacramento, California, said he’s learned through time — and he’s still only 24 — that the most success comes from a passion to simply play the game.
“If you’re playing for the fame and the money and all that other stuff, you’re not going to play well at all,” Champ said. “You’ll have 10 different things going through your mind when you’re sitting over a simple inside-the-cup four-footer and you’ll miss it because you’ve got so much going on in your head.
“If you play for the love of the game, which is what all of us, down inside, is why we’re playing … when you get to certain points, whether you want to move up in the rankings or whether you want to make this tournament, you can’t really think about that. You have to just play. Everything will fall the way it falls. You can’t really try to force anything.”
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Champ, who already has a pair of PGA Tour victories under his belt, has very few problems off the tee, where he’s already established himself as one of the best. So it’s not surprising that much of his work during the pandemic has been focused on his short game.
The former Texas A&M star insists that will likely remain a large part of his routine moving forward, too.
“For me, it’s 80 percent, if not a little more, just short game. Basically, like 150 yards and in,” he said. “Obviously, you still want to focus on the good, but you may want to focus on the bad. For me, my ball-striking and off the tee, has been (good). But when you look at my stats from 150 yards in, that’s where everything I need to work on. For me, down the line, that’s the main area I’m going to focus on, pretty much my entire career.”
Instructor Sean Foley has worked with Tiger Woods and his current client include Justin Rose, Cam Champ and Danny Willett.
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.
Justin Rose and Sean Foley review video on Foley’s phone.
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.
Tiger Woods and swing coach Sean Foley.
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.
Sean Foley shows the sweet spot to a rookie golfer from Peace Players. (Adam Schupak/Golfweek)
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.
