Foley talks TV, Tiger and working alongside his critics

Sean Foley will bring his unique perspective, and the insights he’s gained from a decade on PGA TOUR practice tees, to Golf Channel in 2018. The network announced this week that Foley will host an instructional show, Playing Lessons, and serve as an analyst during the coverage of golf’s biggest events. Foley still instructs several prominent professionals — Justin Rose, Si Woo Kim, Danny Willett and Cameron Champ – while teaching out of the Foley Performance Academy near Orlando, Florida, and producing content for Revolution Golf. “You could easily say that this is part of my evolution,â€� Foley said of his new role with Golf Channel. He spoke to PGATOUR.COM on Wednesday about his new role, an old student (Tiger Woods) and working alongside colleagues who have been critical of his teaching methods. (Interview has been condensed and edited.) PGATOUR.COM: What excites you about the new role? FOLEY: There’s a lot of instructional content, but very rarely do we get to hear what players are working on, how they break courses down, how they practice, what they do. A lot of amateur golfers, they don’t have time to go to the range and change their swing a great deal. This lets them see how these pros do what they do. I’ve always liked hanging out with golf pros and seeing how they go about their business, and showcasing some of the good young men and young women out there is a win-win. And I’ll do some stuff where I’ll be sitting with say Notah (Begay) and Brandel (Chamblee) live from the Masters in the evening, just to give my insight as an instructor and someone who has been around the game. I have a good relationship with a lot of the players out there, and I know their coaches and know what they have been doing for years together. I think I can provide the viewers with a unique insight as someone who has spent the past 10 years on the range and traveling with these people. PGATOUR.COM: They say one of the hardest adjustments is learning to criticize your peers. How do you think you will handle that adjustment? FOLEY: That won’t be my job. I’ll never be that guy. I’ll never do that. Look, say I’m doing on-course commentary and I see a guy back off the ball three times, I’ll tell the viewers before he hits that this may not go too well, but I would never be (overly critical). I think there’s enough people with different personalities who do their thing, and they do it well. I’ve always been typically in a good mood, I’m pretty caring, so I’ll probably approach it more from that standpoint. Getting people to understand that that guy didn’t choke. How are you going to go 72 holes without going bogey-double at some point? It’s just unfortunate that some guys do it on 16 and 17. But if they do it on 2 and 3, they never say it’s choking. There will be an adjustment, like there is with anything. Trying to say something in a certain time frame, being more economical with my words. Just staying true to myself, and to the game and to the players. The game is better when we get more insight from the players. When we have a better relationship with the players, the fans get more out of it. The last thing we want to do is have less ability to have dialogue with players because we are pushing them away. PGATOUR.COM: Brandel Chamblee has been critical of modern golf instruction, including some of your teaching. What do you imagine that dynamic will be like when you are sharing a set? FOLEY: I get along with Brandel fine enough. I don’t really take any of that stuff personally. It’s just business and people doing their job. He has the right to his opinion. He studies and looks at it. He’s a sharp guy, a thoughtful guy. When there’s no dialogue between two people, it becomes easy for people to perceive or hallucinate what they think is going on. I’m sure I’ll agree with some things Brandel says and disagree with other things and I’m sure he’ll do the same with me, or with Gary Koch or Notah Begay. You want to have diversity in life, and on the set. The world has become a little too polarized. People are astounded when they see me hanging out with someone who I disagree with on almost everything, and they’re like, ‘But you don’t agree with that.’ It doesn’t mean I don’t like the person. We’re allowed to have disagreements. I think it will be good. The guy played on TOUR, he played in the majors. He studies the game a lot. He does his homework, so I think it will be great. PGATOUR.COM: Here’s some early practice as an analyst. What are your thoughts on what you saw from Tiger at the Hero World Challenge? FOLEY: I thought the amount of times in interviews I heard him say the word ‘grateful’ was awesome, because I think from humility is when we recognize gratitude. He just looked fresh to me. He just looked good. He drove the ball – people will say the fairways are wide there, that’s whatever – with a 180-mph ball speed on average with a lot of swagger, which is fantastic to watch. If Tiger had an incredible year, or was Player of the Year, or won a major, or three events, how could anyone be surprised after all we’ve seen him do? I know that there’s been these years where he’s been injured, but we know what he can do when he’s 80 percent healthy. I thought he looked great. From the standpoint of, he just seemed more peaceful to me, he drove it nice, iron play was lovely, wedge play was lovely. I thought putting inside 10 feet was fantastic. PGATOUR.COM: What are your thoughts on his recent decision to work on his game on his own, using what he and Chris Como have worked on? FOLEY: I think he’s always done that. This guy is a savant. He would take some of what I said (when I was coaching him) and use it and not use other stuff, and I’m sure he did the same with Chris and everyone who coached him. I think he knows what to do. He’s Tiger Woods, right? Justin Rose does the same thing, Danny Willett does the same thing, Lee Westwood did the same thing. I’ve helped Justin build his swing, but he kind of understands it about as well as me now, so the advantage he has over me is that I’ll never know what it feels like when he hits it. I think it’s probably a good idea for (Tiger). I still believe that he has the ability to reach out to Chris with questions. It’s not like it’s a dead facture. Doing it on his own makes sense. He knows where he’s at. You can see it in his swing. He looks like he knows where he needs to be and how he needs to train and practice. I’m looking forward to this year because I think he’s going to do very well. PGATOUR.COM: Justin Rose closed the year with 10 consecutive top-10s, including three wins. He said this summer that you guys made some swing changes to take pressure off of his back. What were those, and did they contribute to this run? FOLEY: It’s really difficult to play professional golf for 18 years. Justin’s been a professional golfer for half of his life. All the travel, the golf courses, the funny lies, the four-hour range sessions. You’re not supposed to bend over and rotate every day. Also, you won’t get hurt if you swing it 2 mph, either. We had to put him more into neutral spine in his setup. He always was a little bit extended through his lower back. We put more overall roundness in his posture. He ends up being a little closer and a little taller (to the ball), and we made sure that in the backswing from the ankle, to the right knee to the right hip to the lower back all the way up to the neck, that there’s a lot of passivity and slack in the tissue. There’s no tension. We’re making sure that we’re loading the body passively. The lines, if you look, haven’t changed too much. We’re just trying to put it more into a position where there’s less pressure on the joints and trying to use the ground and the pelvis more in transition to generate the energy. It’s not like a swing change, so to speak, but it’s definitely a different setup. The whole blueprint is based on safety and longevity. As far as him having 10 top-10s in a row, Justin Rose is just an extremely great player. I think what happened is the more we worked on the swing, his body started feeling better so that turns into two hours more putting per week, two hours more of short-game and bunker work, more time in the gym working on physical conditioning. When we got the swing to where he was feeling good in his body, he’s not having to get treatment, treatment, treatment. He got to spend more time working on all parts of the game. In the last 10 events, he’s putted still not as well as I know that he is going to putt, but much better than he has been. If Justin holes 97 percent of his putts from 5 feet and in per week – he’s a beautiful putter from 15 to 25 feet – if he cleans up from 10 feet and in, and he hits it the way that he can hit it, we should never be surprised when he top-10s. There’s nothing we figured out. I wish we could say one day we did this or he said something to me and we had this insightful moment. I think what we did is kept showing up and just stayed open-minded and hedged on his skills because that guy is one of the best that I’ll ever see. 

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