The post Top 100 Teacher: A simple swing feeling for a bigger backswing turn appeared first on Golf.

The post Top 100 Teacher: A simple swing feeling for a bigger backswing turn appeared first on Golf.

Sign up for InsideGOLF before Sept. 30 and automatically be entered to win a virtual lesson with Sean Foley.

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Earlier this week, Inside GOLF members (not a member? Sign up right here!) were treated to a fascinating discussion between Baden Schaff (the co-founder of Skillest) and GOLF Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley.

As part of the LIVE golf lesson, the pair selected three golfers swings, and broke them down on camera — sharing some great advice for the rest of us along the way.

“If we don’t use the pivot properly, most of us do not have the wrist, and elbows, and shoulders, to get into world-class positions,” he says. “The pivot is the key to arm structure, in many ways.”

And that, Foley goes onto say, will determine whether you hit slices, hooks, or lasers right down the middle. Here’s a swing feeling you can use to help.

1. Let your eyes follow your takeaway

A good pivot starts on the takeaway, Foley says in the video above. The specific golfer Foley was referring to struggled with coming over the top, so the feeling he gave him was to allow his eyes to follow the clubhead on the takeaway.

“Let your eyes go with it just for the first part of the takeaway,” he says. “Now that my head is in that position, it’s a lot easier to turn.”

2. Turn over your trail leg

Doing that, Foley says, puts your head and entire upper body where it can enjoy a greater range of motion. Simply put: You’ll be able to turn more.

“Allow the pelvis and abdomen to go with it,” he says of his takeaway. “As you do that and continue to the top, allow that chest to turn over your right side.”

In doing so, Foley says, you’ll be adding more side bend earlier in your swing, which will take pressure off parts of your back, and can help prevent you from coming over the top.

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The post The easiest way to understand turning in your swing, according to Tiger Woods’ former coach appeared first on Golf.

The post The easiest way to understand turning in your swing, according to Tiger Woods’ former coach appeared first on Golf.

The golf swing certainly isn’t a natural athletic motion, so it’s up to us to give our bodies cues to follow. In this Skillest lesson, GOLF Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley walks through what he’s focusing on when teaching the best players in the world.

Sign up for InsideGOLF now for the chance to win a virtual lesson with Sean Foley.

The post The easiest way to understand turning in your swing, according to Tiger Woods’ former coach appeared first on Golf.

The post How to win a FREE lesson with Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley (and watch one, too!) appeared first on Golf.

The post How to win a FREE lesson with Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley (and watch one, too!) appeared first on Golf.

GOLF Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley is a busy man. But he’s not too busy for you.

The former coach of Tiger Woods, who now has a range of students on both the LPGA and PGA tours, is ready to give one lucky golfer a free virtual lesson — and, yes, that lucky golfer could be you.

To enter for a chance to win, all you need to do is join InsideGOLF, which you can do here. Yep, it’s that simple. Join here for a slew of amazing member benefits (more than $100 in value for only $20!), and you’ll automatically be entered for an exclusive chance to win one-on-one time with one of the game’s best teachers.

But wait, there’s more! As part of our InsideGOLF partnership with Foley and digital instruction platform Skillest, this Wednesday we will be hosting a live, hour-long webinar with Foley, available only to InsideGOLF members.

Foley will break down the swings of four InsideGOLF members, but there will be learnings for all! Because Foley will focus on the mental, physical and technical elements of the game, even those golfers who aren’t chosen this time around will still come away with knowledge and insight that they can apply to their own games.

You can sign up to be an Inside GOLF member here.

InsideGOLF members may sign up for the webinar with Foley here. It begins Wednesday, Sept. 7 at 4 p.m. ET.

The post How to win a FREE lesson with Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley (and watch one, too!) appeared first on Golf.

The post How Lydia Ko rediscovered her golf game (with help from Sean Foley) appeared first on Golf.

The post How Lydia Ko rediscovered her golf game (with help from Sean Foley) appeared first on Golf.

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — When she arrived at Mission Hills last spring, Lydia Ko was searching.

She was searching for a win. Ko hadn’t lifted a trophy in three years — a shocking drought following her incredible run as teenage World No. 1.

She was also searching for a major championship title. If Ko’s three-year winless spell was shocking, the five years she’d gone without a major title was damn near inconceivable.

And she was searching for a simple, effective golf swing. Ko, a self-proclaimed over-thinker, had a tendency to complicate the golf swing, which had been hampering her progress for years.

Instruction

Lydia Ko reveals what she's worked on with new swing coach Sean Foley

By: Zephyr Melton

But she was close to finding it.

After teaming up with renowned instructor (and GOLF Top 100 Teacher) Sean Foley in the summer of 2020, her game had been trending in the right direction. Heading into major championship season, Ko put together her best stretch of golf in years — seven top 10s in 14 starts — and her world ranking was steadily on the rise.

The two proved to be a formidable team. Ko loves to rely on thinking and feeling her swing, and there’s not a coach in golf more cerebral than Foley.

“There were a lot of questions in my head, and I needed a bit more clarity,” Ko told GOLF.com at the Chevron Championship. “That’s what he’s helped me with the most. Defining what is right and what is wrong is more important than technically knowing what needs to happen.”

The term “swing coach” is too limiting for Foley. That’s not to disparage his fundamentals; he has a terrific understanding of the technical intricacies of the golf swing. But his teachings only begin with golf. Talk to Foley for five minutes and you’ll learn about life.

“A great coach is a friend and a mentor,” Foley told GOLF.com. “It’s not all just technical.”

He’s exactly the type of coach Ko needs. The now-24-year-old was a teenage sensation when she began her professional career. She won in bunches, became the top-ranked golfer at age 17 and was compared to the game’s all-time greats. The game looked easy.

But all of a sudden, golf wasn’t easy. The wins became more infrequent, and then they stopped altogether. She started missing cuts. She fired her swing coach. She fired her caddie. Her world ranking dropped. What once looked so easy became decidedly difficult.

“My M.O. has always been players who are at the bottom of their game,” Foley said in an episode of Off Course with Claude Harmon. “The first time they’ve ever found the game to be super, super difficult.”

Ko certainly fit the profile. She was two years removed from her most recent win when she teamed up with Foley, and she’d dropped outside the top 50 in the world.

They got to work.

From a technical standpoint, Ko’s swing wasn’t in terrible shape, but there was room for fine-tuning. Her alignment had drifted to the right at address, causing compensations in her swing that needed to be addressed. Additionally, they worked on getting the feel at the top of her swing in a comfortable place.

There was also a mental component to the work.

“He’s more than just a swing coach,” Ko said. “Sometimes I talk about life things with him. He’s worked with and met so many people, so his perspective is different. It’s nice to talk to him about golf things and non-golf things. There is no b.s. He’s very straightforward and gives grounded advice.”

News

Sean Foley describes how Lydia Ko regained her world-beating form

By: Jessica Marksbury

The mental aspect of the golf is perhaps the area Ko has improved the most. The scar tissue from her lost years is still present, but it doesn’t define her.

“Philosophically, she’s improved a great deal,” Foley said.

So, even though Ko was searching when she arrived at Mission Hills last season, she wasn’t lost.

Ko was largely an afterthought heading into the final round at the 2021 ANA Inspiration. A solid week left her eight strokes behind 54-hole leader Patty Tavatanakit. Then, everything clicked.

Ko lit the course on fire. She made an eagle, eight birdies and zero bogeys. Her 10-under 62 was the lowest final-round in major championship history. And although it wasn’t quite enough to catch Tavatanakit, the word was out — Lydia Ko was back.

The next week, she validated that final round with her first win in three years. She’s won twice more in the time since and risen to No. 3 in the World Golf Ranking.

She’s not done searching — every golfer is a work in progress — but Ko returns to Mission Hills this week with plenty of confidence.

“To see herself build herself back up is really dope,” Foley said. “She’s worked for everything she’s earned.”

The post How Lydia Ko rediscovered her golf game (with help from Sean Foley) appeared first on Golf.

The post Meet Sportsbox AI, a swing app with potentially revolutionary swagger appeared first on Golf.

The post Meet Sportsbox AI, a swing app with potentially revolutionary swagger appeared first on Golf.

In the era of prodigious purses and savvy strategic thinking, pro golfers are making it their business to be in business outside of their sport, while show-biz stalwarts and superstar athletes like Steph Curry, Peyton Manning and Andy Roddick are discovering that the smart money is in golf itself. In our Golf & Business package (which you can also find in the Jan/Feb 2022 issue of GOLF Magazine), we’ll go inside their wallets.

Part 1: Why Abraham Ancer and Mark Wahlberg teamed up in the tequila business
Part 2: Bubba Watson the businessman is a lot like Bubba the golfer
Part 3: How ascendant attire brand Johnnie-O made a splash on the golf course
Part 4: Why Peyton Manning is making cold calls about this 9-hole golf course
Part 5: Jason Kokrak’s passion is collecting. The payoff is a houseful of liquid gold
Part 6: On the course, Stephen Curry is scoring just about everywhere

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The future of golf-instruction technology is coming, and when it arrives, it’ll fit neatly in the pocket of your everyday trousers. All it needs are your driving-range videos.

Rules

Lee Trevino ‘declared war on slow play’ in 1973. Would his 10 solutions help now?

By: Luke Kerr-Dineen

Backed by a who’s who of swing instructors — including Sean Foley, David Leadbetter and Mike Adams — and GOLF Top 100 Teachers, the Sportsbox AI smartphone app uses motion-analysis kinetic software to convert those videos of your swing into 3D models to provide real-time, corrective feedback — as though you’re a character in a video game.

“Our mission is to help people achieve their goals in sports and fitness, and we believe 3D motion and biomechanical analysis is the best approach for that,” says the company’s cofounder, former LPGA pro Jeehae Lee. “We are going to make that technology available and put it right into people’s hands.”

Who are the “we” Lee is referring to? In addition to the aforementioned golf-instruction royals, some particularly eager top-tier players. LPGA pro Marina Alex came onboard as a Sportsbox AI investor in mid-November. “I was blown away and knew I wanted to be involved in some capacity,” she said. Alex followed major champion Michelle Wie West, who signed on as an investor and active advisor in October, when the app, scheduled for release this spring, was first made available on an invite-only basis.

“Learning about Jeehae and her vision, I invested in her and the product,” Foley says. “There are other companies and products in this area, but as soon as I saw Sportsbox AI it was like the difference between Harvard and kindergarten.”

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The post ‘I think I over-coached him’: Sean Foley reflects on his years with Tiger Woods appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘I think I over-coached him’: Sean Foley reflects on his years with Tiger Woods appeared first on Golf.

Over the course of his legendary career, Tiger Woods has only worked with a handful of golf coaches in an official capacity: Butch Harmon, Hank Haney, Sean Foley and Chris Como.

While Woods’ most prolific years were under Harmon and Haney’s tutelage, Woods won eight times between 2010 and 2014 with Foley at his side, though none of those victories added to his major championship tally.

In an appearance on this week’s episode of Off Course with Claude Harmon, which was conducted in front of a live audience at GOLF’s Top 100 Teacher Summit at Pinehurst, Foley reflected on his years with Woods, and detailed what he would do differently if he had the chance.

News

Latest Tiger Woods injury update comes via frequent visitor Justin Thomas

By: Dylan Dethier

“I would say, at that time, I was still too methodological,” Foley said. “I think my original players that I met on Tour, it was perfect for all of them. And I think that what happened was, I underestimated — I was too arrogant — I underestimated really the state that he was in, period. I mean, he went from a deity to a punchline overnight. He won five of his last six tournaments in 2009 and came back and by middle of 2010, he couldn’t break par. But nothing changed. Still had the same swing, same putting, same chipping. Still had Hank coaching him.

“So I think that that really shows that when you go from being invincible to visible, it’s really difficult,” Foley continued. “And so I think I over-coached him in the sense that I thought a lot of the issues were technical, more so than where they’re at. But that being said, I could say that about everyone I’ve coached. You don’t get it right all the time. I wake up often from 3 to 3:15 in the morning. I’m not sure why I do, but I think it has to do with probably someone that I didn’t help, and my brain understands. I don’t know, but it happens quite often, actually. I do fall asleep again, but it’s there. It’s got to be golf-related.”

Foley and Woods parted ways in 2014.

“We’re still very close, and I think I was there for him at a time where everyone was leaving his world and I was coming into it,” Foley concluded. “And I was coming into Desert Storm, literally. And I knew, too, I was going to be compared to everything he had done at 22 years old. So I kind of understood it was going to be difficult. But I was there for him, I defended him, I loved him, I did my job as a coach. But, I mean I think it’s irresponsible to think, if you could do it again. Everyone’s a genius when they can do it again. I probably would have done it differently.”

For more from Foley, including the impressive way Woods warms up with his short irons, and how Lydia Ko managed to regain her world-beating form, check out the full interview below.

The post ‘I think I over-coached him’: Sean Foley reflects on his years with Tiger Woods appeared first on Golf.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: Sean Foley reveals an impressive detail about Tiger Woods’ wedge warmup routine appeared first on Golf.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: Sean Foley reveals an impressive detail about Tiger Woods’ wedge warmup routine appeared first on Golf.

On this week’s episode of Off Course with Claude Harmon, Sean Foley described the surprising and impressive way Tiger Woods warms up with his short irons.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: Sean Foley reveals an impressive detail about Tiger Woods’ wedge warmup routine appeared first on Golf.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: Sean Foley describes how Lydia Ko managed to regain her world-beating form appeared first on Golf.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: Sean Foley describes how Lydia Ko managed to regain her world-beating form appeared first on Golf.

On this week’s episode of Off Course with Claude Harmon, Sean Foley explained how LPGA star Lydia Ko recovered from her long winless slump.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: Sean Foley describes how Lydia Ko managed to regain her world-beating form appeared first on Golf.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: ‘I think I over-coached him’ — Sean Foley reflects on his years with Tiger appeared first on Golf.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: ‘I think I over-coached him’ — Sean Foley reflects on his years with Tiger appeared first on Golf.

On these week’s episode of Off Course with Claude Harmon, Sean Foley opened up on what he believes he didn’t get right with Tiger Woods.

The post Off Course with Claude Harmon: ‘I think I over-coached him’ — Sean Foley reflects on his years with Tiger appeared first on Golf.

The post Sam Horsfield Swing Study appeared first on Golf.

The post Sam Horsfield Swing Study appeared first on Golf.

Sam’s coach and Golf Top 100 Teacher Sean Foley analyzes the rising Euro player’s swing.

The post Sam Horsfield Swing Study appeared first on Golf.