FOLEY CAN'T LOSE!!! ---- ARE YOU USING STACK AND TILT?

Right now Tigers new coach Sean Foley is in a perfect position just like Barack Obama was when he took over for George Bush. All bad news is Bushes fault – all good news is the current administrations doing. Doing it this way there is no line where the ‘Bush Stops Here.’ I see no mendacity in this purely human trait -- it is simply part of the Inheritance Syndrome [IS.]

How does it work in golf? Any time Woods plays badly it can be attributed to Hank Haney.  Anytime Woods hits good shots, it’s due to Sean Foley.  If Tiger never gets it back, it will be Hank Haney's fault -- if he does get it back it will be due to Sean Foley. 

Hence the rule about how to become a great teacher: teach great players who are currently down on their luck, but are a lock to recover their game independent of your teaching. Tiger is a lock to recover so get ready for the Sean Foley era.

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This is a question from a reader of my golf page Golf Insider, published nationally on a weekly basis.

Q: I read an article in the NYT about the Stack and Tilt. Is there anything to this? I see the ads of all the tour players’ switching.

A:  As you might imagine their ads don’t tell about the players switching out of Stack and Tilt like Aaron Baddeley and Mike Wier.

The NYT article quoted the founders of Stack and Tilt as follows: “…[Aaron] Baddeley was currently ranked 198th in the world and Weir 101st. At the end of 2008, Baddeley was ranked 37th, Weir 21st. …We don’t have to defend ourselves… Anybody who entered our system improved, and the players that left the system have gotten worse.”

This implies that the dismal rankings of these two stars are due to the fact that they left Stack and Tilt, but let’s put it in a more complete historical prospective. Prior to S&T Baddeley was one of the great young talents who won 2 Australian Opens before he was 24. And of course Mike Weir, one of the greatest players to ever come out of Canada, won the Masters in 2003 and was #5 in the world, before S&T. So another way to look at it is they took the number 5 player in the world and turned him into #21.

And changing Baddeley’s pure swing was like adding a scowl to the Mona Lisa.  He was young and against all advice he scrapped his Mercedes for a go-cart then sputtered all the way to #198 ranking.

So it could be argued that S&T’s former poster boys got much worse and are now struggling to recover from S&T. In general you walk a slippery slope when you base your methods’ effectiveness on a few tour players.  What are you going to say when they leave-- it’s the players fault?

I think the best answer to a player leaving a coach was how Butch Harmon answered Tiger Woods. Classy as always, Harmon had no public criticism of Woods while privately building rival Phil Michelson into a great player.