Interesting Steve Elling piece on Sean Foley — though the only real surprise is that it has taken so long for Foley to get some strong American coverage. Thanks to reader “Geoff” (yep, tongue in cheek there) for the tip.

Steve Elling writes an interesting take on Foley, not that much of the information would surprise Canadian readers. There’s a bit of a different take on how he acquired Ames as a student, but that’s the part that varies most from the storyline. There’s no doubt that Foley has his fans, which is why David Leadbetter is now bringing him up in conversation. Call it competition. Nothing unhealthy about that.

Here’s Elling’s take:

“Around OCN,” PGA Tour veteran Greg Owen said, “we call him the Dalai Lama.”
Sean Foley had an idea he wanted to be involved in golf instruction when he was 13 years old.     
That’s not all he has going for him, which is nice.

Even in the here-today, gone-tomorrow business of swing gurus, the glib Canadian overnight has become perhaps the hottest coaching property around, an analyst to both rising stars and seasoned veterans. A little more than three years ago, he was an outspoken, slightly heretical teacher with no prominent clients who enjoyed questioning the stagnant status quo associated with teaching the golf swing.

Now you should hear some of the ear-catching names he weaves into casual conversation. No, not Hunter Mahan, Sean O’Hair, Stephen Ames or Justin Rose, a few of the tour players he schools.

We’re talking about Carl Jung, Buddha, Albert Einstein, Aristotle, Confucius and Abraham Lincoln. Foley sprinkles his conversations with quotations from iconic deep-thinkers like some of us drop in lines from Caddyshack. Forget the funny deathbed line from the movie — Foley, 35, seems to be working on gaining eternal consciousness right now, which is part of his appeal to his pupils.

It is Foley’s tendency to talk big that made me question him a few years ago.My opinion is changing. Last year one of Foley’s students, Jessica Shepley, told me that “Sean didn’t just change my swing — he changed my life.” Now that’s intriguing and perhaps made me take Foley more seriously. Fits nicely with the Dalai Lama notion. And for every pupil like Immelman, who flirts with Foley and then heads back where he came from, the Canadian swing coach seems to be winning others as converts.

I particularly like Ames’ comments on Foley’s reading habits, though I somehow doubt they are quite as extensive as the Calgary golfer suggests:

Right then, he effectively became the youngest swing apprentice in history. Many coaches are former, and often failed, professionals. Foley honed in on the coaching thing and devoured every piece of information he could get his hands on, sifting through the theories and discarding stuff he thought was pointless. That in itself is hardly unusual, since he possesses one of the most inquisitive minds in the game.

“He must read about 300 or 400 books a year,” Ames said. “And some of it is weird s—.”

Time will tell whether his success in three or four years translates into something greater. I keep awaiting the brand that comes along with most swing coaches. Maybe that doesn’t interest Foley, maybe he doesn’t want to be Butch or Lead or Pelz. Regardless, the success of his students is forcing U.S. media to try to find out more about him, thus this story.

Fascinating to see the news that Titleist has divested itself of Cobra, selling it to Puma:

Acushnet Company, the golf business of Fortune Brands, Inc. (NYSE:  FO), announced today that it has signed an agreement for the sale of Cobra Golf to PUMA AG. The sale includes the Cobra brand, as well as related inventory, intellectual property and endorsement contracts, and is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

Wally Uihlein, Acushnet’s CEO, had this to say:

“With the sale of Cobra, we have the opportunity to devote all of our resources to the global growth of our industry-leading Titleist and FootJoy brands,” said Wally Uihlein, chairman and CEO of Acushnet Company. “At the same time, Cobra is a strong brand with a heritage of innovation, and we wish the quality associates guiding the brand future success. Golfers and our valued partners will remain the key focus throughout the impending sale and we are confident that our customers will continue to be serviced to our high standards.”

This sort of makes sense when you think Titleist moved Geoff Ogilvy to its main brand and there has been industry talk that Cobra endorsee Camilo Villegas had apparenrly been told to shop for another deal, according to sources, though that came before his recent stretch of fine play. The parent company of Titleist, Fortune Brands, which also sells, among other things, Jim Beam, said the deal will have little impact on its bottom line:

The company said the deal would reduce its 2010 earnings by 2 cents per share before one-time items. In January, Fortune Brands forecast 2010 earnings of $2.30 to $2.80 per share. It expects the sale to result in a one-time gain of five cents a share.

Always interesting when a company divests itself of a lesser brand. In this case Titleist tried to move down market with the acquisition of Cobra, something that didn’t work out. Callaway, on the other hand, tried to go up market with Hogan, and I don’t think that’s been successful either. In the end, the authentic brand is the founding company, and it seems golfers are reluctant to embrace the companies they acquire. There’s long been talk of Nike acquiring Callaway, for instance, but maybe the failure of Cobra is an example of why that hasn’t happen.

Coach's corner: Swing doctor David Leadbetter talks Wie, Woods and Faldo

I know people often complain that the Toronto Golf Show is nothing more than a travel show. I’ve never really had an issue with that — and I can rarely walk more than 10 feet without running into someone I know, so it makes the show a great networking event for catching up after the winter and finding out what gossip is going on.

This year started a little differently, as I hustled down to the Toronto Convention Centre to spend some time with famed swing doctor David Leadbetter. I’ve interviewed Leadbetter before, but it was for five minutes in a building on Bay Street two years ago when he was in town doing a Callaway promotion. This time I was scheduled for 20 minutes, but that became closer to an hour when another interview canceled.

I’m going to write about the conversation in my Sympatico column later this week. Needless to say, the talk was wide ranging and included everything from discussion of Michelle Wie and whether she really loves the game of golf through to whether Tiger Woods will be the same player when he returns. We also talked about the influx of Korean golfers into the LPGA, and Leadbetter had some strong remarks in that regard as well, saying he thinks they are mechanical, but don’t have the drive and fascination for the game that leads to lengthy careers.

On the role of swing coaches:“In some cases we get too much credit. I got a lot of credit when Faldo broke through. The fact that we worked hard for two years… that was a different case. That was a solid two years of work. These days you don’t do that with players. These days it is on the job work. They can’t afford to take two years to make a change.”

On Tiger:  “You had this image of Tiger as being Mr. Perfect. The way he dressed, the way he played, the family, the way he worked out. Everything was perfect. And that image has been shattered. I don’t think the level of his play will decrease in any way. In some ways he might be even more determined to prove himself. But I think the other players will see him in a different light I think he intimidated so many players for so long that basically playing with Tiger was a transformation … he would find an extra gear and they couldn’t. Now you have the players like Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler and they are going to go in with an attitude that this guy isn’t perfect, he’s human after all and they have a chance. And really believing it, which is a big difference.”

On Wie:“She has the ability, whether she wants it or not that badly… life is a choice. I know she definitely wouldn’t enjoy playing golf 24 by 7 like some of these other girls. She has other things in her life, other interests. It is healthy to some extent. But within certain limitations to what she wants to achieve, she could be very dominant. She and Suzann Pettersen are the best going. Nothing against these Koren girls out there, who are very good players, but there is no dominant player among them.”

On Stack and Tilt: “There’s no point in the game where a method has ever worked. And stack and tilt is a method. Those commercials they have on TV — do any of them work with them any more?”

We also talked about swing coaches and what leads to a lengthy career. Canadian Sean Foley’sname came up several times, including a conversation about former Masters winner Trevor Immelman, who moved to Foley last year, only to head back to Leadbetter soon afterwards:

“He went to Sean and they tried to everything different from what they did with me. But Trevor was hurt and it didn’t really work out. Eventually it was, ‘Well what was Lead doing with you?’ And Trevor was like, ‘If I’m going to do what Lead was suggesting, why not work with him?”

+++

Oak Bay's opening hole -- the Georgian Bay course will open late this year or in 2011

I attended two golf course launches, something that will become more rare in coming years. The first was for Oak Bay, a course in the Georgian Bay region, that is part of a housing development with designer Shawn Watters creating the course. Nine holes are complete and seeded, and nine more are nearly finished and should be seeded when the weather warms. The course won’t likely open until next year. I spoke with Watters about the course, which he says “has the flavor of a Muskoka golf course.”

He also pointed out the course will have plenty of great views: “Many [Muskoka courses] don’t have the vistas of the water,” he said. “We have five holes with those vistas.”

Interestingly, the course is only 6,700 from the tips, a smart move in the era of resort golf being 7,400 yards. Many don’t know Watters as a designer — he’s largely done smaller projects — so it’ll be interesting to see whether that changes with this course.  The routing has a couple of drivable par-4s, which is cool, and the front nine looks walkable. The back nine, on the other hand, is really spread out, and I’m worried the course might feel disjointed.

The other course launch was for the badly named “The Lakes” in Cape Breton. Considering it resides in a place called Ben Eoin (pronounced Ben Yawn), it is hard to determine how someone came up with such a generic name, one that sounds like a gated community in Florida.  That already looks to be changing and there was lots of discussion about calling it “The Lakes at Ben Eoin.” That’s a step. The course is part of a ski facility, has a bunch of government cash in it, and some crazy number of partners involved in the ownership group. The design was created by Graham Cooke (with associate Yannick Pilon working on it as well), and is on the side of a hill. Cooke, who was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame last week, was his typical gracious self, and after his presentation told me the course wasn’t that difficult to route considering its location. Once again he talked about the views, adding the course wasn’t going to be exceptionally hard: “When you play this golf course there are about five areas that transfix you,” he said. The Lakes opens in May.

+++

Finally a comment on the show itself. While there were the typical groups of golfers looking for freebies, the private clubs that are looking for members are now staying away, as are a lot of out-of-town courses. Gone are the likes of Firerock in London, and all the private clubs that flocked to the show a few years back in hope of scoring members. I suspect most of the private courses simply found attendees were more interested in a 4-for-2 or a free round than potentially paying $6,500 per year to play golf. I guess the market just isn’t quite right.

I also participated in a panel discussion with some other notables — golfer/announcer Jim Nelford, CanTour commissioner Rick Janes, golf teacher Henry Brunton and course builder Dick Kirkpatrick — that was interesting for me, but not well attended. Richard Zokol had a public discussion about Sagebrush with Score’s Jason Logan that was also pretty quiet. That’s too bad — it was a neat concept. But I think if given the choice about filling their bags with coupons versus listening to pundits talk golf, the coupons always win out. Which is fine with me…

Well, it won’t be just me, but I’ll be heading down to the Toronto Golf Show in a couple of hours to interview David Leadbetter, and then head to events that will become increasingly rare — new course unveilings (one for the horribly named “The Lakes” on Cape Breton Island and one for Oak Bay Golf and Country Club in Muskoka, which I know next to nothing about).

From there I’ll wander around the show — and then take in a couple of new elements. At 3 pm, Richard Zokol is going to be interviewed by ScoreGolf managing editor Jason Logan Bob Weeks in a public forum to talk about Sagebrush, his award-winning golf course in BC, and that will be followed by a panel on the “game of golf, its growth in Canada.” The panel will include yours truly, designer/builder Dick Kirkpatrick, instructor Henry Brunton, Canadian Tour commissioner Rick Janes and Weeks, and will be moderated by John Boykin, a writer and industry consultant. It runs from 4 to 5 pm. Feel free to come down and ask questions, boo, or even throw things, as long as they aren’t too big and won’t hurt too much.

This is all taking place at the Sandra Post Side Theatre — whatever that is.

Weeks isn’t finished — he then moves on to interview Leadbetter at 6…

The other night I had difficulty sleeping. So I went downstairs and watched John Daly’s new reality program on my PVR. No problem falling asleep after that. Anyway, that experience, coupled with the revelations that Daly has been suspended by the PGA Tour multiple times, was the basis for my latest Sympatico column. Here’s a taste:

Fat or thin, drunk or sober, on the course or off it, John Daly is a train wreck.

This week he was a disaster and he didn’t even play golf. Instead a reality television series based on the golfer’s life kicked off on the Golf Channel. With its bizarre mix of pop-philosophy and images of Daly chain-smoking while discussing the difficulties of packing the appropriate clothing for a tournament, Being John Daly was equally as confounding as its subject. We learned plenty about what Daly’s latest girlfriend thinks about his comeback, while the recently thin golfer sat on a couch smoking, played guitar while smoking or hit the occasional golf shot between puffs. If this is John Daly’s reality, it is far from compelling.
On the other hand, Daly’s life sounded more interesting in a story in the Florida Times-Union tale about the golfer’s trouble with the PGA Tour over his 19-year career. The paper, which was sued by Daly for libel, gained access to his PGA Tour disciplinary file as part of the court case, which the golfer lost and has been ordered to pay costs of $272,000. The file shows a string of strange incidents involving Daly, from a case where he swore at another golfer months before he won the 1991 PGA Championship, through to 2008 when the golfer passed out in front of a Hooters and spent the night in jail, eliciting a suspension from the PGA Tour. And then there’s the case where Daly once allegedly tried to run down a U.S. federal official at a U.S. Open. According to the file, he’s been ordered into rehab seven times by the PGA Tour.

The full column can be found here.