Tiger's teacher talks to Met PGA

The most celebrated teacher in golf spoke for nearly three hours to local pros Tuesday and admitted that he really still is a student, too.

Sean Foley is finding out how to cope with the fame that comes from teaching Tiger Woods. After a week at the Masters, Foley was at the Westchester Broadway Theater for the Met PGA Educational Forum, telling more than 300 people, "I'll probably learn 10 times more from him than he'll ever learn from me."

He nonetheless shared techniques and philosophies and anecdotes about reworking the most famous swing in golf. For instance, he said it took "close to four months" for he and Woods to finish one adjustment. He also said that the stroke that made Woods happiest Sunday was the drive on No. 11, which finally found the fairway. And the most dominant player of his era has been so upbeat about his improved ball-striking lately that he told Foley, "I feel like I'm 16."

Mostly, Foley emphasized the possibilities for everyone in golf, especially instructors who don't yet have a 14-time major champion as a client. The swing coach detailed his own journey, starting 10 years ago, when he was a fledgling Canadian teaching pro, sitting in the audience at a seminar almost exactly like this one (only not as well attended).

Good fortune and hard study helped him get from there to here. Listing his positive influences, he said, "I started reading Mike Hebron's stuff." Hebron, the director of golf at Smithtown Landing Country Club, was in the audience and later received one of the Met PGA's top awards. Foley echoed Hebron when he told the group, "The true platform for learning is screwing up."

He talked about getting hired by PGA Tour pro Stephen Ames, a fellow Canadian, which led to gigs with Sean O'Hair and Hunter Mahan. Woods often plays with those two because he likes their swings. Woods parted with coach Hank Haney and before you knew it, Foley was the hottest commodity in golf instruction. Standing on the practice tee at Augusta Sunday was "a rush," he said.

The Met PGA considered it a coup to land Foley, who has received much attention -- not all positive -- since he started working with Woods last year. He takes the knocks in stride, although he bristles about being called a publicity seeker. "I've never charged a mini-tour player a penny," said the coach whose client list also includes Levittown teenager Annie Park. Foley did take a few swipes at NBC analyst Johnny Miller, tweaking him for harping on pros' missed five-foot putts: "Who missed more [than Miller]?"

Mostly, though, his talk was rich in humility. "The goal of a teacher is to make himself obsolete to the student," he said.

This is not to say Foley arrived without a trove of information and opinions. A question about his basic fundamentals evoked a rambling treatise on ball position, ball flight and Jim Furyk's mechanics. Foley apologized for going off on tangents.

Local pros liked hearing about how he cured Mahan's short-game yips by having him chip balls blindfolded and then intentionally miss greens during practice rounds. "I told him, `When you can miss all the greens in regulation and shoot par, you're done,' " he said.

Foley admitted that when he taught Parker McLachlin, "I helped him lose his PGA Tour card." In answer to a question from Fresh Meadow pro Charlie Bolling, Foley acknowledged he has not covered putting much with Woods. He is, though, proud of having had the nerve to tell the golf legend things he didn't want to hear.

"You don't learn anything," Foley said, "when everyone tells you 'yes.' "