LEMONT, Ill. -- Here's a telling example of how Sean Foley's life is about to change, perhaps not completely for the better.
The Canadian golf coach had been walking the grounds at the BMW Championship on Wednesday morning with one of his players, Hunter Mahan, when his cell phone began going into meltdown mode.
The fact Tiger Woods and Sean Foley live near each other will make their working relationship easier. (AP) He stood on the driving range at Cog Hill, looking down at the screen on the device, quizzically thumbing through the assault of e-mails and text messages that began bouncing off satellites and into the contraption.
"What's this all about?" he said.
As ever, it's all about Eldrick.
Moments earlier, in his own inimitably paranoid fashion, world No. 1 Tiger Woods confirmed he has formally forged a work relationship with Foley, who coaches a half-dozen other PGA Tour players, and the news precipitated the flurry of inquiries that will soon make him the most famous Canuck in the States since Dudley Do-Right.
The calls and messages were just the beginning. Minutes later, a BMW tournament official wheeled by in an electric cart and groused aloud that he was off to coddle movie star Jamie Foxx, who was spotted a few moments later riding in a cart toward where Woods was stationed on the range. Foxx had six other people in the cart with him.
"Like I don't have enough things to worry about," the official said.
Gadflies, sycophants, celebs and pundits -- welcome to the Tiger fishbowl, Mr. Foley. Actually, it's more like a glass blender, and these are the moments right before somebody hits puree.
Halfway through the day, Foley had already been on caffeinated overload, working with Justin Rose, Hunter Mahan and his other charges. It had been a busy morning at the tournament pro-am even before his cell phone blew up.
"Well, walked with Tiger for five holes, then Hunter, and then Rosie, and then back to work with Tiger, waiting on Hunter, work with Hunter, work with Rosie, work with Sean O'Hair and then waiting on Steven Ames," Foley said, grinning.
A few minutes later, he was off to the back of the range for a private session with Woods, who hopefully hadn't been too distracted by Foxx and his entourage.
After four weeks of dollops and dalliances, Foley and Woods have officially become an item. Woods said that after seeing his game rapidly progress in the month since he began working with Foley, 35 -- after hitting rock bottom at the Bridgestone Invitational -- he's committed to whatever transition period it might take to get it all fixed.
Foley is about to supervise Woods' fourth swing overhaul as a professional. The first two took more than a year to come to full fruition, but Woods has seen enough to know that the confident Canadian isn't peddling snake oil.
"I needed to understand the whole concept before I committed to what I was doing," Woods said. "It's nice when you get rewarded with results, and the shots that I'm hitting now, it's been a long time since I've been able to do that. That's always a good sign."
After finishing second-to-last at Bridgestone, he began working with Foley the following week at the PGA Championship, where Woods finished T28. In the two starts since, he's finished T12 and T11, and last week he shot three rounds in the 60s for the first time all year.
Gotta love Foley's timing. When he started, Woods had just finished the worst tournament of his pro career. No matter what Foley does, he's going to look like a quick-fix genius, a notion that made him laugh out loud. "We all know that before I told him anything, he had won 70 times and had 14 majors, so we have to be realistic," Foley said. "The whole idea of coaches being gurus is a bit much and kind of crazy."
But that's the state of the game these days, where Butch Harmon and David Leadbetter -- guys Foley watched on the range at the Canadian Open as a kid and decided to emulate -- have become full-blown marketing entities. With the attention comes double-barreled notoriety when players struggle, or invariably leave. Woods worked with Harmon and Hank Haney for his entire pro career until May, when Haney elected to walk away.
After getting Foley's cell-phone number last month from O'Hair, Woods called out of the blue and asked if Foley could take a look at what was left of his golf swing. Woods was so out of sorts at the Bridgestone, he looked amateurish at times.
"It was kinda like, 'Hey, can you take a look?'" Foley recalled. "Obviously, it was Tiger Woods and how many times have I sat there on Sunday cheering for him before I even started coaching out here? I wouldn't say it was surreal because I feel like I am confident in what I do, but it was cool, definitely. Like, 'Whoa, that's kind of crazy.'"
Not really, though it will lead to more scrutiny than Foley can possibly imagine. The others in Foley's tour crew have dubbed him the Dalai Lama because he's cerebral and well-rounded, and he might need the Lama's famous tolerance and patience to endure what's sure to follow.
The Foley fast track has been interesting. He moved to Orlando to run a Leadbetter-style golf school for kids called Core Golf Junior Academy in 2006, with not a single PGA Tour pro under his tutelage. Not even five years later, Foley has five guys in the 70-man BMW field. Amazingly, all but Ames are ranked in the world top 23.
For all his early success, Foley isn't caught up in his sudden celebrity and has no website, business cards or any exclusivity clause with Woods. Unlike Harmon and Haney, who lived in Las Vegas and Dallas, Foley lives a couple of miles from Woods in Orlando.
"You don't need that, it's not necessary, because you don't need that much time, especially when you live in the same area code," Foley said. "It's perfect.
"The beautiful dynamic of it is that we live four minutes from each other and the ideal way to work with a player obviously isn't at a tournament. I think it's fantastic to have the opportunity to work with arguably the greatest player of all time and I feel very fortunate."
Goosebumps aside, the next question becomes how long it will take for Woods to fully reclaim his strut. Already, it's become fashionable in print to pooh-pooh the notion he will break the records set by his idol, Jack Nicklaus, or regain the form he showed even in 2008-09, before an offseason sex scandal left both Woods and his Cadillac Escalade as smoldering wrecks.
After experiencing the fast results of the past three weeks, Woods is now officially on board and committed to whatever transition period is required.
"I've been through it with Butch and I've been through it with Hank," he said. "I won one tournament from here at the Western in '97 until May of '99, a year and a half, almost two years [under Harmon]. For Hank, it took probably a year and a half before I started to really get it and went off on a run.
"So yeah, I've been through it before, and it's taken some time, and I understand that. I have no problem with that, as long as I keep making progress along the way."
Results have been quick and impressive already. Foley, who is trying to stabilize Woods' head and halt his tendency to move his body off the ball, is fairly certain that he can get Woods' issues rectified fairly quickly. He worked the entire offseason with Rose, who lives at a private club in Orlando, and the Englishman won twice this season already. Mahan has two wins as well.
It won't take a plane flight and a week of nonstop heavy range time with Haney, who had to block out weeks at a time to spend with Woods, to tinker or tweak. Unless they want to.
"Sometimes the things you want to work on are a bit too aggressive for a Tuesday of a tournament," Foley said. "Justin and I got so much done last winter at Lake Nona, and he came out this year really in good shape."
Woods feels like he's already grasped enough of the Foley changes to fix his bad habits in midstream, which is far removed from not even knowing what he was doing wrong in the first place.
"Knowing the answer and being confident in the answer, that took a lot of time with Butch and it took some time with Hank," Woods said. "And it's taken some time with Sean, but not quite as long."
Woods is already in the midst of his first winless season ever. Another year of similar results would prompt even more career obits to be written. But as fast as the pair has hit the ground, it might not take another year of tepid results, baby steps and incessant questioning about why he hasn't won for months.
"It's just the repetition," Foley said. "Tiger understands it now. You have to figure that the best players ever are probably the best learners ever, in any sport. I think he is an unbelievable learner."
As part of the crazy parade himself, Foley stands to learn plenty, too.
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