News Releases
Swing coach gives Ames top marks
GOLF: MERCEDES-BENZ CHAMPIONSHIP
Swing coach gives Ames top marks
From a rented house on a mountain overlooking the ocean in the middle of a jungle in
Costa Rica comes a moment of clarity.
Sean Foley, Stephen Ames's swing coach, provides this by e-mail because there's no
phone, as he peeks into the golfer's prospects for the new year.
"I think Stephen is ready to really manifest his destiny this year as one of the best players
in the world," Foley predicted. "I have seen them all and he is as impressive as any."
Ames, 43, begins the season tomorrow at the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Kapalua,
Hawaii. He and fellow Canadian Mike Weir are in because each won a PGA Tour event
last year. The tournament is restricted to 2007 winners. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson
elected not to play.
Thirty-one players are entered. Mathematically inclined readers might like to know that
the chance of a Weir-Ames playoff is one in 930, while the chances in a full-field event
of 156 players are one in 24,180. Get ready.
Regarding Ames, the most significant of his three PGA Tour wins was the 2006 Players,
in which he shot a final-round 67 to win by six shots. One might have thought his play
convinced Ames he could beat any player any day.
"People say he should have learned that from the Players," Foley wrote, "but I argue that
once is not enough to extinguish all the doubts we have as truly fragile beings, and that
golf can accentuate in its own special way."
But the times have changed for Ames, as has his belief in himself. Ames led the 2007
U.S. Open for a moment in the final round, but triple-bogeyed the seventh hole and went
on to shoot 76 and tie for 10th behind winner Angel Cabrera.
He started the last round of the PGA Championship three shots behind Woods, but
faltered early while playing in the last twosome with him, shot 76 again and tied for 12th.
Woods won.
Foley suggested those were positive experiences for Ames. He said Ames's finishes
"cemented something inside him" that he can indeed beat the best any given day. Only in
the weird, often demented world of pro golf where players are indeed fragile could a
player gain more confidence from losing two majors, while not learning once and for all
from an overwhelming win in golf's so-called fifth major - the Players - that he could be,
or become, one of the game's best players This year will help determine whether Ames
will reach his potential and challenge consistently for tournaments, including majors. He
said he fought himself during the last round of the PGA Championship, a matter of
psychology, not swing physics. Ames has been working on that aspect with his mental
coach Alan Fine.
Meanwhile, he and Foley have been going over the same swing thoughts for nearly eight
months. Their primary focus is on a better setup to enable Ames to swing the club more
around his body back and through, rather than up and down. There's a relationship, Foley
said, between circles and lines in the swing.
"The club will have more linear force when travelling in a circle, with the centre as the
axis," Foley explained. Ames uses two drills to help him get the feeling. In one he hits
balls with tees under both arms, to promote more synchronicity between his arms and
body. Foley describes the other as a speed drill that focuses on "loading, lagging and
maintaining the angle between his hands and the club."
Ames, like Weir and most tour players, starts the year trying to balance mechanics and
feel. Their fates this year will depend, to some mysterious degree, on playing golf on the
course rather than golf swing. It's a never-ending search for what the late writer John
Jerome, in his book Staying Supple, called "movement in which the physics have been
gotten right."
Jerome examined and wrote succinctly about what creates efficient athletic motion. It's
all about physics, as Foley and Weir's teachers Mike Bennett and Andy Plummer - they
advocate the Stack and Tilt approach -know.
The proper movement, Jerome wrote, "indicates an instinct, a natural flair, for the easy
solution to the rapid-fire problems in physics that constitute athletic activity. It is the
single quality that translates from sport to sport, since all sports abide by the same
physical laws."
Tomorrow, in Hawaii, far from his coach in Costa Rica, Ames begins his continuing
quest to express that single quality at the highest levels of competitive golf.
Archived articles
Core Golf’s Wil Bateman wins second Florida tournament
Core Golf students Chase Thurston and Ben Murray enjoy Top Three finishes
Four Core Golf students finish in Top 10 in Florida junior tournament
Core Golf students get great lessons at Disney
Core Golf’s Wil Bateman wins first Florida victory
Core Golf’s Chase Thurston notches second consecutive win
Core Golf's Dr. Craig Davies: Rising star on PGA Tour and among top juniors
News Core Golf’s Jordon Duffy second at Inverrary East Open
Core Golf's Sean Foley named 2008 Ontario PGA Teacher of the Year
Core Golf's Sean Foley coaches PGA Tour winners Hunter Mahan and Parker McLachlin
Jordan Duffy Makes Playoff!
Core Golf Junior Academy new name for Junior Golf Academy of Canada
Core Golf's Sean Foley coaches Sean O'Hair
Danny King wins third Ontario PGA Championship
Kirby and Vandermade finish 1-2 in Ontario Girls Junior Championship
CGJA students Vandermade and Kirby finish 1-2 in Florida