We'll Know Tiger Has Signed Up With Sean Foley When He Hits Balls Barefoot

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I know, this player-coach flirting can be more than you bargained for, but I think we can zero in on when the Foley-Woods coupling becomes official. Robert Lusetich reports after Tiger's opening 66 65 at Ridgewood:

Last week, Foley, who got the SOS call after Woods finished next-to-last at the Bridgestone Invitational earlier this month, had the world's No. 1 player hitting balls for two hours in his bare feet as part of a training regimen he's designed to wean Woods out of his bad swing habits.

"If you're hitting in bare feet, when you get to the top, you can't have a violent change of direction. You just can't or you'll fall over. So instead of having me say that, why not have him feel it?" Foley told me.
 Foley's tried to make three major changes in Woods' swing: not letting his head sway off the ball in the backswing, turning his shoulders steeper, more toward the ball, and not tilting backward on the downswing, which causes the "stuck" feeling Woods has often complained about.

"We need to get rid of excessive movement and get the body in the right positions," Foley says. "The goal is to hit it more consistent with less (dependence on) timing."

And he notes this:

In Foley's favor is the fact that Woods felt like he's grasped the principles well enough to fix his swing after a bad warm-up on the range.

"If I had the same warm-up at the PGA (two weeks ago) I wouldn't have known how to fix it because it was too new," Woods said.