The Genesis Invitational

Torrey Pines Golf Course (South Course)



    Inside the ropes

    Getting fired by a player's wife

    Too many voices on a team usually ends badly

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    This article previously appeared in The Undercover Pro newsletter, a Golf Digest+ exclusive where we grant anonymity to people in golf who’ve got something to say. Here a current coach on the PGA Tour is interviewed by Associate Editor Drew Powell.

    If you’re anything like me, you’re sick of hearing about professional golf’s civil war between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. But let’s talk about another kind of civil war that’s increasingly turbulent out here—and that’s internal sabotaging within a player’s team. I’ve been coaching on tour for over a decade, and with the growing entourages of agents, psychologists, trainers and coaches—including spouses sometimes getting in the mix—things are getting messier. When people jockey for position to get a bigger slice of the money, that can put a target on your back.

    Take this young guy I’d been working with for a while. We’d had plenty of success, he’d gotten his tour card but soon struggled with a lingering injury. His agent told me they were adding a physical therapist to the team to alleviate pain. That makes sense, I thought. He could help my guy warm up and recover after rounds. I’d keep taking care of the technique.

    Except the first day at this tour event, what do I see? The “physical therapist” on the range putting my guy in all these new swing positions. They were nearly the exact opposite of what I was working on with the player. “He’s gotta hit draws, he’s no good with a fade pattern,” I tried to explain, but the physical therapist insisted on these new moves.

    I didn’t put up much of a fight that day, but soon I sent an ultimatum to the player: If you want to work with this guy, go ahead, but it makes no sense keeping him and me both. That was the last anybody heard from that physical therapist.

    Let me be clear—I’m all for bringing in another set of eyes. I regularly text my coaching buddies out here to get second opinions on a player’s swing. But that’s a coach’s job—not an agent’s or a trainer’s. When a player starts to get too many voices in his ear, it almost always ends badly. It’s no different than at your local muny, where the 18 handicap tells the 23 he needs to keep his head down. And just like you, the best golfers in the world will sometimes listen to anything. It’s my job to filter what they do and don’t hear.

    Another time, it was a player’s mental coach who overstepped. We were on the range at a tour event, and I had just finished my session with the player, so I moved down to my next guy. Not 15 minutes later do I look back and see the mental coach giving my player a full-on swing lesson, talking to him about his alignment and different positions. The player’s caddie later told me the mental coach was preaching all this new swing stuff that we’d never worked on.

    When players hear too many different opinions about their swings, they begin to doubt what they are supposed to be working on. If I keep telling my guy he needs to square up his clubface, but someone else comes in and says he needs to get shallower, the doubt creeps in and I’ve lost him. And that’s exactly what the other team member wants. If they can help the player solve their swing issues and play better, then their influence grows, and so does their bank account.

    Coaches are guilty of this poaching, too. One morning at a popular tour stop out west, I was working with one of my guys who is one of the best ball-strikers out here. Suddenly this coach, who I barely know, stands behind us. Hand on his chin, he stands there for a few minutes silently, before jumping in. “Your grip is wrong. It needs to be stronger,” he tells my player, hoping the thought would stick and he’d pick up a client. Luckily, my player was having none of it. “Who the f--- is this?” he says to me right in front of the guy. Unsolicited swing advice from other coaches is one of the biggest no-nos out here and that poaching will get you a bad reputation real quick.

    And don’t underestimate the power that spouses wield. When they decide your coaching isn’t helping their husband anymore, that’s it, you’re done. There’s a story often told out here about one wife of a major champion who was sick of her husband’s poor play. While in the middle of a tournament round, she called up this new coach and had him waiting on the range the moment her husband finished. And it worked. The player stuck with that coach for a while after that.

    I’ve been fired by a wife, too. I had a good run with one former major champ, but after a couple of poor weeks, his wife was in my ear. She told me that I prevented her husband from reaching his potential. Without my coaching, she said, he would have won five times as many events as he did. I just sat there thinking,That would make him an all-time great.You may think she was exaggerating, but her tone said otherwise. That was it, we were done.

    The best teams out here at the ones where everyone stays in their lane. Most great players don’t switch coaches often. But the fact is, most of these guys are eager for a quick tip that might fix all their issues. When everyone in the entourage starts chiming in, it’s a recipe for disaster.