My pal Sean Foley has suffered some slings and arrows from certain quarters of the media recently, with Tiger's continuing woes and Sean O'Hair letting him go but if you know Sean he has all that speculation well in perspective as he gets on with his life.
Still it was nice for me to hear Justin Rose credit Sean with his remarkable -8 63 yesterday on a very tough Cog Hill course.
I have been following Justin since he broke onto the scene as a 17 year old amateur at the Open Championship in 1998 at Royal Birkdale, where he Monday qualified then went on to pitch in at the last to finish T4. He lived with his parents in a little English village in Hampshire called Hook. His dad Ken was his coach and I remember digging up their number with the help of an international operator, and having to talk my way through his mother, then Ken before getting him on the air.
He had the big debate with both of them about turning pro right away that night, and did so the next day. You might remember he went on to miss 23 consecutive cuts in his first year as a pro, he simply couldn't drive the ball in play on a regular basis.
He has come a long way since then and yesterday hit all 14 fairways and 16 of 18 greens.
The 63 was Rose's best of the season by two strokes and included nine birdies. As I said he credits an hour-long session with Sean on Tuesday where he "cleaned up" a couple of things in his golf swing.Their aim was to get the club more on line at the top of his backswing.
"When I have it a little bit laid off, I can throw it quite quickly on the way down," Rose said. "When I have it nicely in the slot at the top of the backswing, the club just falls down nicely into the ball. ... I'm sort of managing to do it with a nice, simple thought, and I think that's the key, is if you can take simple thoughts from the range, that's how you're going to take them to the golf course."
Rose said Thursday's performance was on his "short list" of best rounds ever. Given the conditions and the severity of the golf course, Rose thought breaking 70 would have been "really, really good golf" so he was "ecstatic" about his final score.
Click here for complete scoreboard including projected Fed Ex points http://www.pgatour.com/leaderboards/current/r028/
Red hot Webb Simpson and local favourite Mark Wilson are T2 with -6 65's.
Click here for today's tee times http://www.pgatour.com/tournaments/r028/tee-times.html
Bryan Angus also on twitter@mummmbles
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