Westwood dumps Cowan

While Rory was cruising to victory last night, Chubby quietly announced that Lee's terminated his relationship with Pete Cowan. He's also hired Quiros' caddy - link

Some very revealing snippets there, I thought.

I thought he was only using Quiros' caddy whilst Billy Foster recovered from knee surgery.

It does seem interesting that the guy who helped him become the leading player in the world is getting the boot when it's not the long game that is the problem for Lee; it's his short game and course management. He would be better off hiring someone like Pelz, Utley or Stockton to help compliment that side of things.

McIlroy, who has worked or is still working with Stockton, showed very strong putting yesterday. The par save at 17 comes to mind as an example of his improvement, he usually missed that type of putt before.

I agree 1GG, it does seem a bit silly. By all means get a short game coach, but don't dump the guy who's got your ball striking to where it so famously is.

If he does need someone to pester him until he gets it right, then a) why is his motivation not there and b) surely Cowan has underlings with an understanding of his method who could stand in?

I only mentioned the caddy thing as it's his third bagman since Billy's injury. The sooner they're reunited the better for both of them.

FWIW, I believe Westwood did consult Stockton, among others, at one stage recently. I suspect that in line with his impending move to Florida the new 'short game' coach may well be Foley.

Pretty revealing Chubby's comment that Westwood needs someone to keep on his case through his practice routines, and that Cowen was often not available to do that. (Foley wouldn't either, by the way.)

Unfortunately, there's no magic short-game wand; Lee will always be mechanical rather than a feel player, but I guess he's looking for a higher mechanical efficiency and who can blame him.

Since Foster was injured it's been a wasted summer for him.


Separately, there's a comment in the press today from Kaymer, lamenting his hard work is not paying off and that he's taking three weeks off. Says he hopes he'll make the Ryder Cup Team and looks forward to playing on it, but wouldn't want to be a Captain's pick. Is it conceivable that he might give up his place?

Didn't realise that he is on his third bagman SJ. Although it shouldn't be too surprising really as he's going back to Billy once he is fit again. No one would give up their caddy for that long and probably no one would want to take the short term job without the chance of it leading to a more permanent gig.

Maybe he really needs a much stronger bagman too; Kwini has often bemoaned the fact that for someone with such an imperious long game his par 5 scoring is rubbish. Perhaps he needs someone to make the decision for him about where to play and how to play or to stop him from making a poor decision.

i think kaymer might. he comes across as quite a concious individual, and if there was a high profile on form player (a la rose / casey 2 years ago) definitely going to miss out (i.e. 3 or more into only 2 wildcard slots), then it would be very honourable for him to step aside given his current form.

that said, it would not be beyond the realms of possibilities that the ryder cup may be just what the doctor ordered for kaymer - where a good performance might kickstart his preparations for 2013.

i'm surprised kaymer hasn't found 'it' yet in 2012, really expected him to have a strong second half to the year.

Agree about Kaymer, certainly wouldnt surprise me if he pulled out the team. Seems that type of individual.

With regard to Westwood dont see the issue him changing coach if he aint getting as much time with him as he wants. His long game is so good I think getting a short game coach makes sense. Leading the field in GIR and not making the cut is a stat you dont really want.

Anyone know the story with Quiros? Why is he taking 8 weeks off?

I can't see any top coach being willing to stand over any player as though he were a schoolboy with a goldfish-like attention span. Quite what they expect to get in terms of better service only they will know, but it seems unlikely they'll get anyone high profile to do that sort of thing.

Sand - it's not that I think he shouldn't seek out a better short game coach, just that I don't see why he's broken ties with Cowan completely. Get a Butch or one of his brothers or one of their staff to follow him week in week out and make him work on the short game till it starts paying dividends. If the long game slips in doing that, pop back to Sheffield and let PC sort you out in a day or two as he always has.

What is now a certainty is that we can no longer feel sympathy for Lee when his short game woes play out in front of us in the games biggest events. It is clear from those comments that he does not have the concentration/commitment needed to put in the hours of short game practice people like Tiger and Phil put in. Is this the atmosphere Rory wished to escape at camp chubby?

As Rory has now displayed he can be one of the most relaxed and deadly putters if he needs to be, he is a guy who can obviously put in the required hours to turn an average short game into a very good one.

Lee should take a look at team GB and question how it is they managed to reach such high levels of performance. The answer is that they looked at every detail of their sport and made sure they were as good as they could be in each of these areas. You can’t bitch about not winning with a great long game if you are unwilling to work on a poor short game, just like Jess Ennis didn’t whinge about a poor javelin she went away and made sure that element of her sport was improved as much as possible.

He clearly managed to improve his fitness so why stop there and not bother to finish the job off by becoming a competent short game player and strong mentally under pressure?

PS

Anyone else find it interesting that the player who is popular with the US media and fans and who holds a major is given coaching priority over Westwood? I wonder if Mcdoo can pay his coach a little more than Westwood does?

has anyone heard who its going to be? i know he worked with stockton before but i think he is soley a putting coach. Pelz is the obvious choice but i doubt he would be able to give Lee the commitment he seems to be after

Westwoods pushing 40 now so its not really suprising he might be sliding a little. I think a slow slide to the lower end of the top 10 and then a gradual drift down the rankings.
Doesnt mean he cant bag a major, Clarke and Els have shown that can happen, but I dont buy into the theory of if he gets one he'll gets a few anymore. I think those days of him being at the very top of the game are close to being in the past.

Mac - I agree wholeheartedly with your Team GB analogy. It seems the thing with Westwood is that he somehow still hasn't got his head around the fact that golf is about getting the ball in the hole, not just hitting it from tee to green. I'm always wary of taking quotes out of context but that article quotes him as saying 'I played well enough to contend.' No, you didn't, you played well enough to miss the cut. Until he gets his head round that concept there's no hope for him.

As for the point about GMac getting priority, I doubt it's any more than sour grapes about who booked him first. Cowan has always taught Lee, but GMac is a recent client relatively speaking. I certainly don't think Cowan would have chosen to prioritise based on a player's popularity in the US when he's based in Sheffield. Besides, it's not like he's short of work and needs to raise his profile.

Who will Westwood's new coach be? I still think he'll want a Florida based man with a good pedigree. What's Leadbetter doing these days? I doubt he'd be any more willing to babysit than Foley or Cowan, but he'll certainly have underlings who may.

now that i think of it the cowan dump may just simply be the fact hes relocating to the US.
i wonder could there be a Chubby dump coming soon

SmithersJones wrote:While Rory was cruising to victory last night, Chubby quietly announced that Lee's terminated his relationship with Pete Cowan. He's also hired Quiros' caddy - link

Some very revealing snippets there, I thought.

Have to say the quotes sound a bit.. whingy and petulant. Is there a danger that Lee and his "camp" will gradually become seen as has beens or an irrelevance by the top coaches and support systems? These days, top level sport is about perception, business management and strategy as well as talent and hard work.

Hend - They're very close but that's not a bad shout. He must look at GMac and Rors and wonder what they're doing that he's not. Except the answer is working on their short games and nothing to do with their management!

Bob - They do sound a bit that way don't they? I'm sure that isn't quite how they were intended but I don't suppose Lee's very happy with Chubby right now.

"What's Leadbetter doing these days?"

Somehow making michelle wie worse than she already was.

She's a dreadful player. Another Kournikova, though doesn't have the excuse of being a looker.

Super

I cant believe we are going down this road again. You never have sex and by your own admission are not exactly handsome, yet you claim someone as hot as wie to not be a looker.

Very few things wind me up more than the ridiculous hype generated around her with absolutely no golfing justification whatsoever.

If that's what Leadbetter's up to, I hope for Lee's sake he doesn't choose old Dave. I still think it'll be Foley, again with an underling doing the donkey work if that's really what's required.

Foley already has Rose, Mahan ,Tiger (who I reckon takes up a fair bit of his time) and probably more, so would he actually be able to accommodate lee?

When Wie was 15 or 16 she finished top 3 in 4 majors in 2005 and 2006, She may well not have lived up to the hype but to say there was no golfing justification for it at that time seems strange to me.
She was young, very talented, a pretty girl and she hit the ball a long way. Its not hard to see why it happened.

McLaren wrote:Super

I cant believe we are going down this road again. You never have sex and by your own admission are not exactly handsome, yet you claim someone as hot as wie to not be a looker.

On the contrary Mac, I am a handsome man, just lack a killer instinct.

You can just imagine Super in the morning...."Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest Jock of all........ what do you mean its Mac ? Im the handsomest one, my Mum is always telling me Im the most beautiful little boy in the world...sob....."

Mac's already admitted he looks like a trainspotter

Ironic timing for this announcement of coaching change - Westwood and Cowen feature in a joint instruction article in latest Golf World magazine.

The suggestion in the statement is that the new short game coach is not one of the big names. Presumably he or she is based in Florida though.

Given his current state of desperation it might be fair to assume that westwood is on the way out (and Donalds head is a mess). Is justin Rose 6 months away from being the top ranked UK golfer or can he not keep up this seasons form?

hend085 wrote:could there be a Chubby dump coming soon

i'm sure chubby takes his dumps very regularly

McLaren wrote:Given his current state of desperation it might be fair to assume that westwood is on the way out (and Donalds head is a mess). Is justin Rose 6 months away from being the top ranked UK golfer or can he not keep up this seasons form?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but I think it's very premature to write off a player like Westwood at this stage (especially given that he's experienced and come out of a serious slump in the past), ditto Donald. If you wanted to take a short-term view though, you could say that David Lynn is the best GB (i.e. exc NI) player at the moment... And a month or two ago, some people were saying that McIlroy had left the building - and now he's officially the best player in the world as well as the UK (again)!

I'm not saying that Westy will definitely recover, but rather I don't agree that "it might be fair to assume..." at this point in time. But that's just my opinion too.

In what way is David Lynn the best GB player at the moment. All he's had is three top tens and a few missed cuts this year.

Well done to him for his 2nd at the PGA, but don't get carried away.

That's my point - I was trying to say that short termism can lead to silliness...

Skydriver wrote:That's my point - I was trying to say that short termism can lead to silliness...

.....ah right I see, hard to grab the context sometimes.

It is a little different to suggest a WGC winner and multiple pga tour winner will surpase Donald and Westwood over a six month period to saying lynn's one good result means anything other than a fine performance. I should also have said GB and not UK, as Rory is clearly the best UK player.

Mac, is there an echo in the room? Sky has already said that he was joking.

Super

He was suggesting I was basing this on the last week. Which is not the case, I am basing it on the whole season and the direction each players game has been going over the last 12 months.

Westwood – getting worse and no wins of note.

Donald – getting worse in majors although one win on pga tour this season and good finish last season. overall his game is worse compared to last year

Rose – won a play off event last year and a WGC this season. Looks to be getting better as he understands his foley swing and moving up the rankings.

SmithersJones wrote:While Rory was cruising to victory last night, Chubby quietly announced that Lee's terminated his relationship with Pete Cowan. He's also hired Quiros' caddy - link

Some very revealing snippets there, I thought.

Really? All I can see is some quotes from Chandler - not a single direct quote from LW.

A number of comments here about LW 'whinging' but I'm not sure where they get that from given the above.

Would seem to be pretty straight forward to me - get some short game practice in, maybe including some tips from an acknowledged short game expert.

navyblueshorts wrote:

SmithersJones wrote:While Rory was cruising to victory last night, Chubby quietly announced that Lee's terminated his relationship with Pete Cowan. He's also hired Quiros' caddy - link

Some very revealing snippets there, I thought.

Really? All I can see is some quotes from Chandler - not a single direct quote from LW.

A number of comments here about LW 'whinging' but I'm not sure where they get that from given the above.

Would seem to be pretty straight forward to me - get some short game practice in, maybe including some tips from an acknowledged short game expert.

I thought it was quite revealing that he needs someone standing over him, pushing him to 'play chip after chip'. Just because it's not from the horse's mouth, doesn't mean it's not interesting. I find it quite remarkable that he should have reached the dizzy heights he has without the desire, never mind just the willingness, to work on that sort of thing. Also quite revealing that GMac getting priority was a concern to him. Never saw him as a prima donna before, but if that's true you have to say it's somewhat diva-ish.

I think we are all reading a lot into this. I am also surprised that Westwood has ditched the guy who got him to have a great long game but then again he has been saying that it has been drifting off for a while and he obviously feels that he needs more help and sounds like Cowen is been spread too thin to provide that. I'm not convinced he is prioritising another client, I would guess it is closer to saying that he is working with two other players so you can only have a third of his time and that may not have been considered enough.

Reading Golf Illustrated this quarter there was a big article on Dave Pelz and his new pad with its pretty amazing short game 'garden'. In the article he talks about being asked to help an unnamed British player who had well known short game issues but the guy wanted to Dave to run around after him and Dave's attitude was if you want to get better then you will find time to meet me. He wasn't being overly critical, more using it as an example of how he works but it could be Westwood. Or almost any other GB golfer apart from Donald I suppose!

Just out of interest, anyone know if current pros ask for hints/tips off each other? Maybe LW could get some good advice etc from someone like Mickleson.

even a look at Mickelson's dvd would do him good navy

We never really hear about pros practicing together, other than practice rounds of course. But i'd imagine it would reduce the monotony of hitting ball after ball to have a practice partner. More of a necessity in other sports such as tennis for obvious reasons.

At the end of the day, pro golf is an extremely selfish game. I recall Westwood saying as such in an interview a couple of years ago, explaining that he had no interest in sharing his "secrets" of how he became world #1 after falling outside the top 200 - at least not until he had finished his playing career.

Having said that, I am intrigued by the reference to someone a little different as the probable new coach. Was thinking that it might be a recently retired player who hasn't yet developed a reputation as a coach.

Just thought I'd have a dig around to see if there was any news on the new man's identity, and I found this on LW's own website. It certainly puts a different spin on Chubby's statement, reading it in full;

"Lee is very structured about going to the gym, but not about practising so when Graeme McDowell and Pete's other players are booking him, Lee is leaving it late and is having to work around them. Pete was at Kiawah for two days with Graeme this week when Lee wanted to work with him, so it just wasn't working out. Lee's the sort who needs someone standing over him, making him hit chip after chip and telling him what he's doing wrong. It's not like he's got the yips or anything – he just needs to improve his technique.


"When you miss the cut after that, it gets even more frustrating, and that probably brought matters to a head. And Lee admits he needed to shake things up because he'd lost his focus and his enthusiasm a bit, because he wasn't getting the rewards for his long game."


Lee has a replacement for Pete Cowen. "I won't say who it is, but it will become public next week, because he'll be working with Lee for a few days at the Barclays tournament. All I'll say is that it's not one of the usual suspects – it's someone a bit different. It's an interesting choice.


"He's not going to have a long-game coach for the foreseeable future. There's nothing wrong with that part of his game, as you could see from the fact that he topped the greens-in-regulation stats here for the first two rounds."

I would have thought this was connected to the Westwood family moving to Florida, but if that's the case, I don't understand why the statements are not saying so and are instead a bit negative.

Pure speculation, but perhaps Chubby is trying to make a point of Cowen's unavailability and hence not fulfilling the contract (thus not having to pay damages/penalty for terminating it early).

Sky
Do you think that Cowan and LW will have a contract? Or at least one with notice periods? I know that Butch always says that it is done on a much more informal basis where players pay him as they feel appropriate but maybe this is my romantic side rather than reality.

Anyone have any idea how coaches get paid? Percentage of winnings, flat rate. I have often wondered how much the players end up with once they pay their caddy their 7%, their agent their %age, their manager, physio, pilot, etc. They obviously do alright though!

I don't know how these things normally work, but I'm pretty sure that Mark Roe for one uses contracts of some sort - for confidentiality if nothing else.

I feel a lot of sympathy for Lee Westwood and I'm suprised he has not cracked-up already as Sergio did a couple of years ago. I'm not feeling much sympathy on this thread though.

Lee is an amazing stricker tee to green and has worked hard on all aspects of his game and fitness for about 4 years no but he always comes up a little short in the majors. Ultimitely it is probably his short game (including putting) that lets him down.

He can practice and will get better, but he will never be as good as Mickelson, Tiger of Donald as these guys have more talent at the short game and also practice hard.

I'm glad he's "mixing thing up" and plans to move to US as this shows he still wants to win majors.

I played with a guy at the weekend who was playing in a recent Scottish Tour event pro-am and he was relaibly informed that Sergio has all but given up in majors as he "does not think he is good enough". I was at the Open on the Thursday and Sergio was the only pro not to go to the range before his round.

As I say Lee must still care and best of luck to him.

I also heard another story. Apparently Lawrie and Monty were having breakfast some months ago at an European Tour event and Monty was saying to Lawrie that he was surprised that Clark's form had dropped off since winning the Open. Lawrie answered, "That's what happens after you win a Major, Monty".

ScottieD18 wrote:I feel a lot of sympathy for Lee Westwood and I'm suprised he has not cracked-up already as Sergio did a couple of years ago. I'm not feeling much sympathy on this thread though.


I also heard another story. Apparently Lawrie and Monty were having breakfast some months ago at an European Tour event and Monty was saying to Lawrie that he was surprised that Clark's form had dropped off since winning the Open. Lawrie answered, "That's what happens after you win a Major, Monty".

Ouch!

I think Lee is a fine professional, but I'm not sure I see being "major-less" as requiring or deserving of sympathy. Even if I did, it'd be tempered by the £20m or so he's won over his career to date.

Scottie - I think the context of the original article made it difficult to sympathise with Lee as it seems to make him out to be a bit of a primadonna. The full text makes the situation a bit clearer, but it's still evident that he's not putting the work in that he needs to to get to where those guys are. I completely disagree with the assertion that he can never be as good as a Luke or a Phil, but that's a debate for another time or another thread.

The fact of the matter is he's developed a brilliant long game but for some reason won't work to develop a comparable short game unless there's someone standing over him making him do it. If he can't motivate himself to work on the one area of the game that lets him down, how much can he really care and how much sympathy does he deserve?