Punter's Note: Players Changing Coaches At Any Time

With the (questionable) efforts to make golf a year-round cash grab at the expense of the seasonal ebb-and-flow other sports enjoy, Tim Rosaforte spotlights another bizarre twist that has arrived with calendar-year golf: players changing coaches at any given time.

He cites the Westwood-to-Foley move, the not so surprising Watney-to-Anderson move (nice going Butch!) and the very surprising Donald-to-Cook move.

"Used to say: 'We'll really focus on this in November,' " Foley said Sunday morning. "You can't do that anymore."

Players are looking for the type of impact Matt Kuchar gained from going to Chris O'Connell in 2006 for the one-plane swing, or in the case of Gary Woodland, some short-game counsel from the coach of the game's best short-game player. By going to Pat Goss on a cold rainy day in Chicago the week of this year's Masters, Woodland started learning the fundamentals of bunker play that paid off with a win at the Reno-Tahoe Open and a T-2 in the Barclays.

"It wasn't a rewrite," Goss said. "It was like writing it for the first time. When he came to me, his short game was terrible."

Goss has coached Donald since his freshman year at Northwestern and will continue to help him with his short game. What has changed is that Donald no longer uses Goss as his swing coach -- a switch Goss saw coming. He sensed that Luke had lost faith "when he started trying other things on his own in another direction."