New coach provides quick dividends for O'Hair

By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM Chief of Correspondents

AKRON, Ohio -- All it took was 30 minutes on the range.

OK. So maybe that is oversimplifying things a tad. But that session with a new coach last week renewed Sean O'Hair's confidence in his ball-striking and he finds himself in contention at the midway point of the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, as a result.

O'Hair fired a 67 Friday on the sunbathed South Course at Firestone Country Club to pull within two strokes of Vijay Singh. The 26-year-old, who won the PODS Championship earlier this year, is tied for third at 5 under entering the final two rounds of the star-studded $8 million event.

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Sean O'Hair shot a 67 in the second round in Friday to move into contention.

Sean O'Hair

Through 36 holes

STATS Rnd1 Rnd2 TOT EAGLES -- -- 0 BIRDIES 5 4 9 PARS 10 13 23 BOGEYS 3 1 4 DOUBLE BOGEYS -- -- 0 OTHER -- -- 0 DRIVING ACCURACY 57 79 DRIVING DISTANCE 297.0 296.0 296.5 PUTTS PER ROUND 29 27 28.0 PUTTS PER GIR 1.846 1.667 1.760 GREENS IN REG 72 67 69.4 SAND SAVES 100 -- 100.0

The way he'd been hitting the ball lately, though, O'Hair wouldn't have given much for his chances. He'd been fighting a hook and he was definitely disheartened -- particularly after getting off to such a good start with the win in Tampa and a tie for third the following week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard.

"I've always struggled starting off a year solid," O'Hair explained. "And the summers have always been kind of the time where I catch fire, and I'm just not used to playing like I've been playing during my season. This is when it gets hot and courses start playing tough, (and) I play well at courses like this.

"It's very frustrating, because I worked harder, probably three times as hard as I've worked in my entire life this year. That was one of the main goals that my caddy and I had. We said we're going to have a good attitude and just work our tails off this year and see where it takes us."

When the results failed to materialize, O'Hair decided it was time for a change. He'd been working with Steve Dahlby on and off since he was 13 years old so he thought it was time for a new set of eyes. O'Hair enlisted the aid of Sean Foley, who is Stephen Ames' instructor, and the results were almost immediate with that tie for third at last week's RBC Canadian Open.

"He's got a lot of good stuff to say and approaches things a little bit different," said O'Hair, who had finished 80th the previous week at the Open Championship. "He saw some things in my setup and my move to my left side with kind of my legwork, and basically it's taken the left side of the golf course out of play, and that's kind of been my nemesis this year."

Indeed. A year ago, O'Hair had ranked eighth in ball-striking, which combines total driving and greens in regulation. This year, though, he ranks 107th -- hence, the 128th position in total birdies and 181st in birdie average.

"I'm not hitting enough fairways and greens, and whenever I do, I've got a 40-foot putt for birdie," O'Hair said. "So obviously the ball striking really needed to improve, and I literally spent, I don't know, 30 minutes on the range with Sean and it was ... immediate.

"Sometimes you just look at it and work with somebody for such a long time that it's kind of hard to see things, and I think that was maybe the case with Steve and I, and it just worked out that I picked the right guy to work with. And I think we're making some nice headway."

Through two rounds at Firestone, O'Hair has hit 19 of 28 fairways, including all but three on Friday, and 25 of 36 greens. He's putting well, too, using just 27 on Friday for a total of 56. His birdie putts in the second round came from 28, 9, 30 and 4 feet, the latter courtesy of a spot-on 6-iron at the 18th hole.

In addition to battling his swing O'Hair nursed a chest injury for the better part of a month. He was injured the week prior to the U.S. Open when the Shelby Mustang he was driving -- and had owned just three days -- hit a power pole near his house.

O'Hair had been headed to the gym that morning, and the streets were slick from overnight rain. He was just learning to drive a stick shift and when he turned left O'Hair went from first to second gear a little too fast. The car, the most powerful Mustang ever built, spun on the wet pavement and the pole "just jumped out in front of me," O'Hair said sheepishly.

"I think I still had my foot on the gas a little too much, and when I let the clutch out, it spun the wheels," he said. "I got out of the car; I was freaking out, I kind of was like, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'll be all right for the U.S. Open.

"And after I said that my neck started hurting, my chest started hurting, and then I went to the hospital."

The X-rays taken at the emergency room didn't show any damage. So O'Hair went ahead with a trip to Carlsbad, Calif., to do some work at the TaylorMade facility and by the time he was done, "I couldn't move," he said. Turns out a couple of ribs in the back of the spine locked up from the jolt, several ligaments had become inflamed and the U.S. Open was a no-go.

O'Hair was quick to say that the injury didn't have anything to do with his ball-striking woes, though. "I was hitting a lot of crap before that," he said with a smile. And as for the car? Well, his wife had the final say there.

"She said you're getting rid of the car," O'Hair reported. And with that, the car was sold.