Lee Westwood apparently has found the man to address his short-game woes: Tony Johnstone.
Westwood began working with the Zimbabwean short-game coach last week in West Palm Beach, Fla., and will head with him to The Barclays in New York, according to a report in Golf Digest.
“The boy is just an enormous talent,” Johnstone said, according to the report. “Honestly, we worked on a couple things, and within 15 minutes the stuff we talked about fell straight into place. I thought, What are we going to do for the rest of the five days?”
Johnstone is somewhat of an unknown, though he worked recently with European Tour players Robert Rock and Chris Wood.
Westwood announced after the PGA Championship that he had split with swing coach Pete Cowen and interim caddie Mike Waite. At the time, Westwood’s manager, Chubby Chandler, said that the Englishman needed to “shake things up,” and that he’d “lost his focus and his enthusiasm a bit because he wasn’t getting the rewards for his long game.”
This new move already has drawn praise from Nick Price, a longtime friend of Johnstone.
“A wise choice,” Price said, according to the report. “(He’s the most) underrated short-game player ever. I’m so happy for him, and I am sure he will help Lee a lot.”
