ATLANTA - Jay Feely hoped that lessons learned on the golf course might help when he lined up for a field goal in the NFL playoffs.

The Atlanta Falcons kicker, who's a scratch golfer, hooked up with PGA Tour stars Davis Love III and Stewart Cink over the past two years.

Feely met Love in person during the golfer's victory at the 2003 Players Championship. They discussed the similarities between lining up a game-winning kick and standing over a tournament-deciding putt.

"It was basically about just trying to have the right mental frame," Feely said. "Think the right way. Don't think about the wrong things. Don't allow that."

Forming a friendship with Cink, who has four titles on tour, helped even more.

"He actually bought me," Cink said from Honolulu, where he was competing in the Sony Open. "He won an auction prize for me when I donated a round for the Special Olympics of Georgia. It took about a year for us to play, but we hit it off."

Cink, a former standout at Georgia Tech, lives in suburban Atlanta and was able to stay in touch with Feely.

"Kicking is very similar to the golf swing," Cink said. "You have a couple of similarities. The ball is not moving. You have a lever - a club or a foot - and you've got a target.

"You can go about it two ways. Sports psychologists will tell you to be into nothing but the target. That works for a lot of people. The other way is to be into nothing but the motion. That's they way I think about golf."

Feely began the season by hitting his first 10 field goals, but he missed five of his last 13 attempts during the regular season.