By now you've probably heard about stack and tilt, the name that's been given to the way Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett teach the swing. It's gained a lot of currency in the past year, most recently because of Mike Weir's win last week in the Fry's Electronics Open in Scottsdale, Ariz. Weir's been committed to the approach since he started with Plummer and Bennett a year ago.
But who are Plummer and Bennett? What does stack and tilt mean? I spent a lot of time with them last winter and have continued the conversation at tournaments and by e-mail. (No lessons; it's all been research.) They're passionate about what they're doing. So, of course, are most teachers.
Plummer and Bennett are both about 40, and they were accomplished college players who got worse the more lessons they took and the more they practised. They soon started to find more structured material, especially based on the late Homer Kelley's difficult book The Golfing Machine. Kelley, an engineer by trade, concluded from his research that there were 24 components to the swing that produced a nearly infinite number of variations.
Plummer and Bennett's quest brought them to Mac O'Grady, a Kelley aficionado. O'Grady qualified for the PGA Tour, but not until his 17th try. He won two PGA Tour events in 1986 and 1987, but eventually left competitive golf. He continued to study swing science.
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Players who competed against him, and current players who have seen him, said his swing was about as near to ideal as possible. But, like the late Canadian wizard Moe Norman, he couldn't abide the public and social sides of professional golf. Tour life wasn't for him, but he still studies the swing.
Whatever O'Grady's quirks, Plummer and Bennett learned from him. Bennett said O'Grady taught them how to classify and organize swing patterns and variations. They believe that's absolutely necessary for effective teaching.
Plummer and Bennett eventually started working with Nationwide Tour players and then PGA Tour players such as Dean Wilson, Will MacKenzie and Eric Axley, all of whom have since won. Aaron Baddeley has won twice while working with them. Now Weir, who patiently internalized their ideas, has won again.
The central idea of Plummer and Bennett's teaching is, well, that the golfer shouldn't move his or her centre, thereby staying "stacked" over the ball and even tilted toward the target. Weir said in a telephone conference call last Monday that there's no weight transfer to the back foot during the swing. The swing, he said, takes place in a tight circle, which should generate less room for error and more power and efficiency.
"As you stand there, the club's on an incline, and you swing the club on an incline, looking down," Bennett said last spring, a binder full of photos of top golfers from the past 100 years at various positions opened in front of him on a table. "It's really moving on a circle. If you maintain a central axis, and move the club in a circle, the first thing is that the club hits the circle in the same spot every time."
Therein, he said, lies the consistency of the strike. Move the centre of the circle, anywhere, and trouble ensues. Weir couldn't prevent himself from what he called "drifting" off the ball, which he's now managed to limit.
There's much more to what Plummer and Bennett advocate than what one can say in a few paragraphs. Their database includes more than a million photos of swings, which they believe demonstrate that all top golfers, including Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, have controlled their centres.
Many knowledgeable teachers, including Jim McLean, disagree with some of Plummer and Bennett's key ideas. McLean showed me photos that he said defied anybody to argue that Nicklaus didn't transfer weight on his backswing. The debates will continue as long as golf is played.
Meanwhile, Bennett and Plummer are working on a book and DVD that will be out next spring. As for Weir, Plummer wrote in an e-mail message yesterday: "We are proud of Mike and will help him keep refining his motion this winter. We feel he still has some room for improvement and look forward to more. His discipline is what distinguishes him in my mind from other talented players."
Discipline allied to stack and tilt. It's been a winning formula for Weir, and also for Plummer and Bennett.
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