Stack & Tilt: Driver Thread

[JerseyThursday]

Originally Posted by Newbie Collection Agency

late reply - tried s/t for first time today. wow. hit about ten 7-irons in a row, absolutely pure. thought it may be a fluke, so hit about a dozen 5-irons. amazing. But with the driver, I hit it "high" on the clubface consistently. Then I looked at the instruction by the creators on golfdigest.com, and they say for the driver to pull your spine back on the downswing. PERFECT. So that is the key to your problem, at least if it is the same as mine. This swing will change my game, as I have always struggled with consistent contact but made up for it wiyh distance. now have it all.

I’m having a tough time visualizing what is meant by pulling the spine back on the downswing. Can anyone help me out.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by JerseyThursday

I’m having a tough time visualizing what is meant by pulling the spine back on the downswing. Can anyone help me out.

This thread is pretty old, so let's just ignore that and look at newer videos or information, like:

[CuppedTin]

I'm wanting to know if the jump at 4:17 can be overdone? I am at a point where I am carrying 300 plus yards and am as straight (with a slight draw) as I have ever been. But here is my driver sequence in a nutshell. I am in the exact same position as the video at address, start turning back turning my shoulder down 8-9 inches, I start my hip slide just before I reach the top of my backswing and during the backswing I literally envision that I am standing flat footed and am jumping to dunk a 10 foot basketball goal, and the rest just happens naturally.

My swing speed has increased 8-10mph putting me way up there with a driver, but again can the jump be overdone? The biggest problem I hear with S&T; is the distance lost with the driver, why? What am I missing...

[bunkerputt]

Not sure if this is appropriate here, as this thread may not have life left in it.  I'm still not sure whether I've lost distance with driver or not.  When I first started staying centered, I gained a lot of distance.  Then I started working on my irons and a lot of the other S&T; elements and I think something got jacked up a little.  My shoulder tilts definitely got off, went a little flat, and started causing big hooks, but I noticed a lot of mechanical swinging going on, so I didn't have the speed I normally do anyway.  You can potentially create the same amount of width, i.e. distance from the ball, but it requires a little bit different parts of the body that some body types favor.  My before swing had me swinging my torso flat and raising the arms a lot with a little stretch in the left shoulder.  Since I'm fairly large chested (think man-boobs), the flatter arm swing means my arm runs into my chest unless I lift it above to give it some room.  So I lose maybe a foot of width with a steeper shoulder turn and flatter arm swing than vice versa.  Combine that with the fact that I'm still not swinging very rhythmically and I'm probably 60 yards shorter.  If I flatten out the shoulders and lift the arms up, I can easily swing 20 mph faster, but it just requires a lot more timing it seems.  But it feels more comfortable, so I can get into a rhythm with it and hit it better, even though "technically" it's a less sound swing.  It's awkward trying to swing between the two when you play irons vs. driver, so I'm just sticking with it and giving it some time.  Irons are great, but it sucks that I can hit my 5 iron as far as my driver.  I have no long option off the tee right now.

[iacas]

bp, do you have any way of getting video from good angles of your driver swing (and a 6-iron)?

[bunkerputt]

Originally Posted by iacas

bp, do you have any way of getting video from good angles of your driver swing (and a 6-iron)?

I do.  I'm not entirely healthy right now, which is probably a significant part of the trouble, but I'll take a little break and shoot some next week.  I hopped on the LM yesterday and every shot out of 20 was a push with very slight overdraw between 0 and 5 yards left of the target line.  Pretty consistent, but not very long, maybe 235 or so.  Ball speed was pretty low at around 145.  Many of the shots just had way too little spin for that ball speed, somewhere around 1000 rpm.  The longest was 260 with a regular flex 10.5 degree driver.  Clubhead speed was 99, which usually feels like molasses for me, but felt like a big struggle to achieve yesterday, so I've probably got some power leaks on top of the physical issues.  It's weird that a month ago I was carrying 305 pretty consistently just by trying to keep my head centered and not worrying about the shoulder plane.  The weirdest thing is the sudden onset.  It's just like I woke up one day and couldn't hit driver.  Let me get healthy and get some video.

[golflax65]

Hi everyone,

I recently converted to the SnT swing and I have been having a lot of success with my irons, but my driver  has seen no progress at all.

I'm going to list the assumptions I've gathered and adjusted to to see if I have just comprehended it incorrectly.

-Ball aligned in the left inside heel.

-Handle slightly forward to the inner thigh.

-Head and sternum on a fixed plane aligned with the head of the driver, not the ball.

-Right elbow tucked into side of chest (lats) throughout the back swing and downswing (feels very unnatural and cramped)

-Hips push forward towards the target through the downswing and follow through

-Left shoulder feels like it's pushing up through the downswing, and this leads to expansion of the chest and tucking of the butt in the follow through

-Upper axis tilts away from the target while hips are pushed towards the target

-right foot 'jumps' off the mat to push hips through (maybe I'm making the push too snappy?)

First off, before I converted to stack and tilt I couldn't hit my driver well either. But now It's either a pop up push fade, low grass burner that goes 50 yards, or a big duck hook. When I first started doing these methods I would hit maybe 5-7/35 balls with a beautiful push draw with plenty of distance, now I seemed to have regressed using the same methods and it's about 1-35 that are decent drives and not the push draw but more of just a push. The rest are like I mentioned, sometimes I hit the gates that separate the mats.

The most un-natural part I feel like is keeping the elbow tucked like I see in the videos, it feels like the club is fixed on an single path on the backswing but then feels like I'm slapping the ball with torso rotation giving really weak and weird shots. I'm going to try and get a video up as reading and adjustments haven't helped much yet but maybe you guys see something wrong with what I listed above.

I'm trying to get better off the tee before I start playing more on the course but right now it seems like the only clubs I can rely on are my irons.

[iceman777]

I switched to this swing a few months ago . I couldn't hit driver with it , so I did a few things that have worked . First , I moved the ball back an inch or so , now about even with the left heel . Then I teed it up a little lower , so that the ball is slightly above the top of the clubface , as opposed to half way . No more pop ups . I have also modified some other aspects of the swing , to suit me . I don't take the club as far inside on the backswing and I don't dip the shoulder as much as the pics seem to indicate .  I concentrate on staying mostly on the left side and keeping the head steady , not drifting to the right on the backswing . Pretty big  improvement .

[italiarmo]

Not sure if this is appropriate here, as this thread may not have life left in it.  I'm still not sure whether I've lost distance with driver or not.  When I first started staying centered, I gained a lot of distance.  Then I started working on my irons and a lot of the other S&T; elements and I think something got jacked up a little.  My shoulder tilts definitely got off, went a little flat, and started causing big hooks, but I noticed a lot of mechanical swinging going on, so I didn't have the speed I normally do anyway.  You can potentially create the same amount of width, i.e. distance from the ball, but it requires a little bit different parts of the body that some body types favor.  My before swing had me swinging my torso flat and raising the arms a lot with a little stretch in the left shoulder.  Since I'm fairly large chested (think man-boobs), the flatter arm swing means my arm runs into my chest unless I lift it above to give it some room.  So I lose maybe a foot of width with a steeper shoulder turn and flatter arm swing than vice versa.  Combine that with the fact that I'm still not swinging very rhythmically and I'm probably 60 yards shorter.  If I flatten out the shoulders and lift the arms up, I can easily swing 20 mph faster, but it just requires a lot more timing it seems.  But it feels more comfortable, so I can get into a rhythm with it and hit it better, even though "technically" it's a less sound swing.  It's awkward trying to swing between the two when you play irons vs. driver, so I'm just sticking with it and giving it some time.  Irons are great, but it sucks that I can hit my 5 iron as far as my driver.  I have no long option off the tee right now.

I have the exact same problem. Have you found an answer?