Re-Examining Stack and Tilt a Dozen Years Later

[Phil McGleno]

Stack & Tilt was a thing a dozen years ago.

They had ten words to describe their swing-then they had twelve for awhile-and now I guess it is back to ten.

They are:

• Weight Forward
• Shoulder Down
• Hands In
• Leg Straight
• Arms Straight

These came from https://stackandtilt.com/about-st/.

I wanted to quickly look at how many of these we are still believing in.

 

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Weight Forward

When S&T was new you saw a bunch of people leaning forward at the top of the backswing.-It was a sad sight to see on Instagram when it was around and Facebook before that.

And you still see it.

The site says this:

Quote

Not only should the weight be forward at set-up, but the lower body weight should continue to move forward the entire swing to help make contact consistent time after time.

Oh Christ no.-I added the bolding to the words.

I do not have much more to say here except to point to this:

 

Shoulder Down

I do not have a problem with this one for the most part except that you see a lot of people doing the shoulder straight down and not across enough so their head drops down and forward during the backswing.-You also see a lot of flat shoulder turns so this one is okay in moderation to me.

 

Hands In

Not a big fan of this one- if you tell someone to take the hands in they will probably pull the back elbow behind them too much.

Look at the before video on the left -that guy had his hands in plenty.

 

Leg Straight

"In the backswing, we recommend that the left knee flexes and the right knee straightens, allowing the hips and shoulders to turn more."

Straight is like pregnancy-if they mean extends or loses flex they should say that.

The trail knee does not straighten in a good player swing. Plus thinking leg straight leads to non-athletic BS like this:

 

Arms Straight

Forgiveable-Except Lee Westwood and Jordan Spieth and everyone would point out that nobody really does this either.

 

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So -What do you think of S&T a dozen years later?

Edited October 30, 2021 by Phil McGleno

[Vinsk]

I can say the ‘weight forward’ aspect has been very helpful for me. I adopted this due to Jim Venetos but unfortunately found him to be so intellectually dishonest I had to leave his nonsense.

I also like the trail leg extension but agree the straightening of it is poor advice. I think a lot of relatively untalented to grossly untalented ( me) players can benefit from the weight staying forward in the swing. The shift just messes us all up.

Arms straight? Some just physically can’t do it unless they limit their backswing to what would be a punch shot for better ball strikers.

Regarding hands in, really don’t know. So many of us just can’t get our hands to look like top ball strikers. If we ‘feel’ hands in and find we’re striking the ball more consistently and a nice draw, so be it.

[iacas]

4 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

Regarding hands in, really don’t know. So many of us just can’t get our hands to look like top ball strikers. If we ‘feel’ hands in and find we’re striking the ball more consistently and a nice draw, so be it.

We'll explore that a bit when you're on GEARS but… I disagree, in general. Too many golfers, I agree, pull their hands in with their arms rather than letting their PIVOT do the depth while their ARMS get them height.

[Vinsk]

23 minutes ago, iacas said:

We'll explore that a bit when you're on GEARS but… I disagree, in general. Too many golfers, I agree, pull their hands in with their arms rather than letting their PIVOT do the depth while their ARMS get them height.

Excellent. I’m sure you’re right. I’m really looking forward to this. It’ll be my first time with instruction where I’m 100% certain it’s not the instructor….lol.

[boogielicious]

It took me a long time to undo some S&T elements. The flatter swing caused me issues because of the ‘hands-in’ thought. I’ve worked with my Evolvr instructors to really improve my swing for what my body can do. The last part is important because we each have different flexibility and strength. S&T was too rigid in its ‘do it my way or you’re wrong’ mentality.

[iacas]

Scott do you remember what you worked on at Ponkapoag?

[boogielicious]

28 minutes ago, iacas said:

Scott do you remember what you worked on at Ponkapoag?

Yes. It was a bit different than S&T IIRC. We talked a bit about S&T, but I sensed you and Dave were moving away from it in some areas. I remember hitting punch shots a lot like the long arc drill. I was having trouble with weight forward at impact.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Yes. It was a bit different than S&T IIRC. We talked a bit about S&T, but I sensed you and Dave were moving away from it in some areas. I remember hitting punch shots a lot like the long arc drill. I was having trouble with weight forward at impact.

Thanks.