stack and tilt bad for golf

[Harmonious]

For beginners just learning the game, it's a good idea to have them stay centered over the ball. Many of the beginners I see have a real problem with shifting their weight back to the outside of their back foot. For them to make good contact, they must then return their weight back to the ball, which they can't do yet. So, for them, learning to stay centered is the best approach. Whether you would call that S&T, staying centered, keeping your head relatively still, or whatever, the concept is the same.

For more advanced players, or one's with more natural athletic ability, shifting the weight back to a "braced" back foot is not necessarily bad, so long as they can return the club consistently back to the ball. I would say this can lead to more distance, if done with consistency. Of course, if it can't then distance will suffer.

[kurisu]

Sounds obvious the OP wanted to start a flame fest but fell miserably…

If there is one "mistake" Mike and Andy made was that they called it a "system", and other more famous teachers jumped on the occasion to trash S&T saying "you can't teach the exact same moves to everyone, everyone is different." (which of course, never was what Andy and Mike said)

As mentioned above, S&T is not new, it's just an ordered method to teach how to make good contact, repeatedly. And S&T is the end result of years of studies by very different people, gathered and filtered and ordered in one set of instructions.
And at the end of the day, swinging a golf ball is all about that split second when the club face meets the ball and transfers energy to it. Mike and Andy are taking the heat but look around, even Hank Haney is now "pedaling back" and say "stay centered over the ball, don't sway back". If that's not rule number one of stack and tilt then hell, I might as well be on the PGA tour… (mwahaha)

[enis750]

the OP is a troll and just that
good thing he has responded to his "claim" since hey??

[Stretch]

the OP is a troll and just that

Think he posted somewhere else that he's a PGA teaching pro. Maybe business is suffering?

[Chas]

Someone who makes an OP as opaque and poorly argued as that and then follows up with nada is by definition a troll imho. An alternative explanation would be that he's a complete wuzz without the nerve to back up his post but I don't buy that one - very very unlikely at any rate.

On the S&T about which I'm agnostic, a few weeks ago I was playing solo walk-on as usual and found myself with a real low capper. I mean he was among the maybe top 3 I've found myself sharing the track with all year - very consistent and very clean ball-striking the whole blasted time. After a while I realized that he is an S&Ter;, I watched more closely and sure enough that's what he was. I've never really seen one up close and personal like that, I mean not knowingly. I asked him about it very gently (you never know how people will react), he was cool and said he has played more consistently and hitting ball-then-turf much better since taking it up. All I know is that he was calmly hitting crisp shots all afternoon, accumulating GIRs and leaving me sucking air as usual ....... He wasn't particularly long off the tee as it happens, those few times that I managed to hit the fairway we were about the same spot, I might even have been a bit longer. But he was playing well within himself it looked like, whereas as usual I was overswinging and usually paying the price. I think he shot 3 or 4 over, on one of the harder courses in the area. Me ... well ... never mind.

I'm not going to try it myself as I'm unwilling to try such a fundamental change (or so it seems to me) and I fear the return of the dreaded reverse pivot, but watching that guy throw darts did make me wonder. Maybe if I was 25 again ....

[mvmac]

I'm not going to try it myself as I'm unwilling to try such a fundamental change (or so it seems to me) and

Good to hear someone else in San Diego is stacked, I thought I was a one man army down here

I just want to reiterate that S&T; doesn't come close to a revers pivot. A reverse pivot is when the weight moves away from the target during the down swing. The back swing pivot is very centered and not loading the left side as some critics would want you to think. From there you push forward towards the target. Charlie is a great example of this, spine stays vertical and head stays centered

[Chas]

mvmac,
hmmm, maybe you're one and the same, the guy I played with at Twin Oaks who shot about 4 over. If so, you must have been having a bad day (from your handicap) :)
[only kidding, I think ....]

I didn't mean to suggest that for most people the S&T might lead to a reverse pivot (nice post though), it's just that I had one for years and finally got rid of it when someone was kind enough to tell me about it on the range. So I'm concerned about it coming back, not that it necessarily would if I tried the S&T, it's just a fear that I have. Actually I can imagine how, if you do it right, it would lead to more consistent ball striking, being a simpler move requiring less in the way of co-ordinated movement. That S&T'er had a lot of credibility when he quietly explained his change in method to me, and the proof was right there in those GIRs.

As a tennis player I did use a lot of weight shift on topspin shots (both sides) so I'm comfortable doing it in golf as well. Now that I'm doing a more aggressive hip bump my fear of chunking seems to be lessening, so the weight shift is working better for me.

[saevel25]

I think most people feel like its a reverse pivot because they have been laterally moving backwards in the swing for a long time. Being over the ball than not having your head move forward feels like your not getting to your front side, but its there because you haven't left the center.

Actually most reverse pivots come from moving your weight back because its hard to move it forward from that position, forward enough to make contact with the ball first. Especially the head, which is heavy.

[Chas]

Very good post, I wasn't thinking clearly about it. I did feel like I was loading up my right leg yet I was reverse pivoting (no doubt about it) - you can indeed do both very easily. So the reverse pivot is really just about the pivoting, not implying anything about weight distribution necessarily.

Beware, this is what happens to you when you take up the game and hardly have any lessons. Someone on the range sets you straight once in a while .....

hmmm, maybe I should try the S&T one day and see what it does for me. Can you transition towards it in little stages?

But NOT BEFORE I"VE PLAYED PEBBLE AND SPYGLASS IN A COUPLE WEEKS.

(ahem, sorry about that chaps, my fingers seemed to take on a life of their own hehehe).

[Zeph]

Why does so many assume that weight forward on the backswing means weight back on the downswing? A reverse pivot is weight back on impact, the complete opposite of what S&T teach. In fact, one of the things S&T is trying to eliminate, is the reverse pivot. I have seen way more players get the weight back and stayed there, than I've seen players get the weight forward and then back again. With centered centers and hip push, it's not possible to do a reverse pivot.

[mvmac]

mvmac,

Sorry, not the same guy, haven't played Twin Oaks yet. No worries about the reverse pivot stuff, I was just clarifying what it actually is. Some people think that if the weight goes towards the target on the backswing that it's a revers pivot.

And yes you can start off in small stages. I'd recommend by making a turn while keeping the spine vertical, may feel like the spine is tilting left/toward the target. The shoulders will also turn steeper, left shoulder down and under rather than around. Also important to let the right knee lose some flex, which will probably happen automatically with the steeper shoudlers. Something like this Good luck in Carmel. Spy is my favorite!

[Chas]

Very true Zeph, that is the logical inference. I now see that the S&T; should protect people like I used to be from the R-P, but you are not accounting for the imagination/creativity of the reverse-pivotting community ......

I now define the R-P purely in terms of the tilt of the spinal axis, i.e. upper body leans towards target on the backswing, then away from target coming down - weight distribution is irrelevant. It's true, if you don't weight and unweight any foot during the process it's hard to do a respectable R-P.

A reason for newbies to consider the S&T; indeed.

Thanks mvmac, I might try doing it in stages in a while, when other issues in my game are in better control. You really should play Twin Oaks some time, it's just a few miles N of 78 in San Marcos. A well-maintained, rather beautiful and somewhat challenging (for me) course, esp. the first few holes if you tend to push with driver.

[iacas]

I now define the R-P purely in terms of the tilt of the spinal axis, i.e.

I just had to interrupt here to point out two things...

The blue part is NOT what S&T teaches at all. And the green part is something ALL good players do (largely by pushing their hips forward).

[Chas]

Absolutely Erik, on both points. In the blue part I was describing the "R-P", i.e. the dreaded reverse pivot, that I USED to suffer from. Maybe I shouldn't use the shorthand. I agree that S&T, done properly, will prevent you from reverse pivoting, whereas you can load up the right foot nicely on the backswing (as I have always done, more or less) and still reverse pivot quite badly. I used to be confused about that, wrongly thinking that a reverse pivot had to mean you were loading up the FRONT foot. Not so clearly, and usually the opposite I suppose - certainly for me.

And yes, now that you've opened my eyes to the hip bump with your earlier thread I've been watching the pros from this point of view and they all do it, to somewhat varying extents maybe but they all do it. The Hogan video you posted somewhere shows it very nicely. I started doing it with driver last weekend at the range at Torrey, hit ~40 balls and had the best driver session I can recall (in 10 years) in terms of accuracy and confidence that I wasn't going to hit a big push or a hook (my usual failings). It was a remarkable half hour on the range, very pleasant indeed. The whole action feels different, my right hand drops down nearer my right pocket, I'm on a much better plane, and the whole swing feels more fluid and freer somehow. Time will tell.

[mvmac]

\

Freddy (attached)

[Chas]

Wow, he does do it big time.

It's not that I'd never heard of it mind you, I just never realized the universality of the bump and how much it could help my game.

If I'd had a few lessons decades ago and learned this among a couple other things,
(Jersey accent) ....... I couldabeenacontendah .......