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Four Moves To Stack & Tilt

What you don’t know about our system will change the way you look at the golf swing

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Mike Bennet (left) and Andy Plummer (right).

2010 was a very good year for Stack and Tilt gurus, Mike Bennett and Andy Plummer. Their premier student, Charlie Wi banked $1.5 million, and three others (Bill Lunde, J.J. Henry, Alex Cejka) finished 1, 2, 3 at the Turning Stone Resort Championship in August. (Even more remarkable has been the turnaround of Lunde who had quit golf three years earlier. The San Diego native rebuilt his swing with Bennett and Plummer, notched three top 10s and banked over a million bucks in 2010.)

We caught up with Bennett and Plummer at last fall’s Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas to get a firsthand look into their controversial methodology. What we found were two soft-spoken, bright men with what they say is a “measuring system that every player fits into.” As Bennett told Golf Tips, “It’s a thoroughly mapped-out set of variables and principles, but ultimately because it’s a system, it can start at its lowest denominator and increase in sophistication for the amount the golfer wants or needs.” In other words, it’s applicable to pros and beginners. If you’re looking to overhaul your swing for 2011, read on.

Here’s Mike at setup and Andy illustrating how one should extend at impact.

1. EXTEND AT IMPACT!
Andy Plummer: One of the biggest differences between the game’s poorest and best players is how they extend (or don’t extend) at impact. The legs straighten and the spine extends, pushing the golfer off the ground. This is the swing’s power source.

Mike Bennett: The spine is flexing and extending continuously through the whole swing. Your address posture is not static throughout the swing. As most golfers swing through, they stay in flexion and their body stops turning, their arms start flexing and, as a result, they don’t hit the ball far.

Plummer: Because you can’t turn in flexion. If one tries to, his or her hips will stop turning. Some folks write that off as a flexibility problem. In fact, there’s a whole cottage industry that has sprung up with people getting soft-tissue massages because no one has taught golfers how to extend through the ball. Unfortunately now we’ve got lots of golfers who think that the golf swing is really difficult and that they have to be in such good shape to do it. We believe that point of view damages the golf-instruction industry.

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