Firing Shots on Stack & Tilt, Andy Plummer, and Mike Bennett

The TV commercial advertising the Stack & Tilt swing method ends with Dean Wilson - holder of one career PGA Tour win - saying, "You've gotta try this golf swing." Really now? Do I? 

Well, Stack and Tilt has more or less disappeared from the PGA Tour landscape - barring a special week in the opposite-field Turning Stone event - compared to its pinnacle. In just a few short years, the swing method taught by Andy Plummer & Mike Bennett has gone the way of the dinosaur. The technique, which emphasizes concise movement and focusing weight on the front leg, has lost its zeal in most golf circles. Once having a roster of players like Mike Weir and (then promising) Aaron Baddeley, Plummer and Bennett have lost their traction on Tour driving ranges.

Just a few weeks ago, NY Times golf writer Bill Pennington did a piece on Stack & Tilt. His piece was good and even-minded. It was likely orchestrated by the Stack & Tilt PR team as Plummer and Bennett are miffed that newly anointed swing guru Sean Foley preaches some tenets of their method.

In fact, I received a press release from the Stack and Tilt team telling me that Tiger Woods was working with a guy that was teaching their method. The case they were attempting to make is their mojo is being plagiarized by the Canadian flavor of the week. (For his part, Sean Foley has taken shots at pretty much anyone he can. That, too, is behavior I don't appreciate or respect.) The pitch also directed me to the method's website - and what legitimate golf swing has its own site? - telling me about the world rankings of current and former members of their stable before, during and - in many cases - after their stints with Stack & Tilt.

It was an ignorant pitch at best. Plummer & Bennett threw their former players under the bus by using the Official World Golf Ranking. Charted smack talk about Mike Weir is ill-advised, particularly as Weir has been hampered by injuries, but that's no matter for two guys who are desperate to hang onto whatever traction their method has gained in a half dozen years.

The two teachers are denigrated for teaching an unconventional system rather than individual swings. Whether the method works or not is an argument above my pay grade, but the war of words coming from the Stack & Title camp - sometimes in response to fair criticisms - is not.

Plummer and Bennett complain that Foley - among other teachers - rip off portions of their method. Again, their argument doesn't hold water. Stack & Tilt may be a system, but it is a series of swing thoughts and components. Many of them have been taught for decades. That's no matter for guys who are convinced the golf world is out to get them.

Few high-profile disciples of the method still exist. The only one of recent relevance is Charlie Wi as he is playing well in Chicago at the Western Open BMW Championship. Following Friday's round, Wi spent several minutes talking about Stack & Tilt and talking trash about former cult members and Sean Foley.

"All the players know and all the caddies know who all the best teachers are out here. They're really quiet. They don't go around looking for press or anything. But I think that because it is different, other teachers have a tendency to bash them. Maybe they might be one generation ahead of them, but in the end they're not teaching something that is new," Wi said.

He added: "I'm not going to say the person's name, whoever Tiger is working with, you know, he's got Andy and Mike's DVD, his book, and he always calls them asking questions."

It's that kind of shot across the bow, emblematic of the brash arrogance of Plummer and Bennett, that continues to turn people off to the method. If they're not careful, Stack & Tilt will only be talking about in reference to a dump truck disposing of boxes filled with DVDs, books, and magazine clippings.