It’s becoming obvious to me that there has been a shift in the recent past from a right-biased golf swing setup, drifting ever more to the left (in a right-handed swing) to the leading side stack and tilt pivot method.

Everywhere I go, I start looking at the instruction and the instructor is invariably trying to solve the one problem (unsolvable) you have with this swing method – it is impossible to strike the ball without a severely descending strike angle (only good for wedges).

So now, you’re getting two different types of down swing through the ball – the Squat & Dump that you see many pros doing now, and the increasing second type, the Swipe & Turn.

My last two posts were actually about the Swipe & Turn, I just didn’t have a name for that swing style other than “baseball” until just now, and not everyone plays baseball.

Looking at this particular instructor (I just pick the first one I come across who has a sizeable following, because these are the ones doing the most damage due to sheer numbers), you can see the problem immediately:

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His leading shoulder is way past the ball, and since he’s also going to slide to the left naturally as he begins the down swing, his swing bottom would be so far in front of the ball that you have no hope of making a decent impact with a Driver.

I’ve shown you all in exhaustive detail the first one (Squat & Dump), so let’s look at the Swipe & Turn.

Just watch the back swing that never gets off the leading foot, and then the drop of the arms, the swipe and the turn finish, about 40-50 seconds or so:

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There’s a problem however with his purported motion and his actual swing, because you have no hope of contacting the ball performing his swipe and turn.  You’re going to harpoon that ball to no end:

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I told you – that’s a shaft angle for a wedge impact.  Straight into the turf with that.

So, watch him completely toss out the “don’t turn, just drop,” and proceed to shift off the ball on the back pivot and then turn on it with more head shift away from the target from the top to get a more driver-like impact on the ball:

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This is how Tiger Woods kept damaging his back, by the way, from the Sean Foley days to present – setting up left of his impact position with the head and then violently changing direction at the top to get behind the ball:

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… and that was with a better ball position than the instructor.

OK, now the part where you just wonder at times if these internet gurus remember what they’re saying from minute to minute.

Watch his driver swing:

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… and let’s fast-forward to where he’s hitting his second shot from the fairway, and what he says about “don’t shift to the right from the top, you have to drop and turn…”

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Did you see that?  Look at his driver swing again, and he actually does the same thing with the iron swing.

Now, watch him telling everyone what NOT to do:

“Don’t shift to the right and turn, whatever you do…”

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Aaaaannnnnd….

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Bear in mind, I’m not trying to attack this gentleman, but to point out simply a fact that has been out there since the early days of Stack & Tilt – you can’t swing the way the model is built.

Not even those teaching it – because the minute you try to put any speed into your swing, you will have to drop back onto your trailing foot to make contact with anything longer than a wedge.

If you have any degree of hand-eye coordination at all, you will know looking at the ball that you can’t hit it from where you are, and you will make athletic adjustments, just as I was doing here in 1998 with a Modern Golf Swing model that I was being taught:

Hitting 3 Wood

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I did everything I was supposed to do with my address, but the second I was in motion, my athletic hand-eye moved me to where I could get after it.

Did I have the athletic ability to pull this off?  Yes and no.

Yes, I could drive the ball a country mile and smash my irons prodigious distances, but the motion is not optimal and you were at the mercy of your personal biorhythm whenever you set out to play swinging like this.

Because it’s all timing and hand-eye.

I remember walking off the course one time that same summer, after being 2 under par through 9 and then making a 10 on the next hole, a par 5, where I snap-hooked two drives OB off the tee.  Shattered, I bogeyed the next hole and headed for the range.

It doesn’t matter how honest and upstanding this gent may be – he’s teaching a massively flawed swing model that even he can’t pull off the way he teaches it, and I can tell you that for a fact because someone tried to teach it to me and I had to finagle it myself.

Neither of these moves, the Squat & Dump nor the Swipe & Turn, are any good as mechanical models.

They are injury risks and are simply not mechanically-correct, which makes them rubbish, whomever is teaching the methods.