Centers Of Attention

Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett are instructors with a big, bold idea--and more and more top players are listening

Baddeley has won twice since he started working with Bennett (left) and Plummer.

By Lorne Rubenstein

Photos By J.D. Cuban

April 20, 2007

Swing coaches Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett are known on the PGA Tour as "the scientists" and "the whisperers" for the quiet way they go about their business. Their database includes more than a million—yes, a million—photographs of golfers at various stages of their swings. The centerpiece of their approach is that the most efficient swing is one in which the golfer stays centered over the ball during the backswing, while keeping his weight on the front foot. There is no effort to transfer weight. They have drawn this conclusion from their studies, and it's nearly revolutionary. Most instruction maintains that a golfer must load into the back foot to create torque and power.

Aaron Baddeley has won twice since he began working with Plummer and Bennett in fall 2005. Dean Wilson, Will MacKenzie and Eric Axley each won his first PGA Tour event last year; Plummer and Bennett have worked with more first-time winners in the last eight months than anybody. Mike Weir, the 2003 Masters champion, has been with them since late last fall. Cameras and computers in hand, the duo intends to turn golf instruction upside down or, in their view, right side up. Their files and binders are full of lines and circles and grids, because their work relies heavily on the geometry of the swing.

"You have to look at a lot of pictures of players in the same exact spot," Plummer says. "All of them have different stances, and all of them have different postures. If that's the case, then those aren't really fundamentals." But, he and Bennett claim, staying centered over the ball is a fundamental, perhaps the fundamental.

"I started with these guys two years ago when I couldn't hit the ball," Wilson says during a practice round one afternoon at the Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., as Plummer walks along. "I was working as hard as I could with a teacher, and I couldn't hit the ball anywhere where I wanted to. I felt like a hack. Luckily, I ran into these guys."

Wilson goes on: "The great classic swingers—the best players, Hogan, Snead, Nicklaus—they all look like they're on top of the ball. They don't load up on their right side or restrict their hip turn. Nicklaus says you should load up to your right side, but all his weight's here." Wilson is pointing to his left foot.

Nicklaus agrees with Wilson, and, by extension, with Plummer and Bennett. "I don't believe in a lateral shift," says Nicklaus. "Of course not. I believe in staying on the ball." Asked what he thinks about teachers who advocate a weight shift, he answers, "They don't know how to play."

As for Baddeley, he credits his recent success to his more centered swing, although the idea perplexed him at first. "I had to get around a couple of things when I started to work with Mike and Andy, like staying centered instead of getting behind the ball and having my hands and arms in on my backswing. My swing's now a little shorter, and my hands are more down. I really, really enjoy working with these guys."

Plummer and Bennett have gained credibility among their fellow teaching pros, even while their approach comes in for some criticism.

"They've obviously had some success," says David Leadbetter, who worked with Baddeley before Plummer and Bennett. "I like what they've done with Aaron, the shortness of his action. There's a look of the old reverse-C in the finish position [of their players], so you hope the guys they work with have seriously mobile backs. The interesting thing to me about them is how much time they spend looking at cameras. You just wonder if by doing that, you actually own what you're doing or are you are just borrowing it, and how long it will last and if it will stand up. It's a method, not the method."