Top Teachers: Stack & Tilt?

Josh Leyes of Waterloo, Ontario read our list of America's Fifty Greatest Teachers in the March issue, noticed a couple of absences and seized on it to make a point:

I was reading the most recent issue of GD when I noticed your rankings of America's top 50 instructors. I saw the usual top 10-15 teachers up there, with one glaring omission - Mike Bennett and Andy Plummer, the Stack and Tilt gurus, didn't even crack the top FIFTY! Maybe there is a logical explanation as to why they were left out, but could it be that the "hottest swing on tour" isn't really that hot? I know you have had several letters praising the Stack and Tilt method for its merits. In my humble opinion, Bennett and Plummer are teaching a "feeling" of staying on top of the ball but that feeling isn't actually true. if you take any of their tour pros (Baddeley, Weir, etc.) and put them on a weight plate device through their full swing you would probably see most of the weight on their right heel at the top of the swing, evidence that they are indeed loaded into their right hip. I think you guys actually did an article on that "weight shift" move a in David Leadbetter's "Swing Chi" piece, which I really enjoyed.>

Josh, without getting into the merits of your argument--I know that Plummer and Bennett strongly believe that stacking and tilting is more than a feeling--let me explain why they may have not made the list. The list was compiled early last year, prior to Stack & Tilt's popularity. Plummer and Bennett asked not to be on the "seeded" list of instructors nationally on which the other instructors vote. My sense is they will do very well on the next ballot if the opt to be included. They were included on state lists and Plummer finished high on the Pennsylvania list, Bennett high on the New Jersey list. On a recent poll we did of tour players, they also ranked high.

--Bob Carney