Brian Manzella
Administrator
The Biggest Lie Ever Told in Golf Instruction History
by Brian Manzella
"If you stay centered, or even lean and shift toward your left side a bit on the backswing, the lowest point in your swing will be further forward than if you shift and lean to the right."
Baloney!
That's the biggest lie ever told in golf instruction history.
If you do try leaning left, or shifting left, or even stacking and tilting, or tripoding, or whatever you want to call it, and you did something else less than ideal before, you might move low point forward.
You might cause yourself too do even more damage to your swing.
Most golfers who have low point problems have all sorts of other problems as well.
Remember the Peter Finch lesson?
Finch is the Golf Digest writer who did the Stack & Tilt article and was given a lesson by Bennett and Plummer - the video of which is available on the Golf Digest website.
Finch is very typical of the golfer that every non-world famous golf instructor sees a few times a week. Too much hip slide without enough hip turn going back, and a wide, wide, WIDE open clubface at the top.
Among other things.
And of course, predictably, Finch makes a horrible downswing, trying desperately to hang back and throw the club away, past his hands, in order to attempt to square up the clubface.
This combination of an ultra wide downswing combined with a serious flip, as well as some shaky hip movement, moves low point way to the right of where it ought to be for Mr. Finch.
No biggie, we see it everyday.
Except in this lesson, Plummer and Bennett stack and tilt this guy, and don't do anything about the root cause—the wide open clubface at the top—but they do move low point to the left, because, well, they moved him to the left.
The after was no better than the before for this guy in my opinion, and it could get much worse for his game. God only knows how ugly the mark on his driver was the first time he over did this "advice" on a tee shot.
First rule of teaching golf at the Manzella Academy:
Don't bastardize to fix contact or ball-flight—but fix it right now!
How would I fix this guy?
We'll get back to that in a minute.
Back to this lie, and the lie is NOT "Stack & Tilt." The lie is: "if you stay centered, or even lean and shift toward your left side a bit on the backswing, the lowest point in your swing will be further forward then if you shift and lean to the right."
And B & P are hardly alone in spreading this myth. Jim Hardy is another famous centered pivot teacher, and there are other who believe this big fib as well.
What is the truth?
The truth is simple.
Low Point is much more dependent on hand and wrist conditions than anything else. And Low Point is also greatly affected by hip location, path, and downswing arc."
Ok Brian, give us that in English.
If you flip, your low point will be way further back than it should be, or would be, all other thing being equal. And the #1 reason people flip is THEY ARE TRYING TO SQUARE UP AN OVERLY OPEN CLUBFACE.
One more time.
The biggest cause of flipping, and moving low point to the right, is an overly open clubface.
All that Peter Finch needed was a little "twistaway," in other words a counter-clockwise twist of his left wrist and left arm going back, with a bit less right wrist cocking, that would have gotten his clubface is a much less open position, as well as making those floppy arms a lot less floppy. That would made his top-of-the-backswing position look more like Jack Nicklaus and less like Jack Lemon—rest his soul.
On the NEXT ball after applying some twistaway, and retaining it through the ball even somewhat, Peter Finch's goofy wide arc downswing with the spinning hips and the big arse flip, would have produced a left-to-left ball that would have made Ian Baker-Finch blush.
Something about those Finches, huh?
Then, I would have fixed his backswing pivot.
More and earlier hip turn, with the weight going back toward his right heel. No leaning left. A turn around the center of his shoulders.
But Brian, the left lean moved his low point forward. Did it not?
Yeah, it did.
But, it made the downswing arc problem worse.
You see, the way the downswing vs. the backswing arc thing works is pretty simple.
The downswing arc should be inside the backswing arc, with low point being just past the ball for irons, and, ideally, just behind the ball for a driver. The thing to remember is this: the location of these arcs is VERY, very, dependent on hand path. And hand path is very dependent on left shoulder location, since, well, the hand bone is connected to the arm bone and the arm bone is connected to the shoulder bone...
So, the more the hand path travels to the right on the backswing, the more the backswing arc will be to the right—unless you do something really goofy with your arms and wrists. And, the further to the right that the left shoulder socket travels, the further to the right the hands can travel.
If you lean left on the backswing, or stay "centered," your hands can not get as wide, or to the right, as they can with what I feel is an orthodox backswing pivot. And because in the centered and left leaning pivots, the torso and the left shoulder are located more to the left, the golfer has no place to shift these to the left, because, well, they are already there.
This requires the golfer to move their hands much more to their right at the start of the downswing, because the left shoulder is now NOT as moving forward in the change of direction.
This more "outward and to the right, toward the arc" movement of the hands is almost always accompanied by an earlier loss of wrist cock.
All three of these things, less left shoulder leftward travel, an downswing arc not as inside the backswing arc, and an earlier release, almost always lead to a low point that is further back than it would have been.
And all of this is the opposite of what someone like Jack Nicklaus did. You remember Nicklaus, chubby kid, crew cut, twenty majors by one count, eighteen by another. Nicklaus, had a wide takeaway, and late wrist set, with his weight and body on his right side, and then he added to his wrist cock as the change of direction happened, hips leading the way very early on, creating a downswing arc well inside the backswing one, like William Hogan, another fair to middlin player. The golfer who leans left on the backswing, or stays "centered," makes a move that by geometric definition will probably have a low point further to the right.
Not to mention really poor numbers on the good 3D machines and on TrackMan.
Funny thing, I never thought I'd see this silly reverse pivot—and that's all it's called when a hacker does it—or silly head dead still stuff come back in fashion.
You see folks, I have been at this teaching gig for 27 years now, and 27 years ago, everyone in golf was teaching left lean and still heads.
Thankfully for me, because that's how I made my living early on, fixing these less than ideal pivots and wide open clubfaces.
And moving low point forward.
What about Finch, didn't he move low point forward?
Yeah, forward of terrible.
All you have to do is do it correctly, and teach it correctly. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
The guy had an open clubface! Fix it, let him watch the ball fly left and then you can teach him a good pivot, like that kid Eldrick uses.
It's not that hard—if you know what you are doing. Very little of that out there.
It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes ever, by my great friend and colleague Michael Jacobs.
We had just finished teaching at a very high-end corporate outing. The Manzella Academy, myself and my five all-star instructors taught the full swing, and Dave Pelz and his crew did the short game.
We had only fifty minutes with each group of fourteen golfers, with four of these groups total. Dave Pelz was standing next to Michael Jacobs during lunch saying how hard it was for them to do their job in so little time. "All we could do was give our little speech. I can't imaging having to get the full swing in, including hands on, in so little time," remarked Pelz.
"We do it every day," replied Jacobs, with more than just a little gleam in his eye.
by Brian Manzella
"If you stay centered, or even lean and shift toward your left side a bit on the backswing, the lowest point in your swing will be further forward than if you shift and lean to the right."
Baloney!
That's the biggest lie ever told in golf instruction history.
If you do try leaning left, or shifting left, or even stacking and tilting, or tripoding, or whatever you want to call it, and you did something else less than ideal before, you might move low point forward.
You might cause yourself too do even more damage to your swing.
Most golfers who have low point problems have all sorts of other problems as well.
Remember the Peter Finch lesson?
Finch is the Golf Digest writer who did the Stack & Tilt article and was given a lesson by Bennett and Plummer - the video of which is available on the Golf Digest website.
Now let me digress right here by saying that there are elements of the stack & tilt method that I use from time to time in one of my dozen or so starting point patterns I use in some of my lessons. I once said I liked everything about the stack & tilt pattern except the stacking and the tilting. 
Let's go back to the lesson.
Finch is very typical of the golfer that every non-world famous golf instructor sees a few times a week. Too much hip slide without enough hip turn going back, and a wide, wide, WIDE open clubface at the top.
Among other things.
And of course, predictably, Finch makes a horrible downswing, trying desperately to hang back and throw the club away, past his hands, in order to attempt to square up the clubface.
This combination of an ultra wide downswing combined with a serious flip, as well as some shaky hip movement, moves low point way to the right of where it ought to be for Mr. Finch.
No biggie, we see it everyday.
Except in this lesson, Plummer and Bennett stack and tilt this guy, and don't do anything about the root cause—the wide open clubface at the top—but they do move low point to the left, because, well, they moved him to the left.
The after was no better than the before for this guy in my opinion, and it could get much worse for his game. God only knows how ugly the mark on his driver was the first time he over did this "advice" on a tee shot.
First rule of teaching golf at the Manzella Academy:
Don't bastardize to fix contact or ball-flight—but fix it right now!
How would I fix this guy?
We'll get back to that in a minute.
Back to this lie, and the lie is NOT "Stack & Tilt." The lie is: "if you stay centered, or even lean and shift toward your left side a bit on the backswing, the lowest point in your swing will be further forward then if you shift and lean to the right."
And B & P are hardly alone in spreading this myth. Jim Hardy is another famous centered pivot teacher, and there are other who believe this big fib as well.
What is the truth?
The truth is simple.
Low Point is much more dependent on hand and wrist conditions than anything else. And Low Point is also greatly affected by hip location, path, and downswing arc."
Ok Brian, give us that in English.
If you flip, your low point will be way further back than it should be, or would be, all other thing being equal. And the #1 reason people flip is THEY ARE TRYING TO SQUARE UP AN OVERLY OPEN CLUBFACE.
One more time.
The biggest cause of flipping, and moving low point to the right, is an overly open clubface.
All that Peter Finch needed was a little "twistaway," in other words a counter-clockwise twist of his left wrist and left arm going back, with a bit less right wrist cocking, that would have gotten his clubface is a much less open position, as well as making those floppy arms a lot less floppy. That would made his top-of-the-backswing position look more like Jack Nicklaus and less like Jack Lemon—rest his soul.
On the NEXT ball after applying some twistaway, and retaining it through the ball even somewhat, Peter Finch's goofy wide arc downswing with the spinning hips and the big arse flip, would have produced a left-to-left ball that would have made Ian Baker-Finch blush.
Something about those Finches, huh?
Then, I would have fixed his backswing pivot.
More and earlier hip turn, with the weight going back toward his right heel. No leaning left. A turn around the center of his shoulders.
But Brian, the left lean moved his low point forward. Did it not?
Yeah, it did.
But, it made the downswing arc problem worse.
You see, the way the downswing vs. the backswing arc thing works is pretty simple.
The downswing arc should be inside the backswing arc, with low point being just past the ball for irons, and, ideally, just behind the ball for a driver. The thing to remember is this: the location of these arcs is VERY, very, dependent on hand path. And hand path is very dependent on left shoulder location, since, well, the hand bone is connected to the arm bone and the arm bone is connected to the shoulder bone...
So, the more the hand path travels to the right on the backswing, the more the backswing arc will be to the right—unless you do something really goofy with your arms and wrists. And, the further to the right that the left shoulder socket travels, the further to the right the hands can travel.
If you lean left on the backswing, or stay "centered," your hands can not get as wide, or to the right, as they can with what I feel is an orthodox backswing pivot. And because in the centered and left leaning pivots, the torso and the left shoulder are located more to the left, the golfer has no place to shift these to the left, because, well, they are already there.
This requires the golfer to move their hands much more to their right at the start of the downswing, because the left shoulder is now NOT as moving forward in the change of direction.
This more "outward and to the right, toward the arc" movement of the hands is almost always accompanied by an earlier loss of wrist cock.
All three of these things, less left shoulder leftward travel, an downswing arc not as inside the backswing arc, and an earlier release, almost always lead to a low point that is further back than it would have been.
And all of this is the opposite of what someone like Jack Nicklaus did. You remember Nicklaus, chubby kid, crew cut, twenty majors by one count, eighteen by another. Nicklaus, had a wide takeaway, and late wrist set, with his weight and body on his right side, and then he added to his wrist cock as the change of direction happened, hips leading the way very early on, creating a downswing arc well inside the backswing one, like William Hogan, another fair to middlin player. The golfer who leans left on the backswing, or stays "centered," makes a move that by geometric definition will probably have a low point further to the right.
Not to mention really poor numbers on the good 3D machines and on TrackMan.
Funny thing, I never thought I'd see this silly reverse pivot—and that's all it's called when a hacker does it—or silly head dead still stuff come back in fashion.
You see folks, I have been at this teaching gig for 27 years now, and 27 years ago, everyone in golf was teaching left lean and still heads.
Thankfully for me, because that's how I made my living early on, fixing these less than ideal pivots and wide open clubfaces.
And moving low point forward.
What about Finch, didn't he move low point forward?
Yeah, forward of terrible.
All you have to do is do it correctly, and teach it correctly. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
The guy had an open clubface! Fix it, let him watch the ball fly left and then you can teach him a good pivot, like that kid Eldrick uses.
It's not that hard—if you know what you are doing. Very little of that out there.
It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes ever, by my great friend and colleague Michael Jacobs.
We had just finished teaching at a very high-end corporate outing. The Manzella Academy, myself and my five all-star instructors taught the full swing, and Dave Pelz and his crew did the short game.
We had only fifty minutes with each group of fourteen golfers, with four of these groups total. Dave Pelz was standing next to Michael Jacobs during lunch saying how hard it was for them to do their job in so little time. "All we could do was give our little speech. I can't imaging having to get the full swing in, including hands on, in so little time," remarked Pelz.
"We do it every day," replied Jacobs, with more than just a little gleam in his eye.
