Monday, February 13, 2012

Stack & Tilt: Charlie Wi Takes a Second Place at Pebble



The story at the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am was the match-up between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson (here), a match-up that Mickelson won. Not to take anything away from Phil's 40th win, but a far more interesting story involved Charlie Wi, who took second, Aaron Baadley who took fourth and Tiger Woods, who took 12th place. Charlie Wi is probably the best known player still using the Stack & Tilt swing (more here), Aaron Baadley is probably the best known player not still using the S&T swing and Tiger Woods new Shawn-Foley Swing has elements of S&T in it. It is also interesting that in May of 2011, Charlie Wi also took a second place at the Crowne Plaza Invitational.

The video above is an example of Charlie Wi's current S&T swing. There is a lot of disagreement about how much S&T Charlie really uses (to my eyes, it doesn't look like he "tilts" very much) but a friend of mine followed him at this year's Waste Management Open in Phoenix and said he definitely sets up with the weight on his left side.



Here's Aaron Baadley's new (old?) non-S&T swing. It's obviously working pretty well for him.


And finally, here's Tiger Wood's Shawn Foley swing for comparison. What's interesting to me is the success that some highly skilled players are having maintain more of their weight on the left side throughout the swing. Conventional instructors hate the left-centered swing (for example the instructors at GolfTEC) calling it a "reverse pivot" or "getting into a bad space." For a different perspective, read some of E. A. Tischler's books (here), for example Secrets of Owning Your Own Golf Swing.

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