Stack & Tilt: Getting More Power

According to Mike Bennet and Andy Plummer the first golf fundamental is to "hit the ball first and the ground afterwards." Any golfer who has hit "fat shots" (ground first, then ball) understands the importance of this fundamental. The Bennet-Plummer solution to this imperative is the Stack and Tilt (S&T) swing, pictured in the right two frames above. Compared to the conventional width swing, pictured in the left two frames above, S&T maintains the weight on the left side (toward the target) throughout the swing rather than shifting the weight backward on the backswing.

A second imperative of a good golf swing is that "you generate enough power to play the course." In S&T, the power is generated by the standup move. The swing thought for S&T is "stack-tilt-standup". Over time, this swing thought has worked pretty well for me but it is not without problems: (1) my bad shot tends to be a push, (2) I have not been generating enough power and (3) I can still occasionally hit fat shots!

After a lot of experimenting this summer, I returned to an old video tip from long drive champion Steve Griffith (video above, you have to get through some promotional material to get to the tip, but not much and there's lots of interesting footage of Steve crushing his driver). To generate enough power to hit it long, Steve focuses on the shoulder turn. His tip is pretty straight forward: turn your left shoulder back under your chin and, snap, replace it with your right shoulder. The rapid unwinding of the upper body generates the power; the more rapid the unwinding, the more power.

I have been a little reluctant to share this tip because, as I well know, if done improperly it will result in an over-the-top shot (you can watch a video explanation of this fault here). What is interesting about over-the-top shots is that they usually go further  (and further to the left) then your normal shot. What we would like is the power of the over-the-top shot without the misdirection.

So, let's go back to S&T at the top of the backswing (third frame from the left above).  At the top, you are in a very stable position with S&T compared to the width swing. Quickly replacing your right shoulder with your left shoulder, as suggested by Steve Griffith, should work fine from this position.  But I can still sometimes hit a pull shot suggesting a little over-the-top.

The answer, I found, was to return to the description of how to start the width swing (see the description of the "Switch" on page four of this document):

"Your downswing starts with your left shoulder moving away from your chin as your club moves out toward the target line. Let your upper trunk rotate around you left leg while your right elbow clamps back to your side. Copy John Daly and Jack Niklaus to learn this move" (Adams, et. al. 1998: 137).

Possibly because I have the endomorphic body type suited to the width swing, the shoulder-separation move as the first step in rapidly replacing my left shoulder with my right shoulder prevents the pulled, over-the-top swing. 

To recap, I concentrate on maintaining a stable stacked position at the start of the swing, take the club back on an inside path to a 3/4 position at the top, start the swing by moving my left shoulder toward the target and then trying to rapdily replace my left- with my right-shoulder on the follow through. Right now, when done correctly, this move has given me another 10 yards on the irons and 20 yards on the driver, exactly what I have been looking for. In the future and at my age, there are probably decreasing returns to more rapid upper body rotation. For right now, I'm really happy with the results (increased accuracy and distance) being produced. As a bonus, I have hit no fat shots since taking this approach to the course!

Granholm Steals The Show

Why weren't prominent conservatives such as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Phyllis Schlafly allowed to speak at the RNC (read an analysis here)?

Two Jazz Guitar Elder Statesmen Smoke the Blues

Fareed Haque and Larry Coryell are two of the elder statesmen of Jazz fusion guitar. I have never heard Fareed Haque play live but I did hear Larry Coryell many years ago on the Union Terrace in Madison, WI. Playing on the Union Terrace is quite a treat for musicians (check out the setup here with the musicians on stage and Lake Mendota behind). The acoustics are great and the audience is always appreciative. Larry Coryell seemed to be having a great time, although I don't really recognize him from the clip above with a head of white hair!

Is anyone else really knocked out by Fareed Haque's playing? Want to know how?



Follow Fareed's Jazz Rock Workshop starting with the first clip above. Great stuff!

Is Conservatism a Valid Philosophy or an Excuse for Self-Dealing?

The problems created by climate change and environmental degradation present an interesting test of conservative philosophical principles. Johnathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western University, argues (here) that the principle of private property provides a particularly strong test.

Severe Conservatives seem to argue that the principle of private property gives them the right to do whatever they want with their property. In the Anglo-American legal tradition, however, severe conservatives do not have the right to use their property in a way that causes harm to a neighbor.  Even moderate climate change resulting from your right-wing neighbor's CO2 emissions will have severe consequences that involve the loss of someone's property rights.

The right wing seems to misunderstand the conservative principle of property rights. It also seems to misunderstand that enforcement of property rights could solve environmental problems such as over fishing (here). Finally, small-government solutions such as revenue-neutral carbon taxes, incentives for innovation and reduction of regulations that inhibit the adoption of clean energy are all available conservative policy options.

Why doesn't the right wing champion property-right and small-government solutions to environmental problems? Why does the right wing oppose all kinds of tax increases? Would someone like to argue that the reason isn't simply the result of naked self-dealing and a misappropriation of collective assets?

Austerity: No Pain, No Gain or No Brain?

After a little bit of discussion, in the clip above, about whether or not Greece will abandon the Euro, CNBC commentator Rick Santelli comes on with Harry Dent (The Great Crash Ahead) to talk about Austerity. The clip is a mixture of interesting observations and Santelli's Old Time Austerity Religion.

First, Harry Dent observes that the EU countries should anticipate a future of slow growth for demographic reasons (a reasonable observation). But then Santelli goes on to "make it easy for his listeners to understand" by claiming that Austerity cannot be pursued without some pain (Dent agrees). This would be a vacuous observation except that it is pretty clear Santelli means "pain for somebody else." Since increases in taxation would reduce the Government Debt -> Austerity link and since Santelli is rabidly opposed to any increases in taxation (especially if that pain falls on the upper classes), he hopes to administer pain on the lower classes who are more dependent on the social programs he would like to see cut. CNBC has provided a great platform for Santelli's no-pain-in-my-backyard platform. This is also the Tea Party platform, for whom Santelli presumes to speak.

To cap things off, Harry Dent argues that what we need is a return of the Iron Lady (Margagret Thatcher) to help us impose Austerity on the lower classes. The last I checked, British Austerity as a response to the Financial Crisis was not going very well. Mr. Dent might reconsider using British economic history as a positive example of what happens under a right-wing Austerity regime.

WI Recall Candidate Lori Compas Wins Bimbo Bakery Award

HORSHAM, PA. Lori Compas, running against WI Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, has won the prestigious Bimbo Bakery award in the category "Best Campaign Ad, Wisconsin Recall Election." The Compas video (above) ran in rebuttal to a Wisconsin State Journal article (here) in which Fitzgerald commented that Ms. Compas' husband, Whitewater Professor Eric Compas, union bosses and protest groups were behind the campaign. In the video, Ms. Compas finds Fitzgerald's comment about women "bizarre and a little bit offensive" but typical of the right-wing mentality.

Traditionally, the Bimbo Bakery does not give out awards for actual achievement, but Ms. Compas' ad was so directly on the mark and used humor so effectively that it received the award. In a field of ads showing blow-dryed gassbags making vacuous promises and "pants-on-fire" claims, Ms. Compas' ad was truly refreshing, especially since sarcasm is lost on children, the Tea Party and certainly Scott Fitzgerald, R-WI.