Courtesy: Golf Magazine

Golfers are suckers. We search and search for the Holy Grail of Instruction, stumbling from theory to theory and never seeming to find one that works.

Many of us have tried Hogan's methods and found them next to impossible; some may have even tried Homer Kelly's "The Golfing Machine" - just like Bobby Clampett did - but realized you need to be a physicist to decipher it.

Then there's Carl Lohren's "One Move to better golf", Jim Hardy's One Plane Swing and many, many others.

Do they work? If you stick with them, sure.

But do golfers stick with one method, system, or even one teaching pro?

Nope. We SEARCH.

So, with that in mind, let me muddy the waters further. Actually, I'll let Golf Magazine muddy the waters further.

In June, Stack and Tilt exploded onto the scene in Golf Digest's seminal article about the "new swing" on tour.

There's an update in this month's issue.

It has caused both joy and confusion to golfers everywhere.

Just yesterday, I was attending a business meeting with the Jim McLean Canada Golf School guys along with my colleague Robert Thompson, golf writer for The National Post, my good buddy Dave Grein, ex of The Golf Channel and Jeff Lancaster, web marketing whiz and creator of Ontgolf.ca.

We were talking about instruction theories, specifically Stack and Tilt, when Robert chimed in that there was a new one that posits the theory of a short backswing.

Lo and behold, don't I run across the theory in this month's edition of Golf Magazine.

The theory has the scientific moniker of NBS. That stands for No Backswing Swing.

That's right. No Backswing Swing.

The marketing guys must have got hold of this one before it went to press and decided on something catchy. Of course, there's a backswing. You can't hit anything without some sort of a wind-up.

What NBS really is is a shortened backswing. And there is a lot of merit to it, if for no other reason than it makes a lot of sense. More so, in my mind, than Stack and Tilt does.

It's an intriguing swing theory and an interesting story, replete with "scientific data" to back up the claims made in the article. And if you're impressed by monikers, it's written by a couple of Ph.Ds.