The Ben Hogan Secret
 

What most golfers are not doing and what the top tour pros do most of the time is swing the sweet spot of the club head on plane and in balance from start to finish.

Tiger even had some problems with this do to some swing changes and switching to a longer graphite shafted driver but it does not take him long to get back on track.

Learning to swing the sweet spot of the club head on plane and in balance from start to finish can be easy to learn and was Ben Hogan‘s secret he talked about.

He told you what it was in the 5 lessons book and he tried to teach it to us in his book 5 lessons.

The problem is Ben taught it with his swing feels he used to learn it and very few understood what he was saying. Some thought it was his pivot and some thought it was his right hand and the list goes on.

I wonder what Hogan must have thought about all the analysis of his swing. He spent many hours hitting practice balls learning it and gave us the Secret Formula in his 5 lessons book but nobody was getting it.

Until recently it was not easy to verify swinging the sweet spot of the club head on plane and in balance from start to finish and still took many hours of practice to acquire the feel of it or to own the motion most of the time.

The more the pros make it happen the better the chances of hitting fairways and greens.

If you have watched the Hogan vs. Snead Wonderful World of Golf match than you saw Ben do it on every shot in that match.

What I am talking about is the formula for Perfect Impact and Ben Hogan knew it and did it more than most pros of his time.

Just a thought?

Natural instinct? What you are inclined to do?
 

Only until figuring out what he's talking about:

"....when you grip a golf club to take your first swing at the ball every natural instinct you employ to accomplish that objective is wrong, absolutely wrong.",

"Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.", Ben Hogan

Good morning ball. You're sitting so nicely up on the turf. All I need to do is just SCOOP you up. That's the first instinct of every hacker. Got to get this ball air borne and straight. Result. BANANA, FAT, TOP, PULL, POP UP, etc...

Down and Out to low point and make sure the ball is placed on the circumference before low point. FLW, Clubhead Lag Pressure Point and Straight Plane line; they are the secret to golf.

JUST A NOTE on Down and Out or the Inside/Out swing path. I've always had that motion regardless of what method or procedure was being used. Reason, my dad gave me his 7i and 5i to hit when I was 7. Now that club was so heavy for such a little guy that I couldn't help but drop the club and go DOWN and OUT.

Sweet Spot Plane
 

Purehitter, you mentioned "Until recently it was not easy to
verify swinging the sweetspot of the club head on plane and
in balance from start to finish".

What is the easy way to verify that the sweetspot is on
plane and in balance from start to finish?

Donn

I designed a 3-D swing trainer that shows how to do this. I am also the designer of rover golf swing trainers. The Power Angle Pro, Pure Swing, Power Release and the Power Drive Pro. I am working on a video and a book about this concept. I will keep you posted on the release date.

I know this is a bit off topic, but I noticed in his driver sequence that he chose to use the elbow plane before release, and had a rolled left hand in the release, just before impact. If he had chosen to use a slightly higher plane, ie: the club more between his arms instead of the elbow plane, would he still need to have a rolled left hand near impact? Im sure he did not think about rolling the hand, as it was probably part of his motion as a whole, just wondering if it would still be necessary if his club were in a slightly less inside position.

Yes and Homer gave us the answer by saying nearly every player has a fine out and fine forward but a lousy down.

I too wonder what Mr Hogan would think of all this talk of knowing what his 'secret' was. Especially when the enlightened person stands to make a dollar (books, DVDs, training aids) out of this secret they have mysteriously stumbled upon. If a theory has merit then it should stand up to logic and criticism on its own rather than by reference to a great man who should be given more respect.

I think it is one thing to be able to replicate Mr Hogan's swing and produce a similar appearance, it is another entirely to produce the same results. It is impossible to know what Mr Hogan was doing internally. What was he thinking while swinging? What pressure did he have where and what was active and at what stage? What was he trying to do with the golf club?

In one sense it is great if the idea has merit because it contributes to the knowledge bank on the golf swing and all benefit. However, we all know how much stuff is out there and if you're like me then you tend to take more notice when something involves the great Ben Hogan. I gets kinda expensive. I buy these things in the hope that these people have actual insights into Mr Hogan from what he said to them. They rarely do. When the thesis being put forward comes only from watching him swing on their TV sets it is of little value because all of us have probably come up with aspects of Mr Hogan's swing that we think were crucial and perhaps a 'secret'. All we're really doing is finding out something new about an efficient golf swing that is probably present in many other swings of good ballstrikers.

It is in this respect that Homer Kelley's work is so strong. He did not rely on another person's reputation or skill to advance his own ideas and in the process make money. They stood on their own and gain more and more support every day.

Excellent post!

Come on Matt! Who's going to buy that? Admit that you are MROSE! :laughing9

Mr. Hogan secrets
 

Mr. Hogan may have had many secrets. One could speculate what he wanted to communicate. However, the golf motion has been a mystery for many years! Folks must realize that it is based on the LAWS of the Universe. There is not any secret. It is all based on universal laws. Be a JOCK or Intellectual the motion wants to happen automatically but the human influence comes along and disrupts it! We as individuals are unique and sense our motion as unique individuals. So, feel is subjective and mechanics is object so play mechanics into feel ASAP. Try a Pure Ball Striker and gain a your feel of mechanics and play those feels into your game!

objective mechanics cannot be overlooked or avoided. i agree on that point. but i think a great way to play golf is pretty much trial and error as long as you're astute enough to recognise the things that really matter when they come your way.

i only stumbled across TGM a few months ago. rather than feeling annoyed that i didn't have access to all this great information back when i took up this great game, i'm actually grateful for all the faults and flaws i've dealt with along the way. i live in the smallest and furthest south island state 'down under' and so my golf journey really has been a blind struggle. there has never been a professional in our state that i, or any other good player, would really believe in to advance our games. a good coach is a plane (airplane not swing plane) flight away. whenever i approach these 'professionals' with anything to discuss on the golf swing they would basically laugh it off and tell me i'm overcomplicating things. it's little wonder these guys all had scoring averages in the high 70s for their annual club pro tour.

finding this online community has been a wonderful thing. finally realising that being analytical is not such a bad thing.

one of the major discoveries I made on the golf swing was on the practice fairway prior to quarter finals of club championships about 8 years ago. i was losing it left and on the range i just starting hitting a few with my sole swing thought being to leave the club behind on the downswing. i had always known to swing from the ground up but with this sole focus on the clubhead i started using my backswing to increase the amount that i could stress the shaft coming down. anyway, in that day's match i won 7 and 6 and finished the match off by hitting a bullet fade over the water (runs all the way down the left of the hole) with driver and drifting it back a few metres from the water on a hole where normally i'd only dare to hit 3 iron and bail out to the right. this was a stupid shot but i was testing my newfound LAG PRESSURE.

the other revelation i had around that time was swinging left after impact properly. i had been guilty of paying too much respect to the good players i had spoken to in the past. at my club there is a man who played for australia on many occasions and even held the course record at st andrews. his family won lotto and used it to fund their boy's trip with the australian team. he's in his 70s now and so had very old swing ideas. his main thoughts were to use the legs and swing out to the right. he was an amazing ballstriker (and still is!) but i think he's one of those guys that don't actually do what they say they do. i'd say he did swing out to the right but maybe without breaking his plane line (ie he had the out part of downwards, outwards and forwards but then went inwards). he grew up in the 40s and 50s with his dad the local pro and they had a swing sequence of byron nelson above the fire place. anyway, now i don't swing to the right anymore. i discovered swinging along a STRAIGHT PLANE LINE.

then recently i discovered that it wasn't essential to keep the left arm glued to the chest ala my idol curtis strange and faldo etc. i found that it was ok to let my left arm separate and so now i can get into the straight arms position and retain my FLAT LEFT WRIST.

what i'm trying to say in relation to hogan's secret is that we all have our flaws and then we all have our moments of inner jubilation, our own secrets. i think it's better to go wrong and then work out why it's going wrong than to simply do it right. it's not always going to work out right so when it falls apart a bit it's great to have a few memories to draw upon. having tried out so many different ways to swing i now have very few swing thoughts. i don't really think about what i am doing, i just have a general awareness of what i don't want to do and that funnels me towards good shots. i think the perfect golfer would have a database of having hit every bad golf shot and then recovered from them. however, life may be too short for that. which is perhaps why hogan said that there's not enough hours in the day to hit the amount of balls you really need to.

so as for swing trainers, no thanks. i want to do what i do for a reason. not because i'm programmed to do it. i watched a DVD on hogan the other day that had been ruined by the self-serving plug of a swing trainer.

A swing trainer if designed correctly will always speed up your learning curve with lasting results.

Now on the other hand most training aids are band aids and crutches at best and do not produce lasting results.

It is up to you but I would think the hit or miss method would produce more failure than success.

Just a thought?

depends on how far along the curve you are i guess when they come along and whether you understand what they're helping you do as opposed to just creating a feel that might be misunderstood and will slowly wear off.

i have, and always will have, a lot to learn in this game, but i think i'm a long long way down the road, and still enjoy each additional break through as much as the first and perhaps more so than the scores that result. in other words i enjoy the process as much as the results. makes the results mean a lot more.

a question - if a person invented a swing trainer that allowed you to hit perfect shots most of the time and you learnt of this trainer when you first started and never had the struggle, always hit perfect shots from day 1, would you still think it's the best game in the world or would you maybe move on and try something else? if the trainer is that good then we'd have millions of Tigers and nobody wants that. we want to know that each improvement, each great round... was earned, and deserved. i know the scenario will never happen but it helps to explain my point. the harder the game, the more the satisfaction. that's why people like ben hogan and homer kelley, and heck, lynn blake, they devote their lives to it.

Greatest Training Aid in the World?
 

If you can recieve meaningful feedback without a swing trainer/aid then you don't need them...BUT...those dowels really help me set those flying wedges! Accurate feedback is key.

Dowels are a good thing for understanding the flying wedges.

?
 

Are you making a distinction, or seconding my endorsement of dowel magic?

Secret Agent Man
 

Hogan had many secrets, both physical and mental. Not just one.

A Lesson Learned
 

Success in life is the result of Good Judgement.

Good Judgement is the result of Experience.

Experience is the result of Bad Judgement.

I never said anything to contradict that fact!

We are all built so differently, not only physically but neurologically. If you try swinging like Hogan and are built like Davis Love, it won't work. All of the necessary information is in the yellow book. It is finding the right pattern that is tough. For that, an instructor that knows, ie, the ones that typically are on this site, must be consulted. I recently took two lessons from a top 100 guy who will remain nameless, as he is a good guy and has a great rep. The first lesson focused on a hitting motion of the right arm during the swing, axe technique, the second he weakened my grip and worked on a startup swivel. These are two different feels, let alone patterns. He does not teach the golfing machine and uses these in his bag of tricks, but it left me with an unclomfortablefeeling, to say the least. Teaching aids like Jeff's are important because without access to an ai, for some of us it is the best way to feel the changes we need to make.