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