In this video, I discuss Hogan’s clubshaft protocols… and how
they were different from other players both past and present. Did this give him a technical advantage?
I would say YES!
okay so we are going to talk a little bit more about Hogan’s golf swing and we’re going to do this for a while because we’ve just released the Hogan modules so Hogan is the focus here for a while because it’s been the focus for me for quite a while so right now we’re going to take a little look at at swing plane I don’t really like the word swing plane that much because it’s misinterpreted swing plane is really really needs to happen dynamically the swing plane needs to happen through Force through a opposing forces and pressures happening from one side of the swing to the other it’s just like if I take this shaft and I flex it and I distort it I’ve got pressure over here going one way I’ve got pressure over here going another way and that adds actually stiffens the shaft when I flex the shaft pre-stressing the shaft putting kinetic energy in the shaft or what we would call holding shaft FL so did Hogan do something different with his swing playing than his contemporaries or modern players today and I would say absolutely yes Hogan’s swing plane was created by opposing forces and pressures now one thing i’ I’ve set this pipe up here so we can get it’s just kind of roughly thrown in the ivy over here just to give us a general idea as to what’s going on when I look at any player or golfer particularly Hogan what I’m really looking at is the shaft what is the shaft doing what is the shaft how is the shaft moving through time and through space what is the spatial awareness of the shaft is the shaft going like this is the shaft going like this is the shaft is it cocking early is it going late is it going late and then setting is it never really cocking you know all these things about the shaft where is it where is it in space so as we can see with this line here which is really going to represent the plane through the strike through the hitting area this is what we’re really concerned about I’m concerned about what Hogan’s shaft was doing most my most concerned about what it was doing through the strike from what we call the parallel before impact P3 to the parallel after impact P4 I want the shaft to be doing this through the strip and over here to get the shaft on plane Bo it’s a lot farther low left and around than people people think you see a lot of golfers hitting out to the right and they’re out here you know swing from the inside and they’re out here and they’re just way off plane so yes plane is good but plane needs to be created through the proper intentions and the right Dynamics and through speed velocity acceleration through the strike so getting back to Hogan now when you watch Hogan’s shaft Hogan would never out here on the back swing he never took it out here now that is a way to flatten the shaft yes we can take it outside and flatten the shaft but that does have its special problems with that Hogan figured out he was best to take the inside route and keep that shaft under the plane on the back swing and then you figured out how to keep it under the plane on the down swing and then he figured out how to keep it low left and around post impact and up into his finish now this is very different than what other people do I don’t see any modern players doing this and even players from Hogan’s era I see players getting a lot of this right I get I see a lot of them getting the back swing right I see some of them getting the transition right I see a lot of them down here on the 430 line pretty much most all of them got this right but I see very few of them getting this right over here now why is that because it’s hard okay especially when you’re swinging the heavier Pimon clubs like I’ve got here this one’s uh my practice Club you’ve seen this in the videos and this is a 16 oz 16 o per cimon driver here which is similar to what Hogan would have been using Mo George nson okay 16 o per the one PB Golf Club taking the club to the inside tripping the Sha moving the hands down to the 430 line now you’re developing speed here and the club if I let go of this club and I’ve done this before it’s going to hit the ground and it’s going to go out here to the right as we can see it’s going that way okay and if I swing it really hard it’s going way out there so as you start to develop speed then you really need to start creating better structure cohesive of body tension pressure points and some strength because you’re going to be taking this and what I’ve referred to in other videos and advanced ball striking students have heard me talk a lot about the orbit pole and the orbit pole is exactly this as we’re on the 430 Line This Club wants to go this way but we’re going to pull this thing this way so it takes some strength and some pressure to do that and we can assist in that by turning our shoulders level keeping our upper arms close to our body as we go through it and and trying to maintain our wrist coning through the strike and we’ve got drills that we work on over and over and over to try and strengthen these things and do this correctly with all the right pressures and everything in place now as my swing has been developing recently um by applying this Hogan methodology I’m generating a lot more Club head speed than I ever have with a 16 o driver which is heavy and that mass and I have to pull much harder than I ever have before with the orbit pull because I’ve got Mass wanting to go this way and I’m trying to pull it this way so that I can keep the club face looking at the Target longer rather than using a Swinger’s release which is going to straighten the right arm and throw the toe over and now I’ve got a lot of real active toe going through the strike and all the timing stuff so I don’t like that maybe you want to do that I don’t take that out of the equation so most golfers are told to swing upright here and they come down Steep and they throw their right arm at it to close the cloud face the golf swing looks like this you see a lot of this stuff doing on finish High okay and that’s a type typical swingers kind of release and uh well since we’re on the Hogan conversation well then that’s not what Hogan was doing at all then you’ve got the guys that are saying you know you want to take it inside and come over the top do something like this well that’s no good either because that’s not what Hogan did either so what Hogan did is he kept the shaft under the plane he tripped the shaft to keep the shaft under the plane moved at the 430 line and worked it low left and around through the St okay now you need to learn this at slower speeds you just do it’s the same thing as well I’m a guitarist also and if I’m trying to learn a guitar riff um or I’m writing a lead part or something I’m going to do it slow figure out what I’m trying to do until I get my fingers up to speed to where I can do it fast but I don’t just do it fast I’m going to figure out what I need to do and if I’m learning something using muscles that I’ve never used before it takes time to to learn these things same thing with the golf swing it’s no different you’re going to have to learn these things in sections you’re going to have to learn to take the proper back swing you’re going to have to learn to do this slowly at first get the club into position and then you’re going to have to learn to trip the shaft and as we move laterally and we move down to the right hip pocket and we know this because Hogan’s right forearm was almost grazing his right thigh as he’s coming into the strike here right he’s not way out here he’s not out here his arm isn’t out here it’s here how’s it going to get there he’s going to trip the shaft move laterally put it on the 430 line then he’s going to turn level now one thing you’ll notice about Hogan that’s different than just about anybody is how closed he is coming down the shoulders and hips are very very closed very late into the downswing but through the strike they get really open his hip gets really turned open his hands are way over here in his younger days his shoulder would get a little tiny bit steep here as he got older he figured out his back can’t handle that and return level going through the strike and also as you lose strength you’re not going to turn it in there quite as tight as you do when you’re younger and you’ve got more strength so we could see that happening but the intention is all there it’s all correct so what we would want to do is we want to work on on the back swing getting that correct and trip the Sha and move through the strike now we got to do this at slower speeds first okay that should be pretty close you notice that Hogan’s Club head on the back swing never gets above the plane transition doesn’t get above the plane that club head stays below the plane or on the plane and his Sha sh moves up into the plane so on the downswing he’s moving up into plane up meaning coming from under plane up to the plane from the top of the back swing moving down it’s under plane that shaft needs to be working at right angles to the spine you can see here if you trip the shaft correctly and you got that shaft working right angles to the spine now you can really leverage that Force As you move it around if you’ve got the shaft steep here and you start turning the shoulders level well the club’s going to come out here you’re going to hit across the ball end up with the slice and all that most people are coming down steep take some training take some practice get that shaft moving at right angles to the spine here down to the 430 line most golfers even the better players even T players guys that are upright are sliding the shaft down onto the plane so you have the well take chck Nicholas arguably the greatest player of all time and he would have the right elbow coming out a little bit and that shaft would be Steep and then he would slide that thing back down on the plane you can see how how this is working here right it’s above the plane coming down onto the plane and yes you can you can do this and work low left and around okay this is one way to swing a golf club you can obviously have very good results like that obviously Jack Nicholas right okay but it’s not Hogan and we’re talking Hogan I recently saw Jack on TV talking about Hogan I don’t know it was 1960 or something and he was saying how Hogan had hit every Green for the first 36 holes and then in the third round he had hit the first 16 greens so he went you know 52 Holes without missing you know I learned so much from Hogan I mean Hogan hit the first the 36 green hold 30 36 holes previous to that round he hadit every green and then he hit uh I take that back he hit the 18 holes previous and they hit the first 34 with me regulation so he hit what 50 52 Greens in regulation Jack understood what a great Striker Hogan was again I’m going to come back to this was Hogan doing something different from a technical standpoint that gave him an advantage in the ball striking Department not talking about scoring not talking about Majors or tournament wins and all that which you want a lot of those a lot of that’s short game stuff okay a lot of that’s putting and chipping and wedges and all that stuff we’re talking about just ball strike I’m talking about how did Hogan how was he able to hit drivers long irons you know be the great ball Striker that he was that’s what we’re talking about here okay talking about getting the shaft on plane through the strike so we do this slowly we’re going to learn this slowly okay and then we can start ramping it up to where we’re going to do these things faster okay and right there I can feel I didn’t pull it hard enough left which okay so I’m going to have to pull that even more okay slotting it can yes I can feel that happening okay I’m slotting the club well okay a little bit better technique technique technique for
38 Comments
Never worry about another man's shaft.
It's called the sri lang ra or whatever
That's not a swingers release That's a choppers release and nobody's ever taught that
There are many secrets. One is passive right arm. if you swing with one arm you will be in plane.
This is all about flip or use body at impact. I am neutral on this.
I am looking for perfect swing. Ben hogan swing is very weak in my opinion.
You have merge different ideas and make a swing suit your body size.
Style vs accuracy? Can it be combined? Possible but need superior leg strength.
Some days legs are weak. Linn grant swing will fail.
Some days hands are weak.
Justin thomas broke course record in TPC Saw grass next day he shot 73 or something. that is so much deviation.
Even in PGA tour level , Super Strong people who come out successfully
For hobby golfer , ben hogan swing is too much skill.
But what is your point , Hogan was a good putter under pressure . He also had a good swing but no better than dozens of pros on tour today . Henry Cotton ,Olazabal and Howard Twitty had better swings .
At the top Hogan looks like he’s taking the cup out of his left wrist as the club lays off, just before the downswing.
John, I was at Shady Oaks taking a short game lesson last week. Got to stand under his practice tree!!
Not even close Keep trying tho
Ben Hogans swing is weak?
Just a small turf mat would make this more watchable , the driver hitting the deck gets to some of us !
SUPER!
I retooled my swing with Hogan’s Five Lesson in 2008-10 after retiring and going to work at a NoVA par 35 9-home Rick Jacobsen designed golf academy that became a public course frequented by a lot of noobs because it had a huge year round heated range stalls and a nine-hole round was about the cost of three large buckets if balls. I got to play for free and using the book and actually trying what he suggested — such as only practicing with a mid-iron until it became and extension of hands and brain — like a Jedi light saber in the hands of Luke Skywalker.
To understand the man behind the swing and what made him stand out amongst his older competitors like Hagen and Demaret starting out and Snead and Nelson during his prime I started reading books about him and learned that he was actually a lefty but switched to right starting with just one club out of a hardware store barrel and that grew a caddie rival in West Texas with Byron Nelson and developed his tight inside out low swing plane to get extra distance and win bragging rights and a few extra quarter in the caddie long drive contents. He had a hard life and always though of himself as an under-dog which is why he worked so hard and didn’t give up after his 1948 car crash that left him barely able to walk 18-holes with legs wrapped ankle to thigh in elastic bandages.
By the time he wrote his Sports Illustrated articles that became his book his swing was full of idiosyncratic moves I suspect were compensations for his injuries. A great book for insights about that is “My Afternoons with Mr. Hogan” by Jody Vasquez who as a teenager was Hogan’s practice caddy at the very end of his competitive career.
What I learned from emulating his swing was that the angle of the back foot controlled both torque in the back leg and buttock that is what fired his hips when released and also was used to control total rotation to the top. I learned to stand so I could see my shadow when taking a practice swings and adjust the flare of my back foot until my hands and club were in the ideal position to start the downswing and that varied depending on how flexible I was on a given day and also changed during the day as I loosed up. My tendency was to over-swing at the top and on some hot days when I’d play 18 – 36 holes by the end of the day my normal walking gait / feet where like this to get the club in the right place — that’s the goal of the backswing, not always having the back foot square | that people who are literal sensing types don’t understand about his approach he was by every indication an intuitive-thinking type – and INTJ I suspect, which are quite rare, only 2.1% of people tested. I’m also like minded INTJ in things like golf.
The other thing I find most don’t understand is what the WAGGLE thing was about. Take an old 7i out into the range, pretend it is a axe and you are cutting a V in a log WAGGLE it up and DOWN HARD into the ground 3-4 times then put a ball 1/2 behind where the divot starts. It will fly about 30-40yards dead straight with JUST THE WAGGLE. Next ad SIDE BEND ( forward then back ) to move hands < and > and you will find your hips start to turn in response to the leverage created by the club with hips swinging closed / with forward side bend ( and open with backwards side bend ) From there just extend the backswing to 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and full and WAGGLE clubhead DOWN AT THE GROUND not at the target in sweeping action — why Hogan said — “The Secret is in the Dirt” 😊
I grew up trying to emulate George Knudson and remember seeing Moe Norman in the early 1970's and like most people at the time didn't appreciate Mo's true skill. I saw him do a clinic in the 1990's and was astounded at his skill. Years later I was working very close to club where Moe hung out in the summer and I chatted with him one day. I sense that he was hurt from the lack of widespread appreciation for his skill. I remember him telling me that all he charged to do a clinic was $1600 and all the popular pros at the time were commanding $20,000 and he would get very few bookings. He was truly a memorable character
These days I follow a lot of what Stuart Cartwright from Good Golf Coaching teaches, much of it seems similar to your method.
You're stalling out your lower body through the bottom of the swing and using all upper body to swing left. That is not it. That is not what Hogan did. Hogan's hips continue to turn ahead of his shoulders and upper body through impact. Your shoulders are passing your hip turn because you're hip turn is inactive down there.
John, might I suggest that if you were to be more aggressive in extending your lead (left) leg through impact that you would not have to work so hard to 'pull' the club around and to the left. Let the big muscles attached to the earth do the work. Anyway, just a suggestion and I think there is a reason Hogan was so aggressive in the manner I describe whereas you are quite 'soft' in this regard.
“Down the 4 30 line” You said that repeatedly what is that?
Good shit
… just wanted you to hit that damn ball. Very disappointed
Shit you do the two things i try to do and fail at miserably …golf for 35 yrs and now guitar for 10+yrs 😜🏌️🎸
Never looked like you were releasing the clubface by the time it would have been hit ..is this just camera angle /trick or were you not worrying about tHe possible ball flight in this demonstration? I ask because now that im getting a bit older (55 and feeling it after 18 yesterday and 107 swings +warm up) my swing is getting more and more difficult to replicate with success iam making changes lil by lil ..for me release is a struggle to time up . Ill draw some nicely then Ill pull a few ,make an adjustment get a few straight then itll go the other way (slicing /push) ..im too sore to,practice today lol so im watching g these type videos looking for something that might click .wish i had half the the turn hogan had but i still love seeing his swing ,its like poetry imo.
Hogan had a compact body so he used a compact swing. Long body types can't do this
Hi John from Sydney Australia. Can you please confirm that the movement/clearance by the left shoulder preceeds the forearm rotation in the downswing. Also John, would you please briefly comment on THE DOWNUNDER BOARD for the benefit of your many followers
Great stuff John. Hogan’s pelvis work definitely interesting too. He worked the hips very deep from where they start creating room for his arms to have passage on 4:30 line and then as you how that he is closed coming down , saving his rotation and then his amazing pivot through the ball.
I feel there is something to the lower body. But the shaft movement and transition and exit are very Hogan like.
John, why do you think Hogan's tempo was so fast? Was this a key to his tripping the shaft in transition? When I think of what most people consider 'effortless' golf swings, almost all those mentioned are swingers with relatively slow tempo swings. Do all good hitters have fast tempo swings? I would sure hate to be a swinger with a fast tempo swing. Anyway, just tossing out some thoughts to, in turn, get you to share yours pertaining to the role one's intrinsic swing tempo plays toward their propensity to be a swinger vs hitter.
John, one of my favorite intents you and Bradley promote is draw intent coming into impact and fade intent post-impact. It really delivers in terms of execution. As I alluded to previously, I journeyed through ABS a few years back and it remains my protocol. Over time, I developed another intent that has paid dividends toward execution in MY swing. Namely, as I move through impact my intent with the hand path is pull, while hand (club face) orientation is push. Why/how does this intent help ME? Not sure why, but it promote bacon strips instead of pork chops. Overall, I THINK most people – or maybe it was just me – do not realize just how committed you need to be to an 'open' club face . . . because, of course, it is blasphemy in modern teaching.
Wonderful video John. I have been studying you and Bradley Hughes' YT's. I've fallen in love with the techniques but I'm 6'2" and 71 years old. The 430 line is virtually impossible as I have been a "swinger" since age 12. The low left and around. I do flush it occasionally but not consistently and with powder puff distance. I was once a member at Holly Tree in Simpsonville and played to a 2 for several years. My nephew has had lessons from Bradley and loves the results. About all I have left in golf is to shoot my age which seems unachievable at this point. Anyway, thank you for this massive amount of work you have done.
Just watched this video for the 3rd time. Love that keep the shaft on right angle 📐to the spine. Great.
Hi again John. The lateral shift makes such a difference. When i employ the lateral shift the clubhead returns to the ball instantaneously without any conscious thoughts of downswing rotation of torso or arms. Is this sensation normal. I feel as though I should be consciously completing the downswing with deliberate movements as opposed to the automatic return of the clubface to the ball by the lateral shift
I read years ago, that Hogan kept his club on the inside plane, on the downswing, by turning his right knee clockwise at transition : creating an opposing force in the downswing. This shows up, as external rotation aka Sam Snead squat.
Hi John I’m now77 I still hit balls after a life of golf had back surgery at 70 But always study hogan swing very hard to do. Love your take right on I’m a musician as well
It’s amazing how long Hogan saved his rotation…
Your perseverance to promote understanding is outstanding, perhaps your best gift to golf.
backyard goals 10000000% 🔥
What do you do with the club face with this kind of swing? It looks wide open. Is the club head passing the hands at all?
Love this, but I was wondering, how did Hogan maintain the radius throughout with his swing? Perhaps you could explain that.
And Hogan hit 50 balls with each club every morning, same in the afternoon.
I'm a former student of Alex Morrison, Henry Picard, Gardner Dickinson, David Lee and Keith Marks, Sr. Back in the mid-80s, I was an assistant Pro at Port Royal Plantation on Hilton Head Island, SC. I would drive up to the Johns Island to take lessons from Henry Picard. At the time I was an instructor with Vintage Golf School…which was endorsed by Alex Morrison. We taught the Morrison swing principles. The same principles he wrote about in his book "A New Way to Better Golf" in 1932. The same principles that Morrison taught to both Henry Picard and Jack Grout. And yes, the same principles that Grout taught to Nicklaus. At the time Grout was Pic's assistant Pro at Hershey Country Club.
* I could go on with this story but let me get to the reason for my post….. In 1987 I spent the afternoon on the lesson tee with Henry Picard learning how Ben Hogan actually did swing the golf club. Basically everything pic taught me that afternoon. I've never shared in public. For 48 years I've been walking around with that information basically keeping it to myself. John, I've been watching your podcast for a couple years now and I'm impressed with what I hear and see. I'm also impressed by your knowledge of Hogan. I think it would be very interesting/enlightening if we had a conversation. I.would be interested in talking with you about Hogan and the golf swing. Let me know your thoughts on that. Thanks
Open club face at backswing and downswing