My previous article reviewed some of the mystery and history of Ben Hogan’s swing, ending with an observation by Jim McLean that Hogan’s secret was indeed a lot of little things. Many have studied Hogan’s swing without getting to the bottom of his hooking problem. While it may be intuitively obvious, i.e. Hogan didn’t hook up simply because he was Ben Hogan, it’s not so obvious why he did.
Most golfers familiar with his history know that he struggled with a hook and spent most of his early years fighting it. But the question of what Ben Hogan was trying to do with his swing that caused him to get hooked (in the first place) isn’t often asked and discussed less frequently as part of his swing analysis. The subtle or implied problem is that a hook is a symptom of a problem and not something to fix in itself, for example, like a bad grip or wrong swing path or faulty weight distribution and balance. So while it is roundly acknowledged that Hogan had a hooking problem, it’s rare to see that problem broken down to assign a cause to his action and also see why he didn’t do more about it before 1946.
The reason Hogan hooked the ball is due to the action he initiated to hit the ball farther when he was racing the other caddies at Glen Garden Country Club, Fort Worth in the 1920s (probably between 1924 and 1927). The caddy has played a game where they hit balls into holes for five cents.
The winner obviously won money, but the loser had to collect all the balls for the next round. Hogan was younger and smaller than the other caddy and found that he couldn’t hit the ball that far. At that time he was doing two things above all others; fighting for his place in the pecking order to get select corners to sell newspapers, as well as with the other caddies because that was the nature of the caddy yard, and he was learning to play golf. He combined the two to create a golf action that would allow him to hit the ball further and further as he matured. The action was similar to throwing a punch, with the action of the arms adapted to the rotation of the hips. He probably worked on timing him so that his right arm would swing as fast as possible to follow the action of the right hip. He staged it from the hip as if he were throwing a punch, as he would later recount in his books.
I should add here that this was not the “cartoon haymaker”, often depicted as being coiled behind the head like a baseball pitcher. Hogan’s action was the punch of someone who knows how to use his hands, similar to a boxer’s jab or a short punch that travels a short distance from the hip. While it may not be obvious, timing his action from the hip, all things being equal, means everything spins powerfully to the left through impact. Without some other form of swing compensation, the shoulders, arms and hands work aggressively to the left or closing through the ball. The obvious problem with this action is that it causes a low running hook, but this type of shot was ideal for the dry fairway conditions of the golf courses he played on in Texas. Hogan probably worked seriously on his swing during this time period, as much or more than he did throughout his life as he earned a reputation as a tireless ball-slugger.
It would be no easy task to change this basic action that had been so ingrained when he turned pro in 1932. He struggled with a hook problem initially until 1938 and then off and on during the early part of the 1946 campaign, when he finally discovered a hook problem. way to cure the problem once and for all. He revealed pronation as his “secret” in an August 8, 1955 Life magazine article. Pronation is what he added to his swing to solve the problem, and a careful look at his swing reveals that he continued to maintain the link between your hips and your arm throughout your stroke.
But if pronation was his real secret, why has there been an ongoing debate on this topic for the last 50 years or more? Hogan often hinted that he made his swing “hook-proof” by, in effect, erecting a giant wall on the left side of the golf course, beyond which he was pretty sure he wouldn’t go. . He felt that pronation saved him one punch per round, though it was probably worth a bit more than that in terms of confidence and consistency.
While it is possible that pronation was in fact his secret, there is a minor incongruity to be resolved between some of his statements and the facts. For example, many believe that the combination of little things that Hogan did represent his true secret. He used extremely stiff shafts, oversized grips, weakened the lofts of his clubs, placed his hands in an extremely weak grip position directly above the club, and employed a shortened thumb position with the left hand grip. The “V’s” in his grip pointed directly at his chin.
When he said he used pronation, it was in addition to all these other elements of his setup and swing. While that seems to make sense, once he showed that he had indeed found a way to cure his hook, he also claimed that he had actually started playing better golf in 1946 because he had given up trying to do a lot of golf. of little things. perfectly. Hogan had discovered that such an excess of thoroughness and attention to detail was not only impossible, but unnecessary as long as the basic fundamentals of the swing were sound.
Hogan’s premise that mastery of the fundamentals was sufficient to play top-notch golf, presented in Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, was met with some skepticism. Many who tried his relatively simplified instruction couldn’t help but cut the ball wrong. Others found that his tendency to hook the ball was exacerbated by the inside swing action. Others were puzzled by the lack of any mention of pronation, which had been accepted as Hogan’s secret. There was also the matter of the plane, with a different path for the backswing compared to the path taken to hit the ball.
But Hogan had apparently solved his swing problems by using pronation, since he never suffered from hooking again after 1946. Or was there something else he discovered that allowed him to hit the ball without fear of hooking the ball? We are left with the conjecture of those who believe that there was more than he revealed during his lifetime. In the final analysis, his secret seems to be a lot of little things that were implemented into his swing, with pronation being the final element needed for him to hit the ball so well.