It’s not a great feeling when you know in your heart that you are overmatched, that a golf course and the conditions are too tough and that the true level of your game will not be enough to bring about a positive result, and that you will ultimately fail. I’ve had these feelings a few times in the past, almost every time at the PGA Championship after I have qualified through top 20 finishes in the National Club Pro. It is disconcerting to know that I am not good enough to compete in a major championship, but it is another thing altogether to feel that way at a tournament I have always felt capable of winning.
At the 2007 Professional National Championship (PNC) we were back at the site of my greatest win, the 2001 PNC at the Crosswater Club in Bend, Oregon. While I managed to score decently the first two days, standing tied for 6th after 36 holes, I knew I was in trouble. Sure enough, I shot 75-77 to finish, and missed the top 20 and another trip to the PGA by two strokes. While I always take poor play extremely hard, I now found myself feeling almost relieved at not having to pit my game against Southern Hills, the site of the PGA.
When I arrived back home I was happy to learn that my daughter had DVR’d the tournament, and that now I could watch myself and see exactly what I was doing. I have always used video to work on my swing, and I find it extra helpful to be able to view my swing under tournament conditions as opposed to on the driving range. What I saw was not encouraging: my swing was short and tentative, with no real flow or freedom, and certainly no sense of the aggressive “strike” at impact that I have always strived for. I knew that I needed to move in a different direction if I wanted to salvage a decent year.
I have always taken some pride in the fact that I am essentially self-taught. When people ask me who I work with or where I got my information, I usually point to my camera (Mr. Sony) and tap the ground (the dirt). Like any competitor, I share technique ideas with a few of my friends, and as an instructor I keep up with whatever new ideas show up in books and magazines. Over the years I have struggled with certain aspects of my swing, due in large part to physical limitations brought about by three back surgeries in the early and mid 1980’s.
My “model” swing has always been that of Ben Hogan, and I have studied his swing endlessly in order to try and emulate his moves. I am always more apt to give credence to a “hot” new instructor if there is some new interpretation of Hogan involved, and that was certainly the case as I fiddled with Jim Hardy’s “One-Plane Swing”. My best buddy Mark Diamond had been out to see Hardy on numerous occasions, and as he explained what he was working on and showed me tapes of Hardy speaking and teaching, I decided that, as I was not setting the course on fire with what I was up to at the time, I would try to implement some of Hardy’s ideas.
One of the major aspects of Hardy’s method was the movement and function of the right arm. Hardy thought that the elbow should be behind the body during the downswing, and that by having the elbow against the right side at impact as opposed to being in front of the right hip the player would have a better chance to swing into the ball along the original shaft plane. By doing so, the hands and arms would stay close to the body and provide a shallow approach, while the body rotation would serve to close the face in a less “handsy” fashion. It was a novel approach, and by giving it a name (One-Plane refers to the relative similarity in the shoulder turn angle and the angle of the arm swing, caused by the combination of an extremely bent-over posture and an arm swing that pulled inward across the chest) and applying his considerable marketing talents, as well as some real results with a few Tour players, his new method was all the rage.
For me, however, something was amiss. Watching myself on television I knew I had to lengthen my swing. Bending over and pulling my arms into my chest was not allowing me enough freedom in my arm swing, and I wasn’t physically big and strong enough to make up for the restriction. The other thing that bothered me, and had been in the back of my mind from my first introduction to Hardy’s ideas, was the lack of a crisp, compressed strike with my elbow behind me instead of in front of me. As I mentioned, the fact that Hardy invoked Hogan in his discussions drew me in, and my first impression was that he had come up with something that I had completely missed. I was at the same time happy to find that the swings I had stared at so many times still held new information, and irritated that I had not seen what I was now looking at with a different focus.
Much of what Hardy was pointing toward as evidence to support his assertions about right arm movement came from swings filmed later in Hogan’s career, the most notable being footage of Hogan from the 1967 Masters. The facts of Hogan’s career are obvious. He played his best golf from 1946 to 1953, winning 13 tournaments along with the PGA Championship in 1946, 7 more tournaments (no majors) in 1947, then 11 tournaments, 2 majors among them, in 1948. His car accident in early 1949 limited his play for the rest of his career, and the most he would win in one year was 5 tournaments in 1953. Of course, three of them were majors, which, along with the 1950 U.S. Open and the 1951 U.S. Open and Masters, gave him 9 majors in a span of 8 years. Hogan’s book, Power Golf, came out in 1948, and within it he discusses tournaments as late as the 1947 Masters. It would seem that the photos in the book were taken sometime in 1947, and he has been quoted as saying that the first time he implemented his “fade swing” was in the International Open in September of 1947.
I have heard Jim Flick describe Power Golf as “the wrong Hogan book”. I disagree strongly. Hogan himself stated that he learned proper hip motion during the swing by watching newsreels of the top golfers in the mid 1930’s. I’ll take a photograph over a drawing, and a moving picture over a photo any day. Power Golf shows Hogan in his prime. His grip was neutral, his wrist cupped at the top, the clubface nice and open. Then, most importantly, his right elbow moved directly inward, in front of his right hip, in the forward swing. In doing so Hogan was able to lean his hands well in front of the ball with his iron shots which in large part assures a solid, compressed strike of the ball and a divot taken after impact. This much is obvious from the pictures. His swing is certainly longer than it would be in later years, but films of his major victories as late as 1953 show a driver swing well past parallel even then.
I had been conscious of the leading right elbow before: unfortunately, not knowing enough about swing planes, pivot motion, and hand releases made driving the right elbow forward a disaster fraught with dead right blocks, and outright shanks for the less talented. I knew I needed to lengthen my swing and get back to compressing the ball. The breakthrough came when I finally figured out how to load my library of film of Hogan and many other great players onto the computer I use in my teaching. Over the span of many years I have honed my ability to analyze swings, first by plugging my video camera into the television and using a dry erase marker to outline the player’s body, then moving on to utilizing the V-1 software program that enables me to draw lines, see measured angles, and split- screen swings for easy side-by-side comparisons.
Over the years I have compiled quite a few of Hogan’s swings (albeit with fairly poor quality), and with various collections of Hogan related video such as “A Hard Case From Texas” and the new one from Jim McLean I now have most of these swings in much clearer and sharper quality. One set of Hogan swings comes from a 1947 short piece called “Hogan at Augusta”, in which he is shown hitting a few shots to warm up, then a few more swings on the golf course. My guess is that these swings were shot within days of the high-speed photos used in Power Golf. Many older swings are not usable for analysis purposes on the computer as they are shot with hand-held cameras, and any movement makes line and angle drawing worthless. But here was a clear swing of Hogan from down-the-line with the camera positioned perfectly and held nice and still.
The first time I drew the lines and watched the swing I almost had to do a double-take. All my life, or at least since I first used a video camera (1982), I have been plagued by a slight lift in my backswing. I have always seen clearly that the great players don’t lift. In fact, if anything, they all seem to lower somewhat during the swing, either in the backswing, the downswing, or both. Now, here was Hogan, clearly moving down going back (at least 3 inches), then moving down again (another 3 inches) until impact, when he moves slightly upward into the follow-through. But that wasn’t all by any means. I always draw a line from the back of the player’s butt down to the ground, and I have always taught that the idea was to keep the butt against the line throughout the swing, thereby allowing the player to maintain his or her posture. Here, however, was Hogan, moving his butt behind the line, gaining at least 4 or 5 inches of depth with his right hip. I moved him back to address, and for the first time it occurred to me just how erect he was standing. Not only that, he was definitely leaning well forward onto the front of his feet, and his hands were arched up with plenty of space between them and his body. He triggered the backswing with a downward and inward movement of the hands and arms, and almost simultaneously began to push back into his right hip. At the top he was bent over far more than he was at address, in effect gaining posture, and as he moved into his forward swing he maintained that depth, which caused him to lower even more as he approached impact, all the while avoiding any tendency to pull his head back away from his starting position. The end result was two-fold, and brought about what I now believe to be the secret of a long list of the greatest players and ball-strikers in history: first, the hands return directly through the position they occupied at address, and the shaft arcs into and through impact exactly along its original set-up plane. Secondly, this is accomplished with the right elbow in front of the right hip in a leading position, enabling the hands to lean the shaft forward at impact. The tall, forward-leaning set-up encourages a swing that lowers constantly, an athletic, fluid movement that creates space for the hands and arms to move in front of the body and return the club to the ball on the original shaft plane.
Interestingly enough, there is one player on today’s Tour who is closest to resembling Hogan. From a tall set-up he moves downward in the backswing, then down again into impact gaining noticeable depth with his hips, while striking the ball with a dramatic raising of his hips as he pulls the grip end directly up the shaft plane. His name is Tiger Woods, and I don’t believe for a second that he has never sat for hours and watched Hogan’s swing: the coincidence would almost be too remarkable. All the while, the announcers on all the major golf networks constantly show their utter cluelessness by pinpointing Tiger’s lowering as the reason for all his bad shots.
Certainly there are far more elements to Hogan’s and Tiger’s swings than what I have described here. And what evidence do I have that my assertions have merit? First of all, I can show you real swings, not only of Hogan, but of Gary Player, Byron Nelson, Bobby Jones, Tiger Woods, Joe Durant, Vijay Singh, Lee Trevino, Tony Lema, Sergio Garcia, and many others who lower and bring the shaft to the ball on the original shaft plane, in most cases with the right elbow leading. In addition, there is the fact that after my poor finish in the National Club Pro that year I won the Middle Atlantic PGA Section Championship, the Middle Atlantic Section Senior Championship, the Maryland State Senior Open, and finished third in the National Senior Club Professional Championship. My stroke average for the entire year was 69.8, and in senior-only events it was 68. I hit the ball longer at 50 years old than I ever have in my life, and I am striking iron shots with a renewed authority. With the continued help of my fitness guru (I am still working out every morning) and my friend Ben Hogan (who has left all of us the legacy of his swings and his writings) I am still hopeful that I can continue to improve both my teaching and my playing.