Hogan's Secret...what is it? what is it not? (Hogan Threads Merged)

[golfbulldog]

Do they show what you have been told they should show?

 

What if the guy that was involved in the research for these knew more Hogan than anyone here?

 

What if he had proven at a competitive level that he could play better than most guys here?

 

Would you then question what you have been told to see in Hogan footage or what you look with fresh eyes at some data?

 

Just asking the questions...

 

Do some research about "golfresearch.com"... then question what you have been told to see....

[moefan]

Hi Everyone

As many of you know there is a book coming out in June called "Ben Hogan's Magical Device: The Real Secret To Hogan's Swing Finally Revealed"

Does anyone have an idea what this is about?

Moefan

 

Yes, I know...even before reading it...it's about making money on naive people. Pathetic !

 

Cheers

 

I tend to agree with you but there's something intriguing in the use of the word "device" in the title.

 

Moefan

[Ezgolfer]

Some good stuff for ya all..

 

http://www.golfresearch.com/hoganpictures/index.html

 

 

Rare hmmm....

 

One of them shows Hogan with a modern drive ( i may be wrong.....)

[scores]

The secret is in the dirt six feet under now... He took it to his grave!!!

 

I think the guy worked so hard and felt he received not as much as others in his quest to become a champion he was not going to reveal it, I still think from how much time he spent bending clubs testing golf balls he had a very complex/technical mind all this prior to owning a company. I think the guy thought about the GOLF shot from the ground up..

 

I think the adjustment was something that he could use more or less for a TEE shot if you listen to the interview he did (I had to hit Iron Clubs). and thats where I think Geoff may have nailed it.. swing left gets resistance in the handle mainly off the tee ... If hitting a iron YES its definetely better but you can swing DTL and use the gound to frim up the face of the club but not off the tee..

 

He knew this at least I think???

 

I think he knew the power of RESISTANCE to create energy.. He talks about cracking a whip well off the tee you need some type of resistance to do that and I think swing left is how you do it.

 

Thats all the thinking I can manange tonight...Think about it u r self

[KevCarter]

Do they show what you have been told they should show?

 

What if the guy that was involved in the research for these knew more Hogan than anyone here?

 

What if he had proven at a competitive level that he could play better than most guys here?

 

Would you then question what you have been told to see in Hogan footage or what you look with fresh eyes at some data?

 

Just asking the questions...

 

Do some research about "golfresearch.com"... then question what you have been told to see....

 

Thanks for pointing us in the right direction Dog! I believe Mr. Gregg Mc Hatton to be one of the first Doctors of the Golfing Machine. Along with Mike Hebron, some VERY impressive credentials. Very cool stuff... Thanks to the OP for putting this up for us!

 

Kevin

[moefan]

Some good stuff for ya all..

 

http://www.golfresearch.com/hoganpictures/index.html

 

 

Rare hmmm....

 

One of them shows Hogan with a modern drive ( i may be wrong.....)

 

 

Hi Ezgolfer

 

Thanks for posting those pictures. I'm going to take a long look.

 

Moefan

[Dariusz J.]

Do they show what you have been told they should show?

 

What if the guy that was involved in the research for these knew more Hogan than anyone here?

 

What if he had proven at a competitive level that he could play better than most guys here?

 

Would you then question what you have been told to see in Hogan footage or what you look with fresh eyes at some data?

 

Just asking the questions...

 

Do some research about "golfresearch.com"... then question what you have been told to see....

 

GB, your questions are completely irrevelant in the view of a fact that the author obviously wanted Mr.Hogan's name to "fit" to his theory, as I have learnt in his website. It is a common thing, alas, in today's golf world.

One would need a pair of good eyes and some experience in evaluating Mr.Hogan's swing that there are evident mistakes in these animations.

 

Or wait...maybe he wanted to present the inferior pre-secret version of Hogan's swing ? If so, I apologize, the animations may be excellent, I am not a theorist of his early swing...but, who cares about Hogan's pre-secret swing while gloryfying Him as the finest ballstrikers of all times that he already became after the accident ?

 

Cheers

[Ezgolfer]

Moefan you are welcome

 

I wish these were mine ...

 

This is a link from a website golfresearch.com. I just copied the link .

 

Very clear pics....

 

I was tired of seeing those washed out B & W stuff...

[Dariusz J.]

Question to those who really studied Mr. Hogan: Was post accident Mr. Hogan playing with only one eye his right one only. If true makes it more amazing!!

 

JuNiOR

 

Yep, it does. Great question, mate. Assuming Mr.Hogan became naturally a rear eye dominant man after the accident (being accustomed to be a lead eye dominant golfer all his previous life) the impact could be twofold.

I have a friend who, due to a wrongly executed eye operation, changed the eyedness, BTW. IMHO, if Mr.Hogan had not changed anything in his post-secret head motion, stance, ball position, etc. and even could bare losing the ball from his sight for a 1/50th of a sec. he had to incorporate more lateral element into his motion. Maybe that's why he said one day "Why all of you want to copy a motion of a cripple ?". Who knows, maybe he was so good at biomechanics that he knew that.

One thing is sure for me - even if he became a rear eye dominant golfer after 1949, which is very probable - he did not change much, if at all, in his head preset and motion.

 

Cheers

[Ezgolfer]

Could the eye dominance have affected his putting and we are all digging ball striking ..( Offcourse i know his GIR stats)...

[Dariusz J.]

Could the eye dominance have affected his putting and we are all digging ball striking ..( Offcourse i know his GIR stats)...

 

It could a lot, IMHO. A lead eye dominant golfer tends to aim right of the hole to compensate his too open a stance (he learns to do it by experience), and viceversa - bringing serious inconsistencies to his putting strokes. Now, imagine a man whose eyedness changed a while ago...a horrible thing for a putter.

Young Mr.Nicklaus said after one of US Opens, in response to Mr.Hogans sentence that: "This kid (Nicklaus) would have won the tourney easily by 5 strokes if I had thought for him"...and Jack responded: "Mr.Hogan would have won it easily by 10 strokes if I putted for him". I guess it was something like this. Of course, it happened around 1960...

 

Cheers

[CashmereGoatJ]

Hey all,

 

I've been reading and trying things. I've found that as I've worked on my pivot, a key for me is to get enough of a squat so that my weight is really braced in my legs, and my hips are level and bear my weight. This lets me turn my hips level so I can rotate my around my central axis, dropping the right hip back and rotating the left into the ball. I visualize this hip action on a circle that doesn't move it just spins. I find the spine tilt favors a faster, upward opening of the hips as the head stays back. That and a bunch of other feels and images are how I think about working the pivot. I get the feeling of the pretorque from executing this pivot. Other feelings for the wrist set and such.

[BogeyTrain]

I am not a hogan expert, but having read the 5 lessons, these digital animations seem to capture what hogan's static images could not. The hip and shoulder coiling in the back swing exhibits what hogan was describing in his book. The take away in this link captures what I was looking for in the backswing. I think these animations do a good job in capturing hogan's anatomical fundamentals.

[Dariusz J.]

I am not a hogan expert, but having read the 5 lessons, these digital animations seem to capture what hogan's static images could not. The hip and shoulder coiling in the back swing exhibits what hogan was describing in his book. The take away in this link captures what I was looking for in the backswing. I think these animations do a good job in capturing hogan's fundamentals.

 

Noone talks about wrongly presented backswing or takeaway here. The downswing and impact are captured visibly differently from the reality, alas. The DTL view shows all faults, that's why all who want to mimic Hogan very rarely show their DTL swings, even if their FO swing presentations look incredibly close to post-secret Mr.Hogan.

 

Cheers

[eightiron]

He felt like his right butt was trying to knock down a brick wall on the back swing.

 

What you think about that?

 

A very good sentence. My simple answer is the automatism of the swing motion, specifically, the SPC concept :)

 

He said that he felt like his right butt was trying to [...] and not that he was trying to [...]. The conclusion is that it must have been an unintentional motion that was a consequence of previously taken actions, as e.g. correctly performed backswing on a correct plane after correct things that had been accomplished during his setup.

 

My opinion what it is worth, cheers.

 

 

Looks like his butt is going pretty far forward here:

 

 

 

Clear as day the weight is already on the left but maintaining neck tilt...btw scientific research on shear forces from the feet been around 20 years..look it up and get the facts cause if i post the facts you will cry..lets just say they happen in a good swing and they are different to the move

[GOLF FTW]

what are these facts?

[eightiron]

what are these facts?

 

 

Available at TPI but original source is from a Biomedical Engineer..reseach it..its all there..imop if Hogan did the move with his set up post secret he would probably fall over a bit and look like Arnold Palmer at finish

[ChrisM84]

That is the pass in question though.

 

The rest of the site........ :wacko:

[martinez]

The secret is in the dirt six feet under now... He took it to his grave!!!

 

I think the guy worked so hard and felt he received not as much as others in his quest to become a champion he was not going to reveal it, I still think from how much time he spent bending clubs testing golf balls he had a very complex/technical mind all this prior to owning a company. I think the guy thought about the GOLF shot from the ground up..

 

I think the adjustment was something that he could use more or less for a TEE shot if you listen to the interview he did (I had to hit Iron Clubs). and thats where I think Geoff may have nailed it.. swing left gets resistance in the handle mainly off the tee ... If hitting a iron YES its definetely better but you can swing DTL and use the gound to frim up the face of the club but not off the tee..

 

He knew this at least I think???

 

I think he knew the power of RESISTANCE to create energy. He talks about cracking a whip well off the tee you need some type of resistance to do that and I think swing left is how you do it.

 

Thats all the thinking I can manange tonight...Think about it u r self

:clapping: In bold is what I believe, it applies to every aspect of the swing not just club to ball. If you want to go left, the best way to get there is to "use" the right side pressure, all the better if you never lost the leftward pressure to begin with. I push into my right and pull hard with all I've got, EXPANSION. There's no stall in Hogans' swing because all his joints are open, freedom to move. You can't get that kind of freedom without RESISTANCE.

[scores]

There is no stall in his swing due to his pivot already discussed and yes !!! I have been looking at this part of the golf swing more and more since joining this web site and meeting so many knowledgeable instructors/players..

[martinez]

There is no stall in his swing due to his pivot already discussed and yes !!! I have been looking at this part of the golf swing more and more since joining this web site and meeting so many knowledgeable instructors/players..

 

 

Who said Hogan had a stall?

 

Where are they saying it is in the swing?

 

The point is he has no stall, the trick is to figure out how he does that. It's more than just the "Move" and it's more than just "he releases left".

 

If there is a "secret" (I'm in the camp that says there was an evolution of secrets) only he will ever know what his epiphany was that led him down the path. One thing for certain he continued to evolve it, refine it. I also don't buy the whole cripple thing. I know his trauma was severe, but he still moved with an athleticism which belied a man of his age well into his old age. I want to know what he learned during his rehabilitation. It takes very little outer body strength to swing like him, it takes an incredibly detailed knowledge of human movement to move like he does. It was learned movement, he looks clumsy in his youth compared to the old "cripple" in the Coleman video.

[biscuity]

Use the pivot to release the club, not the hands. That IMHO is the key to the secret.

 

Sure, the pivot sets you up, but Hogan did not have passive hands. Hogan released the club HARD manually, you can see it in the slow motion swings on the beach in Florida. He hit as hard as he could with both hands, on purpose, and not simply a release via the pivot.

 

The key to his Secret was that he set himself up so that no matter how hard he released the club he couldn't hook it. Weak grip, short left thumb, fan the club open as much as he could, shorter backswing, cup the left wrist at the top of the backswing. In that position he could hit as hard as he could and still not hook it. It gave him a power fade and consistency, and removed the smothered hook from his game. That gave him the confidence, under pressure, to win the big ones.

 

First bold statement: Absolutely wrong. To the point of not discussing.

 

Second statement: Mantra

 

But one and two cannot live together.

 

He hit the snot out of it with both the right and the left sides not the hands. The left release allows you to use the right side without any fear of going left....as long as you 1. get left and 2. don't stall the core.

 

But......(w/out nitpicking and being purposefully naive) in a classic DTL (is it CF? dunno my TGM) the body slows down arms go DTL to release the club.

 

Hogan had very fast hands, but he didn't use them to release the club. And if he did in Florida, guess what: arthrirtis backy no turny. But that swing ain't even close to his comptetitive swings.

 

 

 

What makes you think Hogan didn't have a strong release with his hands? 5 Lessons states on page 93:

 

"THE MAIN THING FOR THE NOVICE OR THE AVERAGE GOLFER IS TO KEEP ANY CONSCIOUS HAND ACTION OUT OF HIS SWING."

 

Why did he put the words "Novice" and "Average" into that sentence? Because pro golfers use their hands to create power.

 

 

5 Lessons page 99:

 

"On a full shot you want to hit the ball as hard as you can with your right hand. But this is only half the story. HIT THE BALL AS HARD AS YOU CAN WITH BOTH HANDS."

 

Can it get any clearer than that? That is NOT passive hands. That is not just using the left and right sides of your body to hit the ball. Hogan set up his swing with his Secret so that he could go at the ball with the full force of both hands without worrying about a hook. He used the power of his hands to impart a hook swing that he controlled, through set-up, to a power fade. With his post-Secret set-up he had to attack the ball with a full release of both hands or else he would hit a slice or push.

 

Watch the purposeful hand action at the 15 second point of this video:

 

 

That is not passive hands.

 

Watch the the whip he puts on the club with the hands in this video at 1:10.

 

 

The left knuckles go from pointing at the sky at the top of the swing to pointing to the ground as the hands reach the right knee, then the left wrist keeps rotating to a pronated and square position at impact. Meanwhile, the right hand is pushing as hard as it can, like throwing a baseball sidearm. Can you throw a baseball sidearm with POWER using passive hands?

 

Why did Hogan exercise his hands to build strength? Because his hands were not passive.

 

The pivot puts him in position, the hands delivered the final burst of speed and power at just the right moment.

[martinez]

There is no stall in his swing due to his pivot already discussed and yes !!! I have been looking at this part of the golf swing more and more since joining this web site and meeting so many knowledgeable instructors/players..

 

 

Who said Hogan had a stall?

 

Where are they saying it is in the swing?

 

The point is he has no stall, the trick is to figure out how he does that. It's more than just the "Move" and it's more than just "he releases left".

 

If there is a "secret" (I'm in the camp that says there was an evolution of secrets) only he will ever know what his epiphany was that led him down the path. One thing for certain he continued to evolve it, refine it. I also don't buy the whole cripple thing. I know his trauma was severe, but he still moved with an athleticism which belied a man of his age well into his old age. I want to know what he learned during his rehabilitation. It takes very little outer body strength to swing like him, it takes an incredibly detailed knowledge of human movement to move like he does. It was learned movement, he looks clumsy in his youth compared to the old "cripple" in the Coleman video.

 

 

By constant motion the whole swing.... Thats easy you can see how his motion is both strength and freedom.

 

What does he know that allows an older man to make this swing? I see it in Tiger now, not Hogans' swing, but the same freedom and expansive movement within a tightly spiraled swing. I've been working on it for 9 months now, known what I wanted to get to, and I'm still so far away. I thought I was close a few times then look at the video and realize I'm not. I have two really good swings either side of a stall. Back to the range!

 

I'm with you scores, I only really started to look at Hogan closely once I joined here, so I'm no expert on the mans action, hell, I haven't read 5 lessons, TGM or any of the other theories and the only thing I knew about S+T was that Badds.com was doing it :P

[martinez]

You got to understand Hogan was a product of his old swing, the way he set up his equipment, and the fact that he had limitations with his left side.

 

I don't know if you have ever thrown a base ball from a mound, but if you watch someone do it they just don't stand on their left leg with a wide stance and throw it. They use the right leg to push off the pad and get on to the left using their right side to throw, and try to creat as much lag as they can. They are allways in motion, and use their left side as leverage while creating power from the right.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BDhWy6obUk (Left handed but good form)

 

I have had a few students who were decent pitchers in Japan, one named Daisuke (You'll be able to guess the nickname we gave him) looked particularly good in his action. It was in fact watching him pitch on the range that gave me a great idea one day. I realized that his throwing arm went in one direction from start to finish, it was the fact that the shoulder is a ball joint that made it change direction. He didn't pull back and throw forward as I did when I threw......He pulled down behind him as his heart reached out, hand leading the elbow then as his joint rotated he led with the heart which pulled the elbow and this created the angle in his wrist. I saw the same intention in Tigers backswing (with great resistance that makes it hard to spot), then went looking and saw the same thing with Moe and Hogan and that led me here. Here I've found so many of the pieces of the puzzle that had once been there and I couldn't see them and some that didn't come in the box.

 

I've been looking just like DariuszJ has for that automatic motion, for all intents and purposes I've found it(not in my head like him, it's in my gut), but there are still obstacles in my conditioning and an old DTL sling to get over.

 

I am going to get a club bent flat to see what if anything that does to the look of my swing with my current feel, just to satisfy my curiosity. I think you're dead right on that because I feel like I'm aiming my 1 degree up blade perfectly and if I were to aim a 6 flat blade at the same target I would need to be doing the limbo, just like his right side is.

[golfbulldog]

GB, your questions are completely irrevelant in the view of a fact that the author obviously wanted Mr.Hogan's name to "fit" to his theory, as I have learnt in his website. It is a common thing, alas, in today's golf world.

One would need a pair of good eyes and some experience in evaluating Mr.Hogan's swing that there are evident mistakes in these animations.

 

Or wait...maybe he wanted to present the inferior pre-secret version of Hogan's swing ? If so, I apologize, the animations may be excellent, I am not a theorist of his early swing...but, who cares about Hogan's pre-secret swing while gloryfying Him as the finest ballstrikers of all times that he already became after the accident ?

 

Cheers

 

 

Darius, you like the post secret swing but care little , or study little, the pre-secret swing.... this makes little sense.

 

It is the study of the pre-secret swing which would allow us to understand the secret....the secret to the secret is the pre-secret swing.

 

And let us be quite clear here, The secret that Hogan found revolutionary was found in 1946...that is the story that he repeated....it came suddenly (over days) and "worked like a charm".... the only secret he would have cared about was how not to hook.

 

All the other changes and modifications that he made after the accident i do not think that he would have considered secrets...merely modifications, "rules" etc. as Schlee mentions. They may be taught by teachers now as his secret ... but from Hogan's words, it does not appear as though he really thought that the breakthrough moment in his swing came after the accident. Post accident is a phenomenal swing but he did not care for that motion ...unless you specifically choose to ignore Hogans own words...which you are entitled to do.

 

I believe that the "blobman" stuff was actually based on the images from the 1964 Shell World of Golf swing....well past 1946 secret....

I also understand that the research was done not solely by Greg McHatton but by others....

 

It is a 3D interpretation of a 2 D image of a middle aged (51/52 years old) man swinging.... it is what it is....he claims nothing more...but it has some value in teaching a golf swing.

 

Martinez, I really like your stuff about the hands, shoulder, heart stuff..not sure that I get the picture 100% - but it seems to have an interesting flavour - could you expand please - any slow mo pitching image which shows this?

 

Hi Everyone

As many of you know there is a book coming out in June called "Ben Hogan's Magical Device: The Real Secret To Hogan's Swing Finally Revealed"

Does anyone have an idea what this is about?

Moefan

 

Yes, I know...even before reading it...it's about making money on naive people. Pathetic !

 

Cheers

 

Proven guilty before the trial....that is just wrong...

 

Condemn them after publication , and then onky if you have read it ...but not before.

 

The other secret thread has spiralled out of control...some intersting and useful opinions....but no structure.

 

This thread is about evidence...historical data as well as photographic and video evidence.

 

The premise is that (as described by Ben Hogan) he found something that worked to allow him to avoid an unwanted hook. He states (in interview...with Venturi??) that he left the tour at some stage in 1946, sat around for a few days....then integrated a swing change which worked immediately within the framework of his old swing. This is the "secret" that I am interested in.... it occured before the car accident....so no post accident footage please.

 

For the purposes of this thread - lets us assume that Hogan said exactly what he meant to say in the interviews.... so no need to interpret anything....

 

So the goal is to establish verifed images/footage of:-

 

- his pre-secret (as described above) pre early 1946

- his post secret swing between late 1946 -1949 (the time when Hogan says that he swung the best)

- his playing schedule in 1946 to identify when he left the tour to go home to Fort Worth and he discovered the secret

 

Only after these facts have been submitted will debate begin as to what the secret was and where it is visible in the footage.

 

Thanks for sticking to these rules.

 

If you have footage that you are unsure about the date then please start another thread for the sole discussion of that issue.

[golfbulldog]

1939 Swing:

 

http://www.historicgolfphotos.com/Ben_Hoga...12-0100-LE.html

[golfbulldog]

Data about 1946 winners and schedule:

 

http://golf.about.com/cs/historyofgolf/p/timeline1946.htm

 

Hogan's wins in 1946 from wiki:

 

1946 (13) Phoenix Open, San Antonio Texas Open, St. Petersburg Open, Miami International Four-Ball (with Jimmy Demaret), Colonial National Invitation, Western Open, Goodall Round Robin, Inverness Invitational Four-Ball (with Jimmy Demaret), Winnipeg Open, PGA Championship, Golden State Open, Dallas Invitational, North and South Open

 

Result in Majors before and after 1946:

 

See Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hogan

[Dariusz J.]

I've been looking just like DariuszJ has for that automatic motion, for all intents and purposes I've found it(not in my head like him, it's in my gut), but there are still obstacles in my conditioning and an old DTL sling to get over.

 

Keep doing this, mate. I like a lot your posts, even if you speak of sports that I know only from TV...

The only one thing I am sure of Mr.Hogan's "secret" is that he simply knew how to make the whole motion more automatic = to eliminate timing issues. This way or another, this is prolly the only one reasonable way to such a consistency that may be superior to other golfers of a similar abilities.

 

Cheers

 

Proven guilty before the trial....that is just wrong...

 

Condemn them after publication , and then onky if you have read it ...but not before.

 

Yes, you are right, GB, that this is wrong. But, believe me, if someone claims that he FINALLY REVEALED the secret of a man who is no longer with us is nothing more but stupid arrogancy.

No matter how the book is good and enlightening, no author will ever know what Mr.Hogan had in his head.

The only one person authorized to title a book like this was Mr.Hogan himself.

 

Cheers

 

GB, you will find the evidence you are looking for the post-secret, but pre-accident swing of Mr.Hogan in the BH Collection. Use the interactive disc with 4 swings on it; two first are his 1949 driver swing and his 1967 driver swing - you can analyze them and see how different from the PowerGolf times is his 1949 swing and how the accident changed forever his swing, despite a very very big similarity (between 49 and 67).

I am personally very sad that I do not know any more examples of Hogan's 1947-49 swing, especially from DTL view.

 

Cheers

[downtoscratch]

Hope springs eternal..........

[ryanandrew_golf]

http://www.hogansangle.com

 

Oh, my God...another xxxxxxxxxxx (put your favourite word here...as e.g. great instructor :D ) wants to take money out of naive people using Mr.Hogan's name. That is pathetic. I am not ridiculed any more. I am becoming sad. :(

 

Cheers

 

It actually appears this guy is giving away the "secret"