The Importance Of Golf Swing Fundamentals

Most golfers know that they need to work on golf swing fundamentals if they want to improve. The problem is…golf swing fundamentals are a myth! Yes, golf instructors like to talk about teaching golf swing fundamentals, but if you ask a variety of instructors about fundamentals and what they are, you will get a variety of answers. This is a problem because a golf swing fundamental should apply to everyone, but there are no movements in the golf swing that meet this criterion.

For proof, all you have to do is look at the swings of tour players. Every one of them is different, some by quite a bit. You have strong grips and neutral grips, upright swings and flat swings, heads that stay still and heads that move, pros that roll their arms through impact and those who don't. Some have cupped wrists at the top of their backswings and others have arched wrists, some have flying elbows and others don't. My point is, whatever you may think is a fundamental, there will be a number of the best players in the world who don't do it, so I repeat my claim—there are no golf swing fundamentals!

Now that I have committed golf instruction heresy, let me contradict myself, and I'll do it twice. First, there is one thing that good players consistently do that poor players don't, and that has to do with the position of the hands at impact relative to the clubhead. With good players the hands are slightly ahead of the clubhead when they make contact with the ball. Without going into detail, the importance of this position is that the clubhead can, but it is not guaranteed, be traveling downward as contact is made. Hitting down on the ball is an absolute requirement in order to be able to hit the ball solidly shot after shot!

While I concede that this could possibly be considered a fundamental, the fact that it is a position rather than a movement makes this idea somewhat tenuous. There are a variety of ways to get to that position and there are a variety of ways to finish a swing from that position, and this can be said about any swing position. Because the golf swing is a movement, focusing on positions tends to be unproductive. In other words, attempting to force a position is quite different than getting into the position as a result of moving a certain way.

My second point of contradiction to my claim that there are no golf swing fundamentals regards the swing of Ben Hogan. The Hogan swing consists of very specific movements that most efficiently use the disciplines of physics, geometry, and biomechanics. Anyone attempting to learn Hogan's swing, what I call a manipulation-free swing, must perform some very specific movements at least reasonably well in order for the swing to work and since these movements are mandatory with this swing type, they are golf swing fundamentals! However, these fundamentals are only relavent to the Hogan swing and have no relationship to anyone swinging with a different swing style or method, which makes this a very restricted definition of what a golf swing fundamental is. Regarding the three disciplines, I'm not saying that Hogan read school books in order to develop his golf swing. Instead, Hogan developed his swing by trial and error, with certain goals in mind. As it turned out, due to great luck and unique circumstance (and very hard work, too), he found the perfect golf swing that happened to best apply the three aforementioned disciplines. Obviously, these fundamentals don't apply to all golfers, they only apply to those who want to use Ben Hogan's golf swing as a swing model.

Golf Swing Fundamentals Of Ben Hogan

The Ben Hogan golf swing, what I call a manipulation-free swing, is really pretty simple, conceptually speaking. The difficult part is teaching your body to move in ways that are new and different from anything you've ever done. If you're willing to work on a few key golf swing fundamentals for at least a few years, and hopefully for as long as you play, you should see impressive improvement in your golf game!

However, most golfers rarely work on anything long enough to learn it, which is one reason they tend to plateau at a certain level and never improve much beyond that point (see pages "The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same" and "Muscle Memory" for more detail). Sadly, this "hitting the wall" often occurs after having played for only two or three years and it's the result of people not knowing how to practice properly and not practicing the correct things.

Reading about the golf swing can be interesting, but it in no way means that you'll be able to apply any of those concepts to your own swing. Also, you need to be careful—just about all information you're bombarded with in magazines, books, TV, etc. is conflicting.

A Quick Look At Ben Hogan's Golf Swing Fundamentals

Ben Hogan had a nearly perfect golf swing, far closer to perfect than any other player. Following is a very brief overview of some of the golf swing fundamentals Hogan incorporated into his swing and discussed in his book Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, along with some of my observations. Even as lucid as his descriptions were, golfers still misinterpret much of the information in the book. Keep in mind that Hogan was writing about his own swing—what he thought and felt he did. Because your swing likely doesn't bear any resemblance to his, the odds of you being able to accurately relate to what he wrote are basically nil.

1) Grip—very well documented in Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.

2) Address—well documented but note that almost all amateurs have a stance that is too narrow. Check the illustration with the dotted lines drawn from the shoulders to the feet. Also, beware that the illustration with the wrap around the arms is a swing feeling, not the position the arms should be in at address, even though he wrote that it was. He did not address a ball with his elbows together! Hogan's point with the illustration was that the elbows should remain close to each other during the swing and that the arms should remain firmly against the chest until late into the follow through.

3) First Part of Swing (backswing)—SWING PLANE is what the backswing is all about. Hogan described the swing plane, but didn't tell how to get there, so almost everyone gets this wrong. Also, his swing plane was considerably below the swing plane he described—by about a foot and a half at the top of the backswing. Hogan also spoke of shoulder turn while restricting hip turn so that a proper coiling action is achieved, but if a golfer gets into swing plane correctly, all of these things are basically automatic and generally don't require much work.

4) Second Part of Swing (forward swing)—Hogan stressed the importance of beginning the forward swing with an unwinding motion of the hips. Except for very good golfers, and usually for them too, this is generally disastrous advice. If a proper swing plane hasn't been achieved during the backswing, and a proper plane created in the forward swing (which has to be trained—it's far from automatic), then unwinding the hips is guaranteed to wreak havoc with one's golf game. Additionally, the hips can unwind too quickly, which causes the body to race out ahead of the arms, making it just about impossible to release correctly (called a spin-out). The arms and body have to be synchronized.

If the forward swing plane is correct, beginning the forward swing with an unwinding of the hips can encourage the wrists to remain almost fully cocked until just before impact where they can release their full power into the ball. Instead, most golfers release their wrists near the beginning of the forward swing, which dissipates power and makes it difficult to hit the ball crisply. This movement is referred to as "casting", and is associated with "coming over the top".

There were other things Hogan mentioned in Five Lessons, such as the left wrist bone being ahead of the ball at impact, but these things are the direct result of performing a few key golf swing fundamentals correctly. They are things you would expect to see a good golfer do fairly well, but they aren't necessarily things you would spend much time working on, if any.

Fortunately, you can develop a good golf swing without needing to possess anything more than a cursory understanding of the correct golf swing fundamentals of the Ben Hogan swing, but you do have to be willing to put in a lot of tough work. In addition to developing an understanding of the correct golf swing fundamentals, it would be very beneficial for you to keep in mind that developing a sound swing is a gradual process that is measured in years, not weeks or months.

Next Page—How Do Your Golf Swing Fundamentals Compare To Other Golfers?

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