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Golf Swing Fundamentals Of Ben Hogan

The golf swing is fairly simple. If you're willing to work on a few key golf swing fundamentals for 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 golf swing fundamentals is a good place to start, but it in no way means that you'll be able to apply those golf swing fundamentals to your own swing. You need to be careful—most of the information you're bombarded with in magazines, books, TV, etc. will be conflicting. Also, you'll find it very helpful to know what is wrong with your swing and why you are making those mistakes.

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 have 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, 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. 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 at the beginning of the forward swing, which dissipates power and prohibits hitting 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 correct golf swing fundamentals, but you do have to be willing to put in a lot of tough work. In addition to developing an understanding of 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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