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Casey Eberting Golf Schools and Private Golf Instruction
In Texas Hill Country between San Antonio and Austin, Texas
(35 minutes north of San Antonio International Airport)

Ben Hogan's Golf Swing Fundamentals

Please note: this entire website is basically about Ben Hogan's golf swing fundamentals, but it is also about a manipulation-less golf swing so golfers who aren't fans of Hogan should still be very interested is offered. While this page includes some important Hogan information, there is much more information on other pages.

Ben Hogan stated in his book Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals Of Golf, that movements of the golf swing are a chain action. What this means is that each link in the chain interacts with, and affects, all other links. Therefore, to achieve significant improvement it is imperative that the golfer develop golf swing fundamentals that work cohesively and synergistically with one another in order to form a powerful, efficient, repeating golf swing. With this in mind, consider carefully the following statement—the golfer who thinks he or she need only improve one thing in order to begin hitting the ball well IS NOT GOING TO GAIN MUCH IMPROVEMENT, IF ANY!

Most instructors have ignored (from what I can tell, due mostly to a lack of understanding) the wisdom that Ben Hogan shared with us through his book Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals Of Golf, various interviews, and his nearly flawless swing. Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals Of Golf was mildly informative, giving the reader clues to correct fundamentals, but most of it is much too easily misunderstood. Also, there are a number of crucial points that he omitted. For these reasons, the book isn't going to be of much benefit for golfers looking to improve their swings using Ben Hogan's golf swing fundamentals!

My Background

I teach what I consider to be the only fundamentally correct way to swing a golf club, which was perfectly demonstrated in Ben Hogan's golf swing, and it's a swing no one else teaches. But Ben Hogan's swing wasn't the swing, or at least not in its entirety, that I originally learned to teach.

In the beginning, I taught the swing that was popularized by Jimmy Ballard, the world's number one instructor back in the 1980's and early 1990's. Jimmy was somewhat controversial back then because he believed the right side was just as important as the left side in the golf swing (similar to Hogan's thinking). Of course, the numerous tour players he instructed, including PGA Tour Money Leaders Curtis Strange and Hal Sutton supported Ballard's point about the right side.

I learned Jimmy's swing theories while taking lessons for nearly five years from his First Assistant (I couldn't afford Jimmy's fee of $300 an hour) in the mid 1980's. Then I was very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to teach with Jimmy at the world famous Doral Resort and Spa in Miami, Florida. It was while teaching with Jimmy Ballard that I learned the nuances of the art of teaching the golf swing. I was able to watch and learn from the world's best instructor as he lectured and instructed. Working with the world's number one instructor is an opportunity very few instructors are privileged to have and I will be forever indebted to Jimmy for the experience.

While I have benefited immeasurably from my time working with Jimmy, I have come to disagree with much of his teachings. While Jimmy often used Ben Hogan's swing as an example, there are actually very few similarities between Ben Hogan's fundamentals and Ballard's, and most are even contradictory. It's somewhat ironic that while teaching with Jimmy, I developed my interest in the Hogan swing.

Like all serious golfers, I had read Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals Of Golf, but it did nothing for me. However, when I saw film at Ballard's Golf Workshop of Hogan swinging, I knew immediately that I was looking at the best swing of all time. From that point it was inevitable that I would end up teaching Hogan's fundamentals—why teach anything other than the correct way to swing a golf club? The only problem, how do I learn what Hogan did? There were (and still are) some instructors who claimed to teach Hogan's swing, but it was obvious that they did nothing more than regurgitate Hogan's Five Lessons, which I knew wasn't the answer.

Well, it took me over ten years before I was sure I had the pieces put together, which was sometime around 2000. To learn what Ben Hogan really did, I paid little attention to what other instructors said about Hogan's swing, although I studied them to see if anything of value was there (there was nothing), and I didn't even pay much attention to what Hogan said in his books. I figured if the answers were there—they would have been found already, and they hadn't. I studied a lot of video of his swing, but found that the video was very misleading due to it being two dimensional, so I had to mentally translate everything into three dimensional movements—not an easy task. Honestly, I still wouldn't have figured everything out had I not come across some key statements he made during various interviews and in some letters of his. Ben Hogan was very sly and he didn't want people to know how he swung a golf club!

For those who are interested in learning more about the fundamentals of Hogan's perfect swing, I hope you'll join me for one of my San Antonio CE Golf Schools or Private San Antonio CE Golf Schools.

I created the next chapter for my clients, but I encourage everyone to look through these few short pages. It's regarding how best to improve.

Next Page—Info about the book I am writing on the golf swing.

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