I’ve looked for years at Jack Nicklaus’ golf swing, going so far as to say that the Golden Bear had the closest setup to an optimal one that I could find.

Close behind Jack though, and one of the first swingers I ever looked at, is Ben Hogan.  The problem I always had with Hogan was all of the anti-hook features built into his swing, features that probably created an army of slicers after he released his “5 Lessons” book.

But his setup and swing action (save for the “swing left” anti-hook feature that Tiger Woods broke his back trying to emulate) were poetry in motion, even more pleasing to my eye than any of Jack’s swing iterations.

The very first thing I noticed upon looking recently at Hogan’s setup and swing was how right-dominant it was – you have read of my journey in the golf swing fighting a tendency to swing with my left or leading arm, being cross-dominant, and a couple of years into working on a more right-dominant action, I now spotted it in Hogan at a glance:

And that action was silky smooth.

Today’s swingers would be so much better off studying the swings of the greats from the Classic Golf Swing era, because there’s so much beauty and mechanically-sound action to be observed in them.

I’ve talked about it before, but for the newer visitors to WAX Golf who aren’t familiar with it and who wonder why my trailing foot releases during the swing, watch who was doing it before I was even born:

I didn’t get it from Hogan, nor from the Mikes Austin or Dunaway – when I was in my early swing research, probably in 2008, I began to release my trailing foot through impact because it stopped my leading or foot from having to twist post-impact.

So, yes – this is a move that existed even in the Classic Golf Swing era, and even Hogan did it.

Funnily enough, it would likely be called a “swing flaw” today by the geniuses who think this is a great move in the golf swing:

The shame is that the above Hogan 1953 action is post-accident, after he was nearly killed in a head-on collision with a bus while driving to a Tour event in 1949.

He could barely walk around the golf course in the years afterward, and in the year he won all three majors that he played (Masters, U.S. Open and the Open Championship), he only played 6 times, and if the PGA Championship hadn’t overlapped the Open Championship, he likely would have won that as well.

I would love to have seen footage of his golf swing in 1949 before the accident – probably a work of art.