I’ve already highlighted the insanity that is golf “instruction” on YouTube, and I ran across this fellow we’ve already discussed with his “to swing like Ben Hogan, don’t do anything Hogan was doing or saying” video, however…

I really don’t know what to say about this video, and I’ll admit that I only watched the first minute, because I couldn’t listen to it any longer – this fellow violates every sports principle, and when he started talking about swinging like a pitcher throws, I was out.

I mean, you probably already know what’s going to happen with a man who thinks he looks like Ben Hogan when explaining how not to swing like Ben Hogan (read the linked post from the first paragraph if you don’t know what I’m talking about):

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… but this video, with the first minute transcribed below it, is a fast-moving train-wreck in just those 60 seconds – I didn’t need to hear the rest.

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Here it is, that first minute:

I’m surprised how many golfers don’t know that this is killing their swing speed, and it’s something that’s so commonly taught – you hear it all the time.

The body swing is killing speed – when you obsess over using your body it slows you down.

“What?!?” he then asks with exaggeration, as if he’s about to blow the doors off of proper biomechanics and science with his dizzying intellect, and then proceeds:

You know when I first learned this, it put me in a tizzy, because my whole life I obsessed about swinging with just the body – using the big muscles, using the chest, using the legs, getting all… (pantomimes a full-body reverse-pivot worthy of a Stack & Tilt award) … making everything turn with the chest, the legs and the hips.

But then what I realized is that over-using the body causes you to slow down! And the reason for this is simple.  Whenever the club moves down, the club slows down.

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Now, I am far removed from my physics classes in high school, but I do believe that the law of gravity and all of that other mumbo-jumbo would state that if you drop a club, it will not only not slow down as it descends, it will accelerate at 9.9 meters per second squared – until it reaches its terminal velocity, of course, but that is another matter.

Not only that – even in the Modern Golf Swing universe, what is the first thing you are instructed is proper mechanics when transitioning from the top to the down swing?

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Could it be… perhaps, “you want the hands and the club to drop before the shoulders begin to turn?”

Sound familiar?

So when the club is going in a direction that’s very steep, it slows down the engine of your swing, which is the shoulders.

The shoulders should always be allowed to swing as fast as possible – thinks about like a pitcher in baseball – shwwwweeewww!!!

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And here is where I left the chat.

The shoulders are the engine of the golf swing, are they?  And how exactly do you get the shoulders to move at all, if they are the engine?

What a load of rubbish, and my sanity began to crack here, which is why I bailed.

Now remember, this gentleman purports to teach the golf swing and how Ben Hogan did it, and what did Ben Hogan have to say about the actual engine of the swing (the hips and legs), and about the shoulders?

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Well the most important thing in the golf swing to me, is the movement of the lower body from the top of the swing. And if you don’t mind, I’ll demonstrate.

First off it starts, down below in your knees and your hips.  At the top of the swing, you move the lower part of your body – not your shoulders – the lower part of the body, letting your arms and hands follow, bringing you into position to hit…

… most people do it, entirely opposite – they rotate their shoulders first instead of their lower body.  As a result, they come across the ball (over the top) and hit the outside of the ball instead of the back of it…

… … you move the lower part of your body – not your shoulders – the lower part of the body, letting your arms and hands follow.

It’s almost as if he’s taken everything Ben Hogan said about the swing and inserted it into ChatGPT with the instruction, “Give me the exact opposite of Ben Hogan’s swing mechanics.”

Do I need to say this?

The shoulders are not the engine of the golf swing – they can do nothing by themselves except raise, lower or rotate the arms.  When they turn, it’s because the upper thoracic spine is turning, and it takes the shoulders along with it.

When the upper body turns, it’s either a full-body turn using the hips and legs (hello, Ben Hogan), or a combination of a restricted hip turn and X-Factor lower back torque (hello, orthopedic surgeons).

The shoulder can no more turn by themselves than Superman can reverse the earth’s rotation.

To make such stupid remarks about the golf swing and to have 50K views in two days – it just doesn’t make any sense to me.

It’s too bad he wasn’t around during the Classic Golf Swing era.  He surely would have set Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Byron Nelson and Bobby Jones straight, because these hackers had no idea what they were doing.