I didn’t even notice something in the text from Ben Hogan’s book until after I had already published my post yesterday, but as I was glancing over it, a word in that selected excerpt fairly leaped off the screen – I was amazed I hadn’t noticed it before.

Once again, Ben Hogan absolutely muddled something up in his description of the pivot, but even if he did, I have questions to ask of the Modern Golf Swing people trying to recreate his swing.

First, more muddling from Hogan (in the yellow box now):

---

Now, Ben Hogan was truly a legend of golf, but he was definitely no expert in biomechanics or kinesiology, if he even dictated or wrote the above passage.

Wait, What?

---

Yes – there are many suspicions that he actually didn’t write “5 Lessons,” and that Herbert Warren Wind, who is recognized as collaborator who wrote the text, did it all himself with Hogan merely putting his stamp on the finished product.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Hogan never even read the manuscript before it was published, because of that above passage:

Now, returning to the backswing, I think you may understand more clearly just why it is so important to have this torsion, this stretching of the muscles, that results from turning your shoulders as far as they can go and retarding the hips.  It’s the difference in the amount of turn between the shoulders and hips that sets up this muscular tension.  If the hips were turned as much as the shoulders, there’d be no tightening up at all.

Here’s why – you don’t get the torsion from retarding the hips – you get the torsion because the shoulders can turn a little or a lot more than the hips can.

Pure and simple.

I demonstrated in my “E = MCS” swing video that the thoracic (middle) region of the spine can give you some turn in a range of a few degrees:

---

You see how much turn I get in the shoulders with the hips not turning?  That’s how you have a top position where the shoulders have more turn than the hips:

---

Hogan would have had the same separation of the hips and shoulders, which isn’t the X-Factor twisting of the lumbar region, rather in the thoracic region:

---

I mean, I challenge anyone to explain how Hogan’s hip turn was in any way “retarded,” which would mean he restricted it.

He did not.

---

His hips turned until he reached the top of the back pivot, and the hip-shoulder separation occurred naturally during this motion, just as it does with my own swing using Hogan’s own pivot action:

---

So, the text’s assertion that “If the hips were turned as much as the shoulders, there’d be no tightening up at all,” is bogus.

There is no way that anyone on this planet who performs a back pivot has the same degree of turn in both the shoulders and hips.  I have yet to see this, because everyone who doesn’t have a disability has the same thoracic turn, do they not?

That passage is ridiculous and has no merit, in terms of biomechanics.

The “Question”

But here is my question, the one I have to ask the Modern Swing Golf world.

When I began my golf swing research, I was under the impression that Moe Norman had “the perfect swing,” and so what did I do?

Well, of course – I went straight to the source – I watched any and all videos of Moe Norman that I could lay eyes on – YouTube wasn’t a thing then, so there wasn’t much to be had, but I had the “Pipeline Moe” video released in the 90s, which I watched every single day for months on end:

---

There were 3rd party explanations of his swing that one could watch and listen to, but what do you think I was doing when trying to figure out how to swing like Moe Norman?

I watched Moe Norman.

Now, let me ask the question: why aren’t the people trying to replicate Ben Hogan’s swing watching Ben Hogan swing?

If they are, what on earth are they looking at?

Or are they just taking the word of snake-oil salesmen and deluded know-nothings as the guide to learning how not to swing like Ben Hogan?

Why not – hear me out, now – why not just watch and study Ben Hogan’s swing?

That’s what I did in 2104, years after I had begun my research, and it was only that late because I had foolishly listened to everyone describe his swing as a “Modern Golf Swing,” perhaps the first one ever, and I didn’t waste my time looking at the Modern Golf Swing except to tell people what not to do.

In June of 2014, I watched Jim McLean’s explanation of Hogan’s swing, and began to look at video clips of Hogan’s swing, and I determined that McLean didn’t have a blessed clue what Hogan was doing.

I then proceeded to watch every Ben Hogan swing clip I could find online, and I studied it all in depth, and wouldn’t you know that I can perform a Ben Hogan golf swing pivot exactly the way he did, as demonstrated in my “E = MCS” golf swing video three years later?

---

When I was a lad, we played a game called “Telephone,” when socializing in groups of six or more – someone whispered something to the person to the right of them, and around the circle it went until the last person on the left side of that person whispered into their ear – and it was never anything close to what they had originally whispered to the first person.

Why anyone would listen to anyone else about Hogan’s swing when one could watch it for oneself is beyond me, now that I’ve learned that lesson myself.

Heck, I wouldn’t even have listened much to Hogan himself on the swing – I would have just looked at what he was doing, and if what he said matched, then fine.

If not, I went with what he did.

The same goes for yours truly – don’t just take my word about what Ben Hogan did – read what I write about his swing, if you kindly do – and then watch the videos and gifs. that I provide for you to verify it yourself.

If they match, fine.

If not – go with what he did.