When I was working on the “Basics Of The MCS Golf Swing” video, a good part of my time thinking about how to present the principles was how to explain the late Ben Hogan pivot action.

While I was going over the pivot action, I began to get a familiar feeling – “I’ve been here before,” I kept thinking, and I remembered what it was yesterday when answering colorful47’s question about hip turn vs hip rotation.

This is going to shock my old Mike Austin/Dunaway crew, because the late Ben Hogan pivot has the same lower body action as Mike Dunaway’s.

The reason I missed it (until I didn’t) was that people are separate individuals, and unless they are swinging using the exact same model, they will look different even when doing more or less the same thing.

Take the MCS Golf Swing model which now has the late Ben Hogan pivot as its base – not to say that the other pivot action I taught for years isn’t correct – they’re both mechanically-correct, just different because of the way our bodies are constructed.

I have said, and I say now, “don’t try to swing like Ben Hogan – just use his pivot action.”

That would apply with the higher heel-lift swing that he used:

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I used that same pivot for years after I produced “The Ben Hogan Project” video back in 2014, and my swing looked like this, with the high heel lift:

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Different swings, same pivot action.  My MCS swing differs from Hogan’s in that I use the athletic principle of keeping the head stable during the pivots, whereas Hogan shifted off the ball and then back into it, which is extremely difficult to master.

I’m not Ben Hogan – he’d have beaten my pants off in golf because he was a player and I’m a swing researcher – but there’s a reason he hit balls all day when he wasn’t playing and why I can take 8 months off swinging and basically hit the ball as well as I was before the layoff, and the stable head versus shifting to and fro is the reason..

I also use a more “Leaning A” setup shape while Hogan was more centered in his setup.  Again, the setup is closer to optimal than a centered one, and another reason I can get back into swing shape in a day after a long layoff.

But other than that, my pivot action above is what Hogan was doing above in his younger swing action.

Now, we leave the earlier Ben Hogan pivot and get to the Late Hogan pivot action:

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I nailed that pivot nearly ten years ago without realizing it:

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… and I’ve actually seen the same action from Sam Snead, who was a high-heel swinger:

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… but he actually can be seen using that same pivot action as Late Hogan right here below:

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This pivot, my friends, is not the same pivot as the first Snead gif. – this is the Late Hogan pivot action as evidenced by the free and full hip turn accompanied by the low leading heel lift – that is the signature of this action.

And that brings us to Mike Dunaway – and guess what Mike Dunaway’s swing looked like?

Could it be… another free and full hip turn pivot but with a low to no leading lift?

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Yes, sir, there it is right there… now that I have isolated that action, figured it out and know what to look for, I can spot that action at a glance.

Dunaway’s swing changed slightly over the years:

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… but he definitely swung with that action in all of his slightly varying models:

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The reason I’m so eager to get out there and swing again with this model is because, although I’ve performed this pivot action, I’ve not swung with this pivot with everything else in my swing ironed out.

Back then, I was swinging with a too-strong grip and with a left-dominant action, but I’ve fixed those bugs since then.

And I can’t wait to see what my swing will look like with everything in place.

I promised you all that the real fun would begin once I’d finished with the video project.  Now, there’s a blueprint in “The Basics Of The MCS Golf Swing” for everyone to follow and, as I wrote yesterday, everyone using it is already ahead of me, because I am not yet back in swing shape with the Frozen Shoulder Syndrome recovery.

I did however make some close-to-full back pivots yesterday without too much pain in certain areas.  I’m getting there.

And when I get back out there, we will really start having fun!

More to come.