I have never been able to figure out how people get fooled by listening to and watching someone say something that can easily be checked and debunked. I mean, how gullible are we as a species?
I am no different from anyone else – for years, I ignored Ben Hogan’s swing mechanics because he was the “Father of The Modern Golf Swing” and I wanted nothing to do with planted-heel swings that made you twist your lower back to get a shoulder turn.
Also guilty as charged in following along with Mike Austin’s and Mike Dunaway’s swing videos that told you one thing while they did another – saying the head is centered in the stance and doesn’t move on the back pivot nor on the down swing, when you can clearly see the head shift when you watch the swings.
And still, I swallowed it for a time until I didn’t, just as I found out that everyone who said Ben Hogan swung in the Modern style was dead wrong.
So this latest submission is yet another maddening example of how swing “gurus” just talk and talk and spin these yarns – they’re charismatic and convincing, but in the end, just full of the most BS you’ve ever heard if you check what they’re saying.
Take a look at this short clip of some so-called “legend” of golf instruction (of whom I don’t recall ever hearing until today when I opened my YouTube feed), Jimmy Ballard saying absolute nonsense about Ben Hogan’s swing mechanics:
First off, yes – Ben Hogan did shift to the target to start his down swing, and he did turn through the impact, two reasons you don’t want to try to swing like Ben Hogan, only to use his pivot action, either the straight-up Classic Golf Swing Hogan or Late Hogan (both are excellent).
But that’s how the BS always works – start with a nugget of truth and then go completely off the rails with what comes next, and because you said or did something remotely accurate, everyone goes along with the following idiotic premise.
Let’s look at Jimmy Ballard’s choice of how you want to come into impact, based upon Ben Hogan’s so-called thing that he “did before every swing.”
Before I even continue however, I call BS on even that claim – we have watched an entire video of Ben Hogan practicing and hitting balls, the one where I said I might have found the manual of how to get everything completely wrong, and not once do you ever see him pantomiming what Ballard claims, and I bet you that no one else ever saw Hogan doing this.
This is what I like to call, “Trust me, bro” – because they claim to have seen some historic person doing something with their own eyes, you’re supposed to believe it like you should believe in Spiderman because he lives in a city we all know, New York.
Let’s continue, and look at Ballard’s claim of what Hogan was doing in his pantomimes:
Now, let’s compare what he said Hogan DIDN’T DO in his swing, compared to an actual still of Hogan at impact in the mid-50’s or afterward:
You guessed it.
Not only that, let’s give ol’ Jimmy the benefit of the doubt as his arms indicate a pre-impact position for Hogan, and that which you don’t want to emulate:
If you want to know why no one knows how to swing a golf club properly anymore, it’s because of people like this, who get it so wrong that it’s a wonder they know which end of the club to hold.
Not only that, the video from which I took Ben Hogan’s impact position is one of the most widely watched videos of Hogan talking about his golf swing, and it says right in the description, “Ben Hogan’s teaching on how the hips must lead the downswing.”
We’ve seen this hundreds if not thousands of times, depending on how much we like Ben Hogan, and he even says in the clip:
… well the most important, uh, thing in a 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 it.
First of all it starts down below, with your knees and your hips. At the top of the swing, you move… the lower part of your body… letting your arms and hands follow…
I’ve covered this before when calling out the Modern Golf Swing charlatans, and it never gets old, because what Hogan says in the video is absolutely fundamental to sound golf swing mechanics for the Classic Golf Swing.
I submit to the jury that, even IF Ballard saw Hogan doing this (funny, no one else ever did), he would have been practicing two different moves that he combined in his actual swing – the leading of the down swing with the hips, and the turn he performed through impact.
I mean, the last thing anyone wants to do before swinging is something they aren’t supposed to or don’t want to do, am I right?
You exaggerate the move you want to make, if you’re swinging piece-meal and are of lower swing knowledge than a Ben Hogan.
Like…
That would be if he had ever done this at all – I am pretty sure Ben Hogan knew his swing model inside out, and the reason he hit balls all day was because of how he’d built it, and not because he wasn’t sure which positions to hit throughout.
You’ll remember me posting about a fellow who claimed that “when Hogan gave lessons, he always said to do XYZ to his students,” when we know that Ben Hogan didn’t give lessons.
He would talk about his swing for money, from television or print media, but he didn’t give lessons.
People can say whatever they want, as it’s a free world – but one must exercise critical thinking before believing anything anyone says about things that are so easily proven or refuted.
I personally didn’t begin to advance in my understanding and analysis of the golf swing until I said, “I don’t care what XYZ says about the golf swing, I want to look at it myself…”
That journey began after I had left the Mike Austin school of golf and decided to go back and look at Ben Hogan’s swing mechanics myself.
Only then did I begin to really put swing mechanics together in a logical manner.
That same season, I developed the “Leaning A” address principle and within a year, pretty much had the MCS Classic Golf Swing setup and action nailed down:
Had I taken my own instruction on neutral swinging (I was swinging left-dominant) and on the neutral grip, I would have gotten where I am now ten years ago!
But better late than never, I always say.
WAX Golf 