The reason I keep mentioning Ben Hogan in my tirades about YouTube instruction is because Ben Hogan’s swing model has become the pseudo-standard for Modern Golf Swing instruction.
Meaning, everyone thinks they are modeling Ben Hogan with their misguided teaching, but it’s so far from the actual Hogan as to be unrecognizable – and he would drop dead if he were still with us, I can assure you.
I first agreed with Tiger Woods when he was asked who the G.O.A.T. was – his blunt and direct answer was, “Nicklaus – I’m four majors (then, now three) behind him.”
You have to understand that I don’t have any sort of hatred for TW – I simply abhor the way he has swung from when he was an amateur, because the Modern Golf Swing is garbage.
I consider him the greatest victim of all time (of bogus swing instruction), but at a certain point, he should have begun to look into a more mechanically-sound way of swinging.
Both Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan had a setup that was considered “the same for all clubs,” and that is the way you want to swing as well.
I’ve been saying forever now that you want to setup more like Nicklaus did (I don’t think he invented the setup, but as the G.O.A.T., we’ll just call it the “Nicklaus” setup), and that you want Hogan’s pivot action.
One of these days, the sports world will look back on golf at the dawn of the 21st century and recoil in both horror and disbelief.
The amount of ineptitude on display has been, is and will continue to be staggering until the game finally takes the Modern Golf Swing out behind the barn and finishes it off like the lame plough horse it is (and is making out of physically-fit golfers).
I will tell you all right now, that any golf coach, instructor or analyst who says what the post title says, has no business being anywhere near a golf course, driving range or launch monitor facility.
Before I continue this… well, let’s call it a rant, you all might have heard that Tiger Woods has undergone yet another back surgery, this one his 7th since he hooked up with Sean Foley back in 2010. Just saying…
There is an advantage to being cross-dominant as I am, I suppose, when it comes to figuring out the “feels” for swinging either left or right-dominant, but it took me a while to realize it.
I have actually been doing it unconsciously for some time, but now that it has hit me, I’ve been working on how to best describe the feeling for both dominants in my upcoming video and, of course, the neutral swingers will feel both of them, as they aren’t thinking of one arm over the other.
Originally posted February 24, 2017 – I found this in my archives and nothing has changed in nearly 9 years…
It boggles my mind that Jason Zuback, in the early 2000’s, was around 200 mph in ball speed (Ryan Winther now holds the official record in ball speed at around 227 mph and an unofficial mark of 237 mph).
*Edit – as of today, the current world record holder in ball speed is Sebastian Twaddell, Golf Ball Speed Record Holder 2025 – 246.8 mph (Trackman).
That’s because I have actually gotten into the mid-190’s in my 40’s without having to live in the gym because of technique over muscle power, but one thing I can tell you – the clip below puts the Modern Golf Swing industry to shame.
The old-timers here will know very well of my forays into studying left and right-dominant swinging – it came about because I discovered back in 2022 that I was swinging left-dominant, and how it had caused several problems with consistency.
They’ll all remember as well my trip down the right-dominant rabbit hole, looking at Mike Dunaway’s swing model, which is the most powerful swing I’ve ever seen, mechanically.
If you were to ask me what my greatest breakthrough was in studying and analyzing golf swings (and building swing models), I would have to point to the day I figured out Ben Hogan’s pivot action.
Hogan himself stated that the proper pivot was a whole-body motion and didn’t separate the upper and lower bodies.
I really don’t know what has happened with Phil Mickelson’s golf swing.
He was one of the few players in the ’90s-’10s who had a Classic Golf Swing action, and then he began to tinker with planted-heel stuff, and even drank the Kool-Aid with the idiotic Flying Foot cult at one point.
Now, I just don’t know how a player who had such a solid golf swing looks… just awful.
WAX Golf 