There is no one out there, no matter what they tell you, who swings like Ben Hogan.
There is an entire cottage industry built around “swing like Ben Hogan,” and every one of the claims is either an outright fraud or a complete misunderstanding of how the man swung.
You’ve seen lots of face-on clips of the golf swing, but not as many rear views, I would wager.
I talk a good bit about Ben Hogan’s “Perfect Pivot” action, and here is how you can identify it when you view a golf swing from the rear angle.
There are 3 things that one requires to have a similar action.
I’ve said many times that Ben Hogan had the “Perfect Pivot” action when it comes to the actual pivot mechanics, but that one shouldn’t try to copy his actual swing.
Here is why – the way Hogan swung is a way he found able to repeat, but he also had to hit balls every day to maintain his precision.
I love the rear face-on diagonal view when looking at a pivot action because it shows even more than a straight face-on or down the line views.
I’ve talked extensively about how I would take Jack Nicklaus’ adjusted setup from 1963 and pair it with Ben Hogan’s pivot action to create the optimal golf swing (I wouldn’t try to actually swing like Hogan because his particular swing model was rather unique), but there’s another pivot that I really like.
If you really want to see something that puts the Modern Golf Swing to shame, take a look at the golf swing of a man born in the 1800’s who had better technique than today’s players.
Francis Ouimet won the 1913 U.S. Open and his victory popularized golf with the common masses, whereas beforehand, it had been the game of the wealthy and privileged.
As I’ve said, I never really looked very hard at Tiger Woods’ golf swing other than to look for things to tell others not to do, but the more I look at the younger Tiger Woods, the more tragic his story becomes.
It’s because he was likely taught a Ben Hogan swing model, but a Modern Golf Swing version of it, which made it not Ben Hogan’s swing because of the one thing that made Hogan the great swinger that he was.
I’ve already briefly mentioned this fellow when talking about how so-called Ben Hogan “experts” are either completely misinterpreting what Hogan did or flat-out saying outlandish things that Hogan would have swatted away like a pesky fly.
I don’t even look for this stuff, it just comes across my feed because I am always searching golfers like Hogan, Nicklaus and other greats of the Classic Golf Swing era.
I haven’t looked at Jim McLean’s description of Ben Hogan’s swing since I dissected it back in 2014, but today I ran across a shorter clip taken from the original and thought, “OK, my mental health is not too bad today, let’s have a quick peak…”
Bad idea, that. It’s as bad as I remember it, perhaps even worse, after my having exhaustively gone through the Ben Hogan – How He Absolutely Didn’t Swing video from the 1960s.
I’m beginning to wonder if Ben Hogan deliberately left out the back pivot in this video clip where he describes the action of the down swing involved the hips and legs.
He doesn’t have to, of course, because if you just LOOK at what he’s doing on the back pivot, it’s obvious that he’s using the hips and legs to create the position at the top.
As I prepare to conduct the shooting for the upcoming “New E = MCS Golf Swing” video, I have found a pretty good 8 iron swing in my archives that best illustrate the setup and pivot action (with a couple of changes, namely the right-hand grip and my foot alignment).
It will be an ongoing theme – Jack Nicklaus’ setup with Ben Hogan’s “Perfect Pivot” action, and once again, I am finding my best swings to compare with the finished model are my MCS Golf Swing setup and swings from all the way back in 2015.
WAX Golf 