You’ll all remember my saying that Jack Knapp was “so close” to having a perfect swing?
Well, I haven’t looked at his swing in a year, and it was before I noticed that I had swung with the same pivot as the one Ben Hogan used late in his career, and something made me go back to what I’d posted about him and how easy he generated power.
Something I noticed instantly when I began to make practice back pivots, now that my shoulder is improving enough to do so, was the much flatter plane I have at the top compared to my previous, more typically Classic pivot style.
I began to look into it, wondering why I didn’t have much higher hands at the top the way I used to, a la Jack Nicklaus, but the flatter plane is actually a feature of the “Late Hogan” pivot action.
Earlier today, I posted about how I view the optimal swing to consist of the Jack Nicklaus setup with Ben Hogan’s pivot, and I mentioned Mike Dunaway as well.
I couldn’t remember exactly what I had named this gif., so I had to go searching for it month by month in my media archives, remembering that I had made it when I was producing the “MCS – Drop The Hammer” video in early 2017.
Now, the thing to remember with all of my waxing poetic about Ben Hogan’s pivot actions, especially what I call the “Late Hogan Pivot,” which is the one he used in 1953 (when he won 3 of 3 majors played), you simply can not exclude Jack Nicklaus from the conversation on swinging.
This is because the optimal setup closely mirrors the exact same setup that Jack Nicklaus recommended in his book “Golf My Way.”
It is counter-intuitive to think, if you’re not used to the concept, that you swing from something other than your arms, but that is reality.
The arms are the only links to the club, of course, but they arms are swinging from the shoulders, and the mid-point of the shoulders is really the point around which the swing turns.
I’ve already highlighted in previous posts how people claiming to emulate Ben Hogan’s swing are so far from the goal, they’re not even in the stadium, first and foremost being the way Hogan set himself up to the ball with his various clubs.
We know that Hogan placed the ball on the exact same line from Driver to wedge, and that he adjusted his stance to angle himself from closed with the feet to wide open with the wedge, something that no one you have seen every does.
I nearly deleted my YouTube account when I read that comment regarding the golf swing this week.
Now, let me preface the following observations by stating that I don’t care what this golfer or that golfer does, because we are talking about optimal with regards to mechanics here.
So, how do I make a statement that refutes this statement that there is no fixed fulcrum in the golf swing?
I have taken a swing of mine with the driver viewed from the rear aspect to illustrate my point about Ben Hogan’s later pivot being powerful even with a very low heel leading heel lift.
Because of the particular mechanical action of the hips and legs, you don’t get the high heel lift of, say Jack Nicklaus, but there is still a full hip turn and loads of leverage in the down swing action.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I was delighted to have found that Golf Digest video talking about Ben Hogan’s swing mechanics, because it contained a swing clip I’d never seen before.
It bridged the gap between Hogan’s early years on the PGA Tour with the early pivot action he performed then and his eventual “Perfect Pivot” action that everyone today knows by sight.
I have a 5 iron swing from when I shot the “E = MCS” video back in 2017, and you can see how deceptive the Hogan pivot action is with the low heel lift – but the fully turned hips provide all of the leverage power here.
I know that if I can successfully transfer the knowledge of how to perform this pivot, it will be a game-changer, even for the WAX Nation citizens of old – there is a Classic Golf Swing pivot, and then there is the Classic Golf Swing pivot, which is Ben Hogan’s.
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