First – I was looking through my swing archives again today and found a tragedy unfolding in the summer of 2018, a year after I’d released the “E = MCS” swing video.
That tragedy, I’ve talked about before – I had figured out the optimal setup by 2015, and the Hogan “Perfect Pivot” action by 2017, but I kept investigating and researching and trying new swing stuff… all because of my right hand grip.
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 came across this great video from Golf Digest with Luke Kerr-Dineen presenting a look at Ben Hogan’s swing and his so-called “secret.”
I would recommend watching the whole thing, because it tells you exactly what I’ve been telling you all for years – Ben Hogan’s swing was his own swing, and it isn’t to be copied nor emulated.
I have said that no one out there who mythologizes Ben Hogan actually follows what he did, nor have they any clue what he was actually doing in his swing.
Here is yet another example of such, where the fellow here (again, seems a decent fellow) uses Ben Hogan’s image in his video’s thumbnail, then proceeds to get it completely opposite of what Hogan’s swing mechanics entailed.
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.
I didn’t even notice something in the text from Ben Hogan’s book until after I had already published my post yesterday, but as I was glancing over it, a word in that selected excerpt fairly leaped off the screen – I was amazed I hadn’t noticed it before.
Once again, Ben Hogan absolutely muddled something up in his description of the pivot, but even if he did, I have questions to ask of the Modern Golf Swing people trying to recreate his swing.
I hate to say this, but I have never been one to avoid facts or to hide my head in the sand, and this is it – Ben Hogan clearly, most definitely heel-lifted (that can’t be argued against with a straight face), but he muddled the issue with his book and some people’s poor reading comprehension.
WAX Nation citizen AK sent me excerpts from Hogan’s book (which I have in my library, but which I haven’t read in decades other than to look for online quotes), and we found therein a likely cause of the “Hogan said not to lift the heel” legend.
An up the line view of one of my driver swings from when I was shooting the “E = MCS” video back in 2017 shows how you can use the Ben Hogan “Perfect Pivot” to get great consistency in your golf swing.
I’ve said before that the golf swing isn’t really a rotary or “turning” motion, rather a pivot action and a down swing, where the hips and legs drive the swing and the turning of the hips are what rotate you to the finish.
I have so many thousands of swing clips that I’ve compiled over the years between 2007-2022 that it is sometimes surprising to look back on the various models I’ve worked on.
It is beyond doubt to me, however, that my favorite ever driver swings to watch face-on are from May 15, 2015 – I hardly ever swung exactly the same way from day to day, as I was conducting swing research, but that day stands out to me as the day I nailed it.
I’ve been searching through my fairly large swing archive from between 2015-2022 and have found some archived swings from 2022 that are pretty much how I would be telling people to swing with the MCS Golf Swing model.
The years of 2023-25 consisted mostly of my investigating just about every variation of the swing with regards to grip, stance and mechanics, but as I have said, I basically had the MCS swing model figured out by 2015 and, aside from my personal journey to swing like this model, there has been very little change in said model over the years.
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