teachers, and players. Nick Price has read and reread and marked up the book with comments and observations; there are places he agrees with Hogan and occasions where his opinions differ. I plan to do something similar here. I will, in a sense, mark up Five Lessons and examine it from our turn-of-the-century perspective. I hope I can accomplish this act of interpretation judiciously and with the respect it requires. I would also encourage you to read or reread Five Lessons—Hogan’s swing theory becomes that much clearer.
The idea, of course, is to help you work toward developing a reliable swing. The more reliable your swing, the more you can trust it, and the greater your confidence. The chances of your building this confidence will be enhanced when you feel secure with what you are doing; this security will come when you incorporate the correct fundamentals so that you can produce a reliably effective swing and control the distance, direction, and trajectory of the ball. The mental side of the game, including course strategy, becomes that much easier. The idea is to know where the ball will and won’t go. The golfer has to realize that every shot won’t be perfect: the key is learning to hit “better bad shots,” keeping the ball in play through sound mechanics—basically, believing in your technique, making it subconscious and instinctive through practice so that you can go out on the course to simply play the game.
When you reach this point you have achieved the ultimate—you can think about quality practice sessions in terms of just maintaining and refining your technique and then hitting different types of shots for pure enjoyment—for example, draws and fades, high and low shots. You will then have plenty of time left to practice that all-important short game. You certainly don’t have to be like Ben Hogan in your practice habits; however, making good use of your time and practicing with a purpose will go a long way toward your shooting lower scores.
I base some of the key building blocks in my teaching upon Hogan’s fundamentals: grip, setup, plane, the lower body motion, the basic use of the big muscles, the understanding of the action of the hands and arms, the use of physics to strike the ball, the application of drills and mirror practice to learn technique. His influence is plain to see in my teaching. I based my first book, The Golf Swing, on the style and layout of Five Lessons. Hogan’s book is, I feel, the first systematic approach to teaching the full swing, a step-by-step guide to help a golfer understand the components of the swing and then to put them all together.
Even though he wrote his book in the 1950s, much of what Hogan said, when examined closely, holds true today, so it is no surprise that Five Lessons is a focal point of every serious golfer’s library. It has played a major role in the evolution of teaching the game. Like Hogan, I believe that many golfers are simply spinning their wheels and not improving. Hogan himself once spun his own wheels. In an article in Esquire in 1942 called “When Golf Is No Fun,” Hogan wrote that he had taken the same sort of punishment that struggling amateurs know all too well.
“Before I really found my game,” Hogan wrote, “I might be hot one round and cold the next for no reason I could figure out. After rounds when I wasn’t scoring well I would practice for hours trying to get to hitting the ball, and finally go home disgusted.”
But Hogan wouldn’t tolerate that feeling, so he studied the golf swing carefully with an eye to eliminating his sources of error and making it efficient and reliable. He was able to do this, and came to believe that with the proper understanding and application of the fundamentals and with patience, everyone has it within his or her grasp to play good golf. Hogan is right when he says, “Doing things the right way takes a lot less effort than the wrong way does.” I agree, and invite you to examine the following pages with a view to learning to build a reliable and efficient swing. I am confident you will be on the way to reaching your potential when you understand Hogan’s principles along with some alternative approaches that we have learned about the golf swing in the last few decades. That is why I have written this book.
Ben Hogan said, “good golf begins with a good grip.” He believed and taught that a fundamentally correct grip allows the hands to work as a unit on the club—so important for consistent shotmaking. Hogan felt that golfers downplayed the value of a sound grip in terms of its contribution to speed, consistency and control of the clubhead through impact.
Left Hand Hogan favored a palm grip for the left hand, feeling that this offered the player a better chance for maintaining control of the club than if it were placed in the fingers. He said that the club should lie across the left hand so that it runs diagonally from the heel pad to the first joint of the index finger. Hogan also felt that pressure points in the grip were important for maintaining control. The main pressure I points in the left hand were up from the last three fingers and down from the fleshy palm-pad under the thumb. These pressure points helped prevent the club from coming loose during the swing, and helped keep the club solid at impact. When Hogan looked down at this completed left-hand grip, he saw that the V between his thumb and forefinger pointed toward his right eye.
Hogan placed the club well into the palm of the left hand.
Hogan felt that the club should not be placed down in the fingers of the left hand.
Grip pressure comes up from the last three fingers and down from the palm pad.
The V between thumb and forefinger of his left hand pointed to the right eye.
To maintain grip pressure is to maintain control.
When grip pressure is lost, hands become loose and control is lost.
Hogan placed the club in the fingers of the right hand across the top joints.
Right Hand As opposed to the left hand, palm-oriented grip, Hogan believed that the club should be placed in the fingers of the right hand; specifically, the club should be placed across the top joints of the fingers—just below the palm. His thoughts about the right hand grip in general were that it should work equally with the left hand, but that it should not play an overpowering role in the swing.
Right hand folds on top of the left thumb.
To ensure that his hands worked as a unit, Hogan placed the little finger of his right hand in the groove between the index and second finger of his left hand. He then positioned the cavity in his formed right hand on top of his left thumb. Pressure in the right hand came from the middle two fingers and from the knuckle above the right index finger. When Hogan looked down at his completed right-hand grip, he saw that the V between his thumb and forefinger pointed to his chin (as opposed to the V in his left-hand grip pointing to his right eye). As a practice aid to neutralize the stronger right hand and also to feel how the hands should work together, Hogan practiced swinging the club (but not hitting a ball) with his right thumb and