Ben Hogan’s Swing

The Sweetest Swing

What’s your answer when confronted with the ever-popular question, “Who has the best golf swing of all time?” Tiger had/has/will have a pure swing. Some will say it was Jack or Arnie.  How about Freddy Couples’ long, languid swing? Way back, was it Byron Nelson or Walter Hagen?

(I have been told mine is the best. The source was my mother so I take that compliment with more than a grain of salt. But I bet your mother told you the same thing.)

But the consensus that has outlasted all those contenders (including me) is that there is but one choice: Ben Hogan.

And it’s not just beautiful: witness his nine majors and 64 PGA Tour wins. Clearly, the swing is as effective as it is enviable. Let’s take a look at what makes it so.

Beginnings

Hogan was not a “phenom.” He didn’t burst onto the scene and win immediately.  In fact, he didn’t win a tournament for nine years.  Nine. But while he wasn’t winning, he was busy working, hitting balls, perfecting his grip, deciding what worked best for him in regards to posture, to waggle or not to waggle, how much wrist cock is too much, etc.

I can’t tell you how much this endears him to me: the idea that he wasn’t just born great but that he worked tirelessly in order to become great.  By the last year of his career (shortened dramatically after a 1949 car accident that nearly crippled him), he played only six tournaments. He won five of the six, including the three majors he played in.

Before going any further, I want to emphasize that this is not a deep dive into “Hogan’s Secret” which is ideally suited for better golfers who struggle with a hook. If you’re interested, I highly recommend reading “Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons,” or David Leadbetter’s “The Fundamentals of Hogan“

Setup 

At address, Hogan set up with his shoulders and hips slightly open to the target (if you’ve heard of the “Hogan Fade,” this is where it starts) but the only really notable thing (at least to my eye—see picture below) is that his front foot is turned slightly open to help promote the eventual hip turn. The trail leg is perpendicular to his target and his legs are about shoulder-width apart, which allowed him to move fluidly through his hip joints during the swing. The front foot, in particular, is something more golfers can emulate at set-up, especially those who struggle with hip flexibility.

Grip

Hogan actually changed his grip several times during his career. (Fun fact: He was effectively ambidextrous and actually with a cross-handed grip after learning golf with left-handed clubs). He went from cross-handed to interlock to overlapping and, by the end of his career, had come up with a grip (combined with “Hogan’s Secret”) that allowed him to prevent his dreaded miss: the hook.

To replicate this grip, place your lead hand on the club as usual. The grip should feel relaxed but firm. Then place the trail hand on the club, the thumb pointing directly down the shaft. The trick to mimicking Hogan’s grip is to make sure your trail hand is straight, not diagonal. The Ben Hogan grip is less of a parallel “V” shape and more of an overlap. Your trail hand should cover more of your lead hand than normal. 

Keep in mind that this grip was specific to Hogan’’s hook-miss. If that’s not your miss, a more conventional grip (I hesitate to say “proper grip” because different grips work for different golfers) may be more your ticket.

Backswing

In the second picture above, you can see the takeaway is wide, slightly lagging the club head so that, in Ben Hogan’s words, he could “swing under the pane of glass.” The takeaway is often the most important part of a swing, as it’s (duh) where everything starts and, if done correctly, puts you in a perfect position to finish right where you started. Here’s the Glass Pane Drill to help those of us who struggle with a slice.

• Keep your left arm below the glass pane during the backswing
• Avoid breaking “the glass” with your club
• Straighten your knees by an inch
• Stick your butt out six inches
• Keep your shoulders up during the backswing
• Keep the same height you’re starting with at address

Admittedly, that’s a lot to practice. But I have found in my practice sessions lately that keeping even just the idea of the pane of glass in my head really promotes a fluid takeaway that gets me into a much better position at the top.  Try it and let us know if that helps you with your takeaway.

By the time he’s at the top of his swing, his hip rotation has hit nearly 45 degrees and his left heel is lifted slightly, ready for that huge transfer of energy.

Here’s a quick video that shows the complete sequence of Ben Hogan’s swing. Pay special attention to his position at the top: his torso is turned away from the ball, his left wrist cocked, head still down at the ball and, because he seemingly tucks that right elbow into his ribs (more on that in a second), his left arm is allowed to fully extend into the turn.

Downswing

This is where the real magic happened in Ben Hogan’s swing.  The key to Hogan’s power was all the lag he was able to generate, especially considering he was only 5’9″.  If you watch that video above closely, look at how his right elbow drops down into his rib cage while his hips fire forward. This created an unbelievable amount of lag. This is the move I’ve been trying to emulate the most: keeping that right elbow “connected” to my ribs, which not only promotes more lag but also promotes an in-to-out path. Again, for us slicers out there who are typically on a more out-to-in path, this should prove very useful.  

Another thing to note is that his hips begin the downswing just before he’s actually finished the backswing—to be able to see it in slow motion really demonstrates why the lag he was creating was so potent—the club was whipping back through and slightly inside (thanks to that elbow) the plane he’d just brought the club up on.  

Also of note: Look at his head at the start of the swing, at the top of the swing and at impact. It’s virtually in the same exact spot. No real sway, no “getting taller” … just rock-steady all the way through impact. Incredible.

Impact

We’ve all heard “Swing easy!” “Don’t try to kill it!” “Nice and easy!” at various times in our golfing lives (or, if you’re me, in your last round). But Hogan believed that hitting the ball hard allowed for a more powerful and repeatable swing. MyGolfSpy’s own data has shown that this concept has merit

For Hogan, hitting the ball hard was the best way for him to do the same thing again and again. Granted, he’d done all the work to make sure the other parts of his swing were on plane (and under pane—get it?) and in the right spot, but he was not thinking, “I’ll just ease into this one.” It was go, go, go, which explains why people describe the sound of his club hitting the ball as otherworldly and the ball producing a “bee-like, zinging sound” as it went by you.  

Follow Through

On the follow-through after impact, Hogan kept his arms close to his body until the last possible moment. This move made his swing more compact and repeatable which was a recurring theme when he was discussing his swing. He wanted something repeatable, something he could replicate over and over.  

Concluding Thoughts

There’s a reason that Jack Nicklaus called Ben Hogan the greatest ball striker who ever played the game. And it wasn’t just the shoulder turn or the stance or the grip or the epic lag. It was everything. It was the Ben Hogan Swing, in totality, and you’d be well off to try and infuse some of that magic into your swing.

Now that we’ve taken a pretty deep dive into his swing, I thought it would be fun to let the man himself simplify things with a 41-second clip from a talk show in the 50s, promoting his book (Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons). It’s almost hilariously simple, especially the first part of the swing, with his elbows seemingly glued to his torso, but I say this from experience: it works. Years and years of grinding, of learning the proper techniques, of what worked for him, boiled down to about 45 seconds.  In modern slang, we’d call this the TLDR section :)