I approved the electronic proof for Henny Bogan and the Secret of Ben Hogan on 9 Oct 2009 and I will approve the physical proof this week. I will shortly send an update to the mailing list when this site is activated for purchases.
Meanwhile, book number two is coming together. It is an amplification of aspects of Henny Bogan and the Secret of Ben Hogan intended to clarify many of the instructional elements that were not developed in the first book. I hope to publish the second book by spring in time for the golf season.
Good Golfing!
Mark
Monday, October 12, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Henny Bogan and the Secret of Ben Hogan Cover
This is the cover for Henny Bogan and the Secret of Ben Hogan. I sent some minor revisions (7) back yesterday and should get to approve the changes next week. Back cover and then proofs are next. Should be getting close. I also published an updated Ezine article that discusses more of the facts related to the story.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Henny Bogan and The Secret of Ben Hogan
I wanted to provide an update on the book. I revised the name and this past week I approved the font, style and chapter layout for the book. Once the overall design is approved, we complete the back cover and set a price, it is all systems go for the publishing! I will update and activate the order mechanism available through the web site. I plan to send this note via email, as well, so look for the email as verification that I have you on the list. Thanks for the interest in the book! MC
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Ben Hogan's Secret
My previous blog left us with the question of what Ben Hogan was trying to do with his swing that caused him to hook (in the first place). The subtle or implied issue is that a hook is a symptom of a problem or issue and not something to fix per se, for instance like a faulty grip or an improper swing path or a weight and balance issue. So while it is roundly acknowledged that Hogan had a hooking problem, it is rare indeed to see that issue decomposed to assign cause to his action and to also look at why he did not do more about it before 1946.
The reason Hogan hooked the ball is because of the action he initiated to hit the ball farther when he was competing with the other caddy’s at Glen Garden Country Club, Fort Worth in the 1920s (likely 1924-1927). The caddy’s played a game where they hit balls toward holes for nickels. The winner obviously won money but the loser had to gather all the balls up for the next round. Hogan was younger and smaller than the other caddy’s and found he could not hit the ball nearly as far. At the time he was doing two things over all others; fighting for his place in the pecking order to get choice corners for selling newspapers, as well as with the other caddy’s because that was the nature of the caddy yard, and he was learning to play golf. He combined the two to derive a golf action that enabled him to hit the ball farther and farther as he matured. The action was similar to throwing a punch, with the movement of the arms keyed to the rotation of the hips. He likely worked on his timing in order to have his right arm launch just as quickly as possible to follow the action of the right hip. He staged it off the hip just like throwing a punch, as he would later relate in his books. I should add that this was not the "cartoony" hay maker, often depicted as being wound up behind the head, but the punch of someone who knows how to use his hands, akin to a boxers jab or short punch that travels a short distance propelled off the hip. While it may not be obvious, timing release off the hip, all things being equal, means that everything is rotating powerfully to the left through impact. Without some other form of swing compensation, the shoulders, arms and hands work aggressively left or closing through the ball. The obvious problem with this action is that it causes a low running hook, but this type shot was ideal for the dry fairway conditions of the golf courses he played in Texas. Hogan likely worked on his swing in earnest during this time period, as much if not more so than he did throughout his life while earning a reputation as a tireless ball striker.
It would be no easy feat to change this basic action that had been so ingrained by the time he turned professional in 1932. He would struggle with a hook problem initially through 1938 and then off and on through 1946, when he finally figured out a way to cure the problem once and for all. He revealed pronation as his “secret” in an article in the 8 August 1955 Life Magazine. Pronation is what he added to his swing to solve the problem, and a careful look at his swing reveals that he continued to maintain the link between his hips and his arm swing throughout his career.
If pronation was indeed his secret, what was left to reveal that has had many speculating for years about his real secret?
The reason Hogan hooked the ball is because of the action he initiated to hit the ball farther when he was competing with the other caddy’s at Glen Garden Country Club, Fort Worth in the 1920s (likely 1924-1927). The caddy’s played a game where they hit balls toward holes for nickels. The winner obviously won money but the loser had to gather all the balls up for the next round. Hogan was younger and smaller than the other caddy’s and found he could not hit the ball nearly as far. At the time he was doing two things over all others; fighting for his place in the pecking order to get choice corners for selling newspapers, as well as with the other caddy’s because that was the nature of the caddy yard, and he was learning to play golf. He combined the two to derive a golf action that enabled him to hit the ball farther and farther as he matured. The action was similar to throwing a punch, with the movement of the arms keyed to the rotation of the hips. He likely worked on his timing in order to have his right arm launch just as quickly as possible to follow the action of the right hip. He staged it off the hip just like throwing a punch, as he would later relate in his books. I should add that this was not the "cartoony" hay maker, often depicted as being wound up behind the head, but the punch of someone who knows how to use his hands, akin to a boxers jab or short punch that travels a short distance propelled off the hip. While it may not be obvious, timing release off the hip, all things being equal, means that everything is rotating powerfully to the left through impact. Without some other form of swing compensation, the shoulders, arms and hands work aggressively left or closing through the ball. The obvious problem with this action is that it causes a low running hook, but this type shot was ideal for the dry fairway conditions of the golf courses he played in Texas. Hogan likely worked on his swing in earnest during this time period, as much if not more so than he did throughout his life while earning a reputation as a tireless ball striker.
It would be no easy feat to change this basic action that had been so ingrained by the time he turned professional in 1932. He would struggle with a hook problem initially through 1938 and then off and on through 1946, when he finally figured out a way to cure the problem once and for all. He revealed pronation as his “secret” in an article in the 8 August 1955 Life Magazine. Pronation is what he added to his swing to solve the problem, and a careful look at his swing reveals that he continued to maintain the link between his hips and his arm swing throughout his career.
If pronation was indeed his secret, what was left to reveal that has had many speculating for years about his real secret?
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Ben Hogan's Secret: The Heart of the Matter
If you ask the next 100 golfers you meet about Ben Hogan’s swing and what he was trying to achieve, you are likely to get the same answer from each golfer. The question is, what was Hogan trying to do with his swing? And the invariable or inevitable answer will be that he was trying to cure his hook. Hogan was a bit dogmatic about answering questions, often pausing for embarrassing amounts of time to give even the most rudimentary of answers. He did not suffer fools and was ice cold to those who misquoted him or who published a story without careful scrutiny of the facts. There is a story told about a dialogue he had with a German professional golfer that involved the topic of hooks and causes and cures. Hogan did not react well to the question of the cause of a hook and the dialogue became somewhat tense when the German pro was a bit insulted at Hogan’s insinuation that if the German golfer was indeed a pro, then he certainly knew what caused a hooking ball flight action in the swing. The German pro had to acknowledge that he did indeed know and a pleasant conversation ensued thereafter.
The somewhat obvious point of my story is that all things being equal, a hook is the result of something done in the swing. Much like a slice, it is the result of a deliberate or inadvertent act or flaw of some type that acts on the ball in a manner that causes the result. To further belabor the obvious, Hogan was attempting to do something with his swing that caused him to hook the ball. He always talked about developing a powerful, consistent, repeating swing. The manner in which he tried to go about it produced a hooking action. What was it that caused the problem in the first place?
Many believe Hogan’s insistence on an inside move, with the right arm close to the side, caused the hooking problems. But many golfers swing from the inside and it is roundly acknowledged as a good players swing. Still others maintain that his flat plane was the obvious cause and that anyone who swung similarly would have the same problems. But Hogan always disputed the characterization of swing planes as flat or upright unless the discussion included some type of context about the golfer’s stature and body type. Hogan felt it was erroneous to characterize swing planes as one or the other without accounting for the golfer. Part of the reason he was adamant about this topic stems from his own stature. Jules Alexander reports on his website that Hogan’s arm length was 35”, which is pretty long for someone 5’7” or 5’8”. The technique that Hogan adopted to cure his hook, often referred to as the old Scottish technique of deliberate pronation, was thought to help golfers get the ball off the ground easier (while helping the average golfer hook). Again, these examples start a bit into the discussion, assuming that Hogan’s problem was the hook.
But what was causing him to hook it in the first place????
The somewhat obvious point of my story is that all things being equal, a hook is the result of something done in the swing. Much like a slice, it is the result of a deliberate or inadvertent act or flaw of some type that acts on the ball in a manner that causes the result. To further belabor the obvious, Hogan was attempting to do something with his swing that caused him to hook the ball. He always talked about developing a powerful, consistent, repeating swing. The manner in which he tried to go about it produced a hooking action. What was it that caused the problem in the first place?
Many believe Hogan’s insistence on an inside move, with the right arm close to the side, caused the hooking problems. But many golfers swing from the inside and it is roundly acknowledged as a good players swing. Still others maintain that his flat plane was the obvious cause and that anyone who swung similarly would have the same problems. But Hogan always disputed the characterization of swing planes as flat or upright unless the discussion included some type of context about the golfer’s stature and body type. Hogan felt it was erroneous to characterize swing planes as one or the other without accounting for the golfer. Part of the reason he was adamant about this topic stems from his own stature. Jules Alexander reports on his website that Hogan’s arm length was 35”, which is pretty long for someone 5’7” or 5’8”. The technique that Hogan adopted to cure his hook, often referred to as the old Scottish technique of deliberate pronation, was thought to help golfers get the ball off the ground easier (while helping the average golfer hook). Again, these examples start a bit into the discussion, assuming that Hogan’s problem was the hook.
But what was causing him to hook it in the first place????
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Ben Hogan Books and The Secret
Ben Hogan spent a considerable amount of time giving back to the game via his thoughtful books and articles related to the golf swing. He stated that he wanted to give back as much as he had "subtracted" from golf. While I am pretty sure he did not mean that literally, it is equally true that his dedication to golf was complete and he truly felt blessed to have achieved so much doing something that he loved.
Hogan taught millions of golfers over the years, indirectly through his books and directly through the influence of his reputation for high caliber play and his image captured in a variety of media and formats. His books include Ben Hogan's Power Golf, first printed in 1948 and updated or abridged in several printings since that time; Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, first released in a series of Sports Illustrated articles in March 1957 and released later that year as a book, reprinted over the years including an updated foreword that captures Hogan's interview with Nick Seitz in December 1984; Life Magazine articles related to his secret, including April 5, 1954 and August 8, 1955, the former included top pros of the day guessing his secret and the latter with Hogan disclosing his secret of pronation.
A few interesting notes about these references. Power Golf was clearly written and released prior to Hogan achieving what he described as the "full integration" of his understanding of the golf swing, which was later expressed in Five Lessons. So the majority of Power Golf was likely written prior to Hogan's breakthrough in 1946. From a personal standpoint, I did not realize until 1994 or so that the original and many of the abridged versions had actual pictures vice the line drawings contained in the later version (that I owned). A big difference in many of the pictures related to the book is Hogan still has an extremely long swing, which provides some evidence that the pictures were taken prior to his change to a short thumb in his golf swing, which he modified coming out of the service in 1945. That is not to say that he never swung long after 1945 as can clearly be seen from the Hogan Collection.
A seeming discrepancey between the Life Magazine articles outlining his secret and his book Five Lessons is the glaring ommission of any discussion about pronation. Further, although he described the technique in some detail to Nick Seitz in the updated foreword added in 1985, he also stated emphatically that he would write Five Lessons the same way, "everything I know about the full swing is in here; I don't think the fundamentals will ever change". Hogan obviously believed that deliberate pronation, as espoused in the Life Magazine article, was not a fundamental of the golf swing.
The Life articles have fostered almost 50 years of misunderstanding and confusion over the relative importance of pronation in the golf swing. Hogan himself said it would be ruinous for a bad player and he clearly did not recommend it as a fundamental or basic element of the golf swing.
Many have confused the secret revealed in the Life Magazine article with aspects of the swing that Hogan advocated. That is clearly not the case, as evidenced by the absence of any emphasis on pronation (save for a portion discussing the dangers of early pronation at impact) in the book. Whenever I read about "Hogan's secret being bad for new or beginning golfers" it strikes one as promulgating Hogan's own words, since that is exactly what he said all along. Of course that assumes that the secret outlined in the Life Magazine article and Hogan's secret for his swing are one and the same thing. More on that topic in a later blog.
Hogan taught millions of golfers over the years, indirectly through his books and directly through the influence of his reputation for high caliber play and his image captured in a variety of media and formats. His books include Ben Hogan's Power Golf, first printed in 1948 and updated or abridged in several printings since that time; Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, first released in a series of Sports Illustrated articles in March 1957 and released later that year as a book, reprinted over the years including an updated foreword that captures Hogan's interview with Nick Seitz in December 1984; Life Magazine articles related to his secret, including April 5, 1954 and August 8, 1955, the former included top pros of the day guessing his secret and the latter with Hogan disclosing his secret of pronation.
A few interesting notes about these references. Power Golf was clearly written and released prior to Hogan achieving what he described as the "full integration" of his understanding of the golf swing, which was later expressed in Five Lessons. So the majority of Power Golf was likely written prior to Hogan's breakthrough in 1946. From a personal standpoint, I did not realize until 1994 or so that the original and many of the abridged versions had actual pictures vice the line drawings contained in the later version (that I owned). A big difference in many of the pictures related to the book is Hogan still has an extremely long swing, which provides some evidence that the pictures were taken prior to his change to a short thumb in his golf swing, which he modified coming out of the service in 1945. That is not to say that he never swung long after 1945 as can clearly be seen from the Hogan Collection.
A seeming discrepancey between the Life Magazine articles outlining his secret and his book Five Lessons is the glaring ommission of any discussion about pronation. Further, although he described the technique in some detail to Nick Seitz in the updated foreword added in 1985, he also stated emphatically that he would write Five Lessons the same way, "everything I know about the full swing is in here; I don't think the fundamentals will ever change". Hogan obviously believed that deliberate pronation, as espoused in the Life Magazine article, was not a fundamental of the golf swing.
The Life articles have fostered almost 50 years of misunderstanding and confusion over the relative importance of pronation in the golf swing. Hogan himself said it would be ruinous for a bad player and he clearly did not recommend it as a fundamental or basic element of the golf swing.
Many have confused the secret revealed in the Life Magazine article with aspects of the swing that Hogan advocated. That is clearly not the case, as evidenced by the absence of any emphasis on pronation (save for a portion discussing the dangers of early pronation at impact) in the book. Whenever I read about "Hogan's secret being bad for new or beginning golfers" it strikes one as promulgating Hogan's own words, since that is exactly what he said all along. Of course that assumes that the secret outlined in the Life Magazine article and Hogan's secret for his swing are one and the same thing. More on that topic in a later blog.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Secret of Ben Hogan and Henny Bogan
Ben Hogan was in the news quite a bit over the years after he turned professional in 1930 and joined the pro tour around 1932. The first reference to Henny Bogan in printed or written material traces back to at least as early as 1936 and is attributable to Hogan himself. His employees gave Hogan a nameplate for his desk that stated simply "Henny Bogan". He often signed notes or letters or answered the telephome by referring to himself as Henny Bogan. Was this just a comical or lighthearted attempt at humor, simply a play on his name?
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