Hogan in Mexico

[Richie3Jack]

John Dochety (aka Lake1926) was telling me about this swing video of Hogan in Mexico. This is about as good as it gets here.






3JACK

[gmbtempe]

Richie,

I had thrown these two sequences together from that video a few weeks ago for a friend.



and

[siteseer2]

Good as it gets....

[Richie3Jack]

Fantastic, Greg. Thanks.




3JACK

[lake]

One of my favorite Hogan pics Left wrist is not arched....

Attachments:

[Richie3Jack]

He's not going to run out of right arm there, Lake.




3JACK

[begolfpro]

Excellent photo sequence! Notice how his hips are open, right foot flat and square his shoulders are at impact! Just perfect

[gmbtempe]

What I notice is how long he can keep the right shoulder up and the secondary axis tilt seems to happen very late.

[dodger]

Interesting to me that his right elbow is much more free in the backswing than is sometimes described. No glove under the right pit stuff. Mediate recently said that Tiger needs to have both elbows pointed down during the swing, which is a Ballard thing. Hogan essentially does this in the video. Magnificent swing.

[Richie3Jack]

Nobody saved the right arm like Hogan did thru the swing. A great sign of a swing that gets the clubhead to the ball by using the pivot and unbending the right wrist a bit and then continuing to pivot post-impact.

Tiger could probably benefit a bit by using Ballard's 'left side connection' drills, I'm just not nutty about the elbows pointing to the ground and the big move off the ball.

Tiger needs to strengthen his grip a bit and then either decide to swing more left with the driver or start hitting more up on the ball with the driver. He currently has a -3* attack angle with the driver according to Trackman and it's clear to me he swings out to the right with the driver. That will produce a nice draw, but when he hits it dead right basically his face is wide open...I think in large part because his grip should be stronger.

I think he's best off making slight changes in both, swinging a bit more left and having a bit more of a shallower attack angle. But if I had to choose between one of the two, I would lean with swinging more left. Then just get him to junk the 'parallel plane lines' which does not actually exist and get him taking the club a bit more inside and he would be in a much better position at P4.

It's really easy to fix IMO, especially for a golfer with Tiger's abundance of talent and if he putts semi-decent, he would break Nicklaus' majors record by the time he's 40 years old. But Haney teaches the 'swing out to the right, weak grip, throw the arms away from the body, parallel plane lines' swing and has his ear.





3JACK

[dodger]

You are right on 3jack. I have looked at the Ballard stuff since it first came out. I cannot play with a move off the ball and I think he simplifies amateurs problems as related to reverse pivoting. Pros move more towards the target than away, by alot. However with a steady head, tripod in Homer's terms, the elbows down thought can be very effective. I have used it as a thought and it is good anti- chicken wing remedy.

[Richie3Jack]

I took a couple of lessons from Jimmy when I was playing college golf before I got into working with a TGM AI (not Ted Fort, a different AI). I actually like Jimmy a lot and much of his teaching is sound, but the big move away from the ball and the elbows pointing down was something I couldn't get into. I had a friend who went to Jimmy and I thought he struck the ball superbly using his method and then he went to Mike Bender and his ballstriking wasn't nearly as good. Then he kept switching off and on between the two and really didn't fulfill his potential. He would've been much better sticking with Ballard IMO.

But the 'left side connection' is a drill used throughout golf instruction quite often. Extremely valid in the circles of TGM, darome and ABS and even SliceFixer. In fact, David Leadbetter made his career by aping Ballard's work and I remember Butch Harmon taking some of Ballard's stuff but it's been so long that I can't quite remember. Basically before Greg Norman went to see Butch, he first went to Ballard and Ballard gave Greg what to do but I think the two got into a tiff and then Greg went to Butch with what Ballard told him and Butch just ran with it.

At least that's the story I was told.

I've met with Butch on 3 different occasions (I had another friend who was working with him on his swing). He's actually a super nice guy. Very personable. Talked with him again at the season ending tournament at East Lake, he really didn't remember me but again extremely personable and gracious person to talk with. I don't see a lot of similarities in what Butch and Ballard teach, but I remember Ballard really not liking him. I think both are worlds better than Leadbetter and Haney.





3JACK

[joec]

r3j, i have agreed with almost everything you have said on the site to this date. but wait a minute, ballard over anyone is hard to swallow. ha. you must swing up to hit down. we do not want any angles. did you ever see his swing machine? he was a hell of a salesman and alot of fun to be around. he had some good points too.

[Richie3Jack]

I think Jimmy is one of the better 'name' popular golf instructors out there because I've seen his swing theory work much more than most name popular golf instructors. His left side connection drill fits right in line with a part of TGM, darome, S&T, ABS and SliceFixer. He was also adamant at being against the SBST putting stroke when I worked with him and this was back in the day of the Pelz craze and well before Utley came along with his teaching.

IMO, you can pay a helluva lot more for instruction and do much worse than going to Jimmy Ballard.



3JACK