I love this thread !!
An enigma wrapped in a mystery covered with enchilada sauce and a side of pico de gayo.
Sounds like it’s gonna give us gas. 
3Jack,
This is how I view a longer club. It gets flatter as it gets longer. Something must be lost in translation here.
don’t know what an exploder is, maybe an earlier version of his equalizer, but this thing is supposed to be
his PW or gap wedge and the loft is 61 degrees? Then swing weights 6 points lighter than a his 9 iron?
Presumably the exploder is a Lob Wedge which fits with the loft and swing weight and the PW is missing from the set? Makes more sense that way. Interesting that Hogan had 2 lofted wedges at 58 and 61 but I presume lots of players had wedges bent to all sorts of large lofts
C’mon Richie, a beginning student at the Golfworks Academy would not make that type mistake for a simple length measurement. The sheet does seem odd to me. 
If you start with two clubs with the same lie angle and add an inch to one and hold them at the same spot at setup, the longer club will have the toe come up more.
I think you are assuming the club lie angle has been adjusted to have the club set properly on the ground (flat). The pictures looks to show that. Then yes, the lie angle will be lower than the shorter one to allow that.
You are thinking after adjusting, he was thinking before adjusting. Both are correct, but from different perspectives. Makes sense to me.
Don’t forget this is the “Practice” set of clubs that we have most of these specs on. For whatever reason, the USGA couldn’t be bothered to do anything other than lie angles for the “Real” '53 clubs. I wouldn’t be surprised if what they are calling the practice set is just a set than someone threw in a wedge or two to complete the set when it was given to the USGA. Probably didn’t even know the difference between the exploder and the equalizer when they threw it in.
I’m not sure when Hogan or his people gave the clubs to the USGA but the buzz seems to be at the end of '53. Not sure when the “practice” set was given. I think part of that was because Hogan went from MacGregor clubs to building his own when he started his club company in '53. Of course he was at the top of his game, just coming off winning 3 majors that year. If he were to give his clubs to a museum while still playing competitive golf and with those clubs being a now competitors brand clubs, would it be possible if not probable that he wouldn’t give it to them with his real specs? He was still competing and knowing Hogan would not give any of his hard earned “secret in the dirt” info to anyone. Not to his fellow competitors and certainly not to his now competing golf equipment rival.
As for the swingweights, I noticed that it looked like none of the clubs had any lead tape on them. Did the museum folk decide that they need to scrape that stuff off to reveal the clubs because lead tape looks ugly? Did Hogan have lead tape on his clubs? From what I seem to remember, he did and tweaked his clubs all the time. Take off the lead tape and the swingweights go down.
Just another angle of thought since these specs seem to be so out of line with the many anecdotal stories about his clubs.
I still can’t believe after over a half century later we don’t have all the specs for all of the Hogan clubs that are still around. Just amazing. 
Here’s how I interpret it, please feel free to correct me :
If the club was lengthened and gripped at the orange dot instead of the yellow, the hands are then higher from the ground (above the blue line). If the hands are then lowered to the blue line, the toe would be in the air.
I have never seen a quality set of clubs set up this way…with all clubs having the same lie angle. That is not practical, functional or logical. This set being discussed here is not set up this way either.
3Jack, why would you add length to a club and then not set the lie angle correctly?
Are you suggesting that you stand the same distance from the ball with all clubs? Wedge to driver? In that case, yes, the hands would have to raise up as the clubs got longer… and the lie angles would be more upright. Surely you don’t swing that way.
Clubs get flatter as they get longer. Always been that way and for many reasons.
Nah, I’ve seen errors that small on plenty of clubs I own and other customers clubs I’ve worked with. I don’t think it’s that bad as you cannot notice a 1/8" difference in length.
And you think that’s bad, you would laugh at the discrepancies I’ve seen in head weights, even with vintage equipment.
3JACK
i believe what Richie is saying is … if a club is shorter than standard it will play flatter than standard eg the 1" shorter 7i at 60 deg really plays in length as a standard 9i so that 60 deg is flatter than a standard 9i
Tim has exactly down what I’m saying. The clubs listed with the shaft length and lie angles are effectively much flatter than the modern gear because of what the static lie angle is doing and the length of the clubs being about 1-inch shorter than today’s standards.
Let’s take Hogan’s 5-iron data:
Lie Angle: 59.3°
Length: 37" (with grip)
Today’s modern 5-irons are:
Lie Angle: 61-62° (we’ll say 61.5°)
Length: 38" (with grip)
So from a static lie angle point of view, the 5-iron is 2° flatter than the modern 5-iron. Then with the 5-iron being 1-inch shorter, that’s an extra effective lie angle difference of 2° (flatter). Thus, a total effective lie angle difference of 4°.
And you can ask Tom Wishon about shaft length difference and its impact on effective lie angle because that’s where I got the numbers from.
3JACK
No, I’m not suggesting that clubs don’t get flatter as they get longer.
I am suggesting that shaft droop can play a role in what lie angles work for you.
When I do fittings for anybody, including myself, I generally do the lie angle fitting last. That’s because I want to get the MOI done second to last. Once I get the MOI fitting down, the impact dispersion tightens substantially and now we can work to get a more accurate depiction of where the ball is being struck on the face because of the smaller, tighter dispersion of impact.
After that is done, we then go thru each iron in the bag with impact tape, on grass (no lie board) and see where the ball is being struck on each club. There are often times differences. I have had a few times, including my own set, where the lie angles were in perfect 0.5° increments and some irons were consistently struck off the toe and some of the others were struck off the heel. One of my sets with KBS shafts (that were spine aligned), my 3-iron is at 57.5°, my 4-iron at 59° and then a mix match of different increments with my 9-iron at 64.5°. This is after a lot of swings and those lie angles over a year still fit me for those clubs. I just bought a new set, same model heads, but with different shafts and the lie angles are very different.
My point is…whether or not Hogan knew about shaft droop, that could be one of the reasons why a couple of his sets had the same lie angles as two of the clubs. Maybe he had them purposely bent that way. Maybe they just got that way. But, I wouldn’t always assume that just because a club is longer that the lie angles must be at a perfect increment or that they must be flatter because there’s many factors that could cause a difference. In general, yes the club should be flatter as they are longer, but that’s not always the case.
And at the risk of sound sacrilegious, perhaps Hogan wasn’t as precise about his equipment as we assumed.
3JACK
FWIW, I’ve got Wishon’s club fitting book from several years ago…"“the correct lie will be 1 degree more flat for each 1/2 inch a new club is longer. If during the dynamic lie fitting test, the golfer strikes the shot .5 inches towards the toe, bend the club 1 degree upright for each .25 inch…”
I wouldn’t listen to Wishon about clubfitting… He’s believes in fitting golfers for their OTT move… If he was an equipment genius, he wouldn’t be building light upright frying pans…
No, I’m not saying this at all. Just used an artifical point to show that the longer a club is the more you would have to lower the lie angle to get it to sit flat while holding the clubs at the same hand height. You will be standing further from the ball. Problem is we are talking about the club length and lie angle AND the golfer too. This gets more into club fitting and there are different theories on how to setup clubs for that. BTW, there is a guy that sells clubs that are all the same length and lie angles.
If someone gave me a “standard” 5 iron to setup with and then gave me a 5 iron that was an inch longer but both with the same lie angle, I could do one of two things. I could either hold it at my regular hand height and have the toe up a little or I could move my hands up a bit to compensate. Hence all the talk about upright clubs and causing upright swings. People trying to adjust to the clubs instead of the clubs being adjusted to the person.
To me, at a basic level, you want your clubs to fit you, not the other way around. Even though my hand height with my pitching wedge thru 2 iron is about the same, I have the lie angles and lengths adjusted to sit flat for all of them. Isn’t that the whole point of having the lie angles gradually decrease as the club gets longer? Also explains why you hear people saying all the time, “I hit my irons great but can’t hit my driver to save my life.” Modern drivers and fairway woods get longer and more upright where you have to raise your hands to set it even somewhat flattish. Look at how toe up most people are with a modern driver/fairway wood (even pros).
So If I decided to add plugs to my current set to get them 1 inch longer what would I do? Either raise my hands a bit higher to keep the lie angles flat or adjust the lie angles down a bit to get that toe back to flat so I can keep my hands where they were originally.
So by adding that length it also effectively adds to the lie angle if you want to keep the same hand height.
Yes, I know it’s confusing and even causes me to have to double think on it. Throw in all this talk about shaft flex, toe droop, MOI, dynamic versus static lie board measurements etc. and you will go crazy.
I also am completely opposed to clubfitting to a players current swing… unless that player is already a top striker… then fine.
But hackers will continue to hack if they keep coming OTT with super upright gear and tons of offset. They are locked in to that because of the gear. If the clubs are light, it gets ever worse. So it is my understanding that Wishon takes the custom club approach to fit the hacker. I don’t agree with that.
However, I do think Tom is an honest reputable guy with a deep understanding of gear from the past and the history of the game. He understands this stuff. He is not swing teacher… just trying to help hackers like many do… knowing they are not going to work on their swings.
Here at ABS students are working on their swings as well as other instruction methods and so on. If you want to learn to drive a race car, you would not do yourself any favors driving around in a big wheel base cushy Cadillac or Lincoln Town Car, or a Rolls Royce for that matter. Tight suspension, no power steering, low center of gravity, tight wheel base and a manual transmission. Just like the golf swing. It’s not easy to drive it at first, but good gear teaches you what you need to know and feel inside the body.
As far as this thread goes… regardless of someone’s claims or measurements etc… Hogan played flat gear. How flat? I’m sure there are people that know. The people I know that claim to have inside knowledge seem to suggest around 6 to 8 degrees flat. Very flat. The films and videos support this much more than they would support upright lie angles. The heads were heavy. Certainly much heavier than today’s offerings… I think we can rest on that. The gear from the past was generally much heavier. Plenty of testimony about how stiff Hogan’s shafts were. Super stiff shafts have been a common theme for many of the great strikers from Moe (which I can personally attest to) and Palmer to Lanny Watkins, Knudson, Hogan. Stiff X shafts help stabilize the heavier heads… minimizing any surprises and toning down things like toe dip etc.
Stiff shafts are going to more effectively transfer the efforts of forearm rotation and pivot rotation into the golf ball. If the club is accelerating through impact, it is not doing that on it’s own. A cohesive connection must exist and the shaft is the linking bridge to keep it all together and from falling apart. Stiff shafts are the way to go.
If you can handle heavier heads… it’s better. If you use them you WILL get stronger over time. Flat lie angle are great because you move the left vector of possibility more toward the target. OTT does not start the ball as far left with flat lie angles. They also help you swing the club more behind your body so you can properly use your body. If you swing up and over your head, then you are going to have to use your arms to do that and disconnect.
If anyone doesn’t believe me on flat lie angles try this. Stand as upright as you can and close to the ball… now come straight down OTT and you can easily start the ball 45 degrees or more left of the target. I can come straight OTT and hit a ball through my legs almost 180 degrees straight behind me. Now try teeing a ball up with a driver and play a shot from your knees. You’ll learn really quickly that you can’t pull the ball very far offline as long as the clubhead’s loft isn’t kicking the ball left. So… of course if you were hitting a wedge off your knees and didn’t bend it flat to fit the level of the ground… but if you swing flat with flat lie angles… the ball is not going left very much. OTT starts to take on a lower trajectory function. So to play good golf… you would much rather have trajectory issues than direction issues. To approach mastery… you want both.
If you are going to hit… flat stiff and heavy is optimal. If you are going to swing… stiff, heavy and upright like Moe did. That is optimal.
Can you be a good golfer and play upright gear? YES!!! but it is more difficult from a technical standpoint. More timing, more disconnection and the left vector of shot dispersion possibility moves farther from the target… to the left.
Yep, you got it.
What would you prefer, one hand height (fit the clubs to you) or 14 different hand heights (you try to fit to the clubs) to try to play golf? 
I agree, it doesn’t matter what the numbers say on those clubs. Of course I wish we could get numbers of all his clubs out there to get a better idea.
I went with 6 degrees flat off “standard” since I have been on this site about 8 mos ago. I thought it was going to be a radical change, but at first setup and first swing it felt like putting on an old pair of comfortable shoes. I used to sit with the toe up, but kept being told don’t worry toe droop will flatten it out. I’ll never go upright or even to standard again. I got some older heavy, stiff forged muscle back blades. I bent them down to 6 flat and have never felt better contact/compression. Laser straight most of the time or a fade if not so great. Even got my third hole-in-one with them a few months ago.
Was watching some video of Knudson and he bends his knees and has his hands down so flat, it makes it look like hes 12 degrees flat. He absolutely is not at standard lie angles.
Modern club makers are going the wrong direction in lots of ways.