Hogan....Tip of the Spear

Public Forum—Concepts in Advanced Ball Striking
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Ok…this is for all the cheese stealing rats out in cyberland…yeah, you know who you are! I was one once.

Since you happen to be reading the best golf site anywhere on the planet, RR is going to let you in on a little something. It’s called Hogan’s Tip of the Spear.

I’m confident Lag and Two have covered this ground deep within the inner halls of ABS privacy, but this piece of information is just too valuable to stay hidden from not only the cavernous nuances of all things related to a hawk, or hard working men lugging blocks of ice up a stairway, but from hard working rats as well.

Viewing is only allowed with payment using either Paypal, Visa Debit Card, American Express, old Indian pelts, stone marbles, or anything other item of equal trade value, perhaps even one of Captain’s discarded beauties- slightly unused preferred.

The Tip of the Spear will be revealed starting July 25th. :smiley:

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Oh boy… One too many red pills??? :laughing:

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Well…one is the loneliest number in the equation N+1= cue: opening theme music!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4wr9jyMgeA[/youtube]

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZwGo8tLlMU[/youtube]

The video from Golfbulldog presents many comments speaking to why Hogan has more forward lean through the zone. One comment mentions doing a waggle above the ball, then dropping down by way of the knees. Another comment suggests he is giving himself more room. Although the first comment is technically correct, I would have issue with the second comment. Not forgettiing the other comments, I believe another option is available- which seems to hold true regardless of method. It concerns the vertical cocking of the wrist.

When a club goes vertical due to vertical cocking, it is for all practical purposes outside the line of the ball. The task then becomes how to get it back inside obviously.

In the diagram the solid blue line represents the shaft at address, the dotted blue line represents the same shaft with vertical cocking without wall interference, and the red line represents a side view of a wall providing resistance.
RR.jpg

If you want to sense what a more forward lean feels like through the zone, and the hands getting closer during the same interval as seen in the video try this. Place a club on the floor in which the toe of the club touches a wall. Now only cock the wrists…no arms. About 6 inches or so up the wall you will feel the forward lean and hands getting closer to you. More and more wrist cock is met with more and more forward lean.

Now in contrast at address and without wall resistance if the same vertical cocking is present notice how the clubhead can appear up to a foot outside the line depending how much wrist cock is involved, and the posture hasn’t changed. It isn’t really a foot, it just appears that way to the eye. It may be more like up to 6 inches outside.

So one of my beliefs is that anytime vertical cocking is involved in motion, it will by default place the clubhead outside the proper line even though once fully coiled and cocked at the top it will feel like we are in fact inside that line- but we’re not fully inside- there is still more work to do. Hogan himself said that most people start down with the shoulders and “hit the outside of the ball”. That is because they are already outside the ball due to vertical cocking and Hogan said the direction of the wrist cock is vertical.

So Hogan is really shortening the radius of the black circle and there are ways to do that as everyone knows, most notably saving R arm and CP via a proper transition. The black circle is oriented as it is to make the visual easier to capture.

That’s it…nothing new, just some ideas for the cheese stealing rats out there.

l like how opposed address postures form the tip of the spear. Are they opposed postures, or opposed geometric shaped R’s…pass the red pills please!

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Glad you found something of interest in the clip of Hogan’s posture changes…I am still working on the spear stuff but thought that I would add abit about the Hogan clip.

Hogan has the same shaft angle at address and impact and he comes into impact with great speed and an inside approach - IMO…to achieve this he needs to create and maintain room for his pitchy right elbow to move down into release so that the shaft will recreate address angle. His squat seems to do that IMO…along with relative delay of the right hip moving ballwards or upwards.

I see alot of modern pros who have a shaft angle higher than address angle and in almost all of them they have a weird hip motion and upper spine motion… see :

youtube.com/watch?v=dJlzCoxiTdg

I think amateurs suffer from the right hip moving forward (ballwards) too soon in the downswing with elevated shaft angle and out to in swing path.

The pros avoid the out-to-in path but their elevating right hip in the downswing mandates a higher shaft plane at impact. (I think Homer Kelley got it right with the right elbow-hip interaction stuff).

Hogan and Trevino have a right hip which seems to hold back (away from the ball) and head down through release and impact…looks like a real body/pelvis hit through impact to my eyes…you can understand why he wanted extra spike on his right toe :slight_smile:

The white belts which are in vogue at the moment seem to make the right hip elevation easier to spot but I think that few people see them as a video-analysis training aid…sadly… but they do highlight a lot of faults in my opinion.

What follows on from this is how good Snead, Hogan and Trevino’s address positions are…they suit their impact positions…one can imagine that there might be some biomechanical advantage to this…as well as the aesthetic value…the same cannot be said of Ross Fisher…the first guy in “Where is hte Goat”.

Glad to hear any comments…always looking to learn… sorry if this is a threadjack… (PS. love all the stuff about Canadian Open, rough, persimmon and vintage blades )

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I really like some of your videos over there on YT Golfbulldog…nicely done I think and I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at them.

As far as a threadjack…I’m still not totally certain what one is, or how one is avoided. I have my ideas on that, but I don’t consider your comments off the beaten path by any means. Good stuff to me… of course my thoughts never follow a staight forward path- curves work better for me :laughing:

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youtube.com/watch?v=VrFoBrxKdR8

Put some thoughts together in this new youtube clip.

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Nice work on the video there Golfbulldog and as you point out, hip and elbow “conflicts” can lead to some wayward shots indeed. :slight_smile:

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RR…“good stuff.” Super art work, along with the vertical wrist cock /outside “the line” brain teaser…it’s taking me a while to absorb. And one of the things on the backburner of my mind is how low the butt of the club is at impact for Hogan, Snead, Trevino…vs many of the modern guys.

My take is that it also further illustrates the need for proper forearm rotation if you use vertical wrist cock.

I like the Hollies too. Are you saying he Carousel action is our one of our goals?

Golfbulldog…nice videos. Thanks.

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Yes…rolled opened forearms. Good one Eagle!

If you want to have some fun with this try this one. Find your wall that has an adjacent doorjamb nearby to the right of you by about a foot. Place the toe of the club on the wall and by only moving your torso- no wrist or hand movement movement at all- just rotate the trunk until the shaft gets nearly parallel to the ground typically known as P1…but not quite P1. You should from this position be able to simply rotate the trunk back to its starting position and the toe of the club will just brush the wall in its return to the starting position- no interference from the doorjamb.

Now try it again doing the same thing, only this time stop at the same spot near P1, then introduce vertical wrist cock, and now just rotate the trunk- with the wrists now cocked vertically and not being moved at all- back to the starting position. The doorjamb will now block you as the clubhead is outside the line of the wall. However, if you roll open the forearms secondly at near P1 after first cocking the wrist when you arrive at P1, then you can rotate the trunk back to it’s starting position without interference from the doorjamb.

I just like the Hollies for starters…and the lyrics seemed to go with some ot the stuff seen in Golfbulldogs video about postures going up and down and travel going somewhat around in circles: The entire journey is not a carosel…more asymetric than that…but from P3 to P4 one could argue that it approaches that feel. Here are the lyrics that I thought fit the video in some fashion.

Round and round and round and round and round
And round and round and round with you
Up, down, up, down, up, down too

That’s about the long and short of it…or is it? :slight_smile:

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RR,

Could you diagram what you have explained above about the door jam example above? I think it would be much easier to understand and follow if we could visually see what you are wanting us to experiment. Great stuff you got going here.

Thanks,

Brandon

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I’ll give it go…but will have to think about how to capture the vertical part as that will add a third dimension to the process. Maybe an eagle-eye view might work alongside a DTL view. Not sure…will give it some thought while driving the old Ford tractor tonight. :slight_smile:

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Found a way to capture it. Will work on the artwork a little today and tonight and hopefully put something up tomorrow night. :slight_smile:

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Nice!

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Probably as good as I can get it…so I’ll put it up today.

There are three solid blue lines and a dotted blue line in orientation with part of an elipse. Panning from left to right they would represent 6:00, 7:00, 8:00 and 9:00.

As far as the wall goes, an outside corner is what’s needed as shown in the drawing. Some basements with a long linear span of concrete will also have a square support columm made of concrete that works perfect. But any wall with an outside corner to it will work great. I try to find a wall without baseboards- like in basements- so the toe of the club actually touches the wall and not the baseboard.

Here’s how to proceed.
wall.jpg

6:00 represents address with the club soled and the toe touching the wall. 7:00 represents travel by torso rotation but now the toe is about an inch or so removed from the wall due to the rotation. 8:00 represents where travel stops and the clubhead is about 6 inches or so off the floor…and the clubhead is outside that outside corner as shown.

If you just set up normally, with the wrist set normally or just arched down a touch, by just using one-piece movement only you should be able to swing back and forth between 6:00 and 8:00 and the outside corner of the wall will not interfere with the clubhead returning to the 6:00 position.

Now this time freeze motion at 8:00. Now add vertical wrist cock and freeze that postion. Now by just using one-piece movement like you did in the above exercise, try to return the club to 6:00. You can’t do it because the outside corner stops you because the vertical wrist cock added.

Now the fun part and the dotted blue line at 9:00. When you arrive at 8:00 this time and freeze, then add wrist cock you are obviously going to run into the corner again if something isn’t done. The solution is at 8:00 rotate the shaft to a R palm up orientation and the face will be wide open at this point, as will be the forearms. If done properly the shaft will now be on a 9:00 orientation. You can now hold everthing together and just rotate the torso and club back to 6:00 with any interference from the outside corner. However you will also see that the face will be wide open.

Better yet…do that once again, only this time once you set the R palm orientation facing skyward by rotating the shaft and forearms together and having that 9:00 orientation, now add a little more turn backward with the upper body…and this thing called a 4:30 line will stare you in the face.

May have to fiddle with it some…but I like the visual as a support mechanism to understanding why firing late with active rolling and opening status are so vitally important so that the guns of Navarrone can fire at the right time.

That’s it. :slight_smile:

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Thanks RR! I tried it…sure enough, the vertical wrist cock only, brings my club head almost entirely past that corner edge. With the wrist cock and forearm rotation, i was easily inside and had plenty of room to clear that corner. How did u figure this out? Just messing around? It really shows the importance of wrist cock and forearm rotation.

Thanks for the diagram and explanation! I got a little confused for a second when u said 6, 7, and 8 o’clock. lol. To me it looked like 12, 1, and 2 o’clock. But it was very easy to follow and understand. :smiley:

-Brandon-

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Actually the credit goes to Lag really in a mostly indirect sense as I am not a module student…and like Bom said moons ago " I wouldn’t wish me on Lag" :laughing: But his site is one for the record for sure. Too bad more people don’t recognize the brilliant stuff that happens here. If they would just keep quiet and open their eyes for once, it’s all right there in front of them- they are just too blind to see it. Or maybe too bullheaded.

So I get inspired from time to time and come up with my own little different takes on things I experience on the ABS site as I like to own my own feelings and attitudes as I sense them. So that’s how that came about in a general sense.

Glad you enjoyed the wall…Pink Floyd sure did :sunglasses: