Looking through You tube and found a great video of Ben Hogan, Im sure some of you have seen it. I cant stop watching it, his ball flight is amazing.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LsvwnGVblc[/youtube]
How on earth does he do it? Not sure if its camera angle, but only other time I’ve seen similar is Tiger woods stinger shot.
What motions is he doing different to get this to happen? thoughts?
Man is it funny you bring this up currently. I TOO have been mesmerized from his ball flight the past few weeks, watching same videos over and over at youtube. You are also right that Tiger was able to do it with his “stinger”. Hogan’s Secret?
But aren’t these just really low punch type shots that all great golfers can do? A combo of things, not just one. Like ball more back in stance, etc. I have messed with trying to do this at range but it is just way over my head at this point. Maybe when I can at least shoot low 80’s first I’ll worry more about it as I have a lot more better things to worry about right now with my swing…
Going flat with my irons seems to have had an effect in lowering my flight but it isn’t consistent so I can’t know for sure.
The ball has a ton to do with it, and obviously striking it properly too. That essentially used to be the ball flight of a top ball striker, but you can’t really do it with the modern ball. LCDV seems to be in the news today, but he made some very enlightening posts regarding this.
I would agree with Bom and LCD about the ball…plus the bottom weighted clubs are all about higher launch…the older clubs used to have more mass behind and slightly higher on the club…this helped keep ball flight down too…I honestly believe the heavier equipment also set people up to swing on a shallower approach with more of the hands leading the club as opposed to today’s lighter gear that people want to flick at with their hands and add loft.
Hogan’s line of thinking was all about trajectory. He had a rhyme and reason for how he flighted the ball. Apparently shots he hit that other pros were watching and would have died for had Hogan turning his nose up at because he didn’t like the trajectory he put on the ball even though the pros watching him hit were complimenting him on the shot.
Very level rotation which is at the core of many of the things going on in his golf swing…
including being able to harness maximum usable forearm rotation.
There it is, there’s the string drill in action. That’s the ballflight that separates the players from the pretenders. My personal experience that changed me was watching two guys up close: Don Winter, a mini tour player out of Modesto CA and Ryan Miller when I was paired with him the first time I tried (very unsuccessfully) to qualify for the US Am. That was the summer of 1992 when I was 18. I spent the next 10 years totally obsessed with learning and mastering truly great ball striking and everything I could find out about the greatest ballstrikers ever. And just around the time I was putting the whole thing together they went and ruined the golf balls and made it impossible, totally impossible to hit the ball on anything close to the proper trajectory. I was lost, didn’t get it didn’t know how huge the problems were with the ProV1s, especially on the way back down to the ground and very quickly, like within 2 years I just up and quit the game.
Best thing that ever happened to me. By far.
Thanks for the props Mark & everyone else. Why on earth would I be pissed about reposting that? Its what it is, a big fat part of my take on what a great move is. Anyone who thinks I’m whatever is I hope a bit off base. What I am is passionate about the game still and always will be. I like this resource and ABS a lot but at the same time it’s still my personal opinion that there are problems with it like anything else.
Thanks for the reply,
Im very new to golf, I actually hated the game growing funnily enough. So I have no real experience or knowledge of golf history.
How did the old balls make this flight possible? or is it more about landing the new ball if you execute this low trajectory?..
There is another You-tube clip of hogan performing the above shots amongst others, in the two shots he plays that bore nice and low, it looks to be a different swing. Almost a shorty swing, I’ll see if i can find it.
The new solid core balls are too hard and too hot for lack of a better term. They just don’t smoosh or stick to the face. Its the difference between a volleyball and a stone. I don’t know how better to explain it and incidentally these are the same questions that Tiger has been trying to answer unsuccessfully for 10 years.