The Moe thread

Essential Reading
121

Eagle
From: Greg Lavern
I am glad you are enjoying the thread. John (Lag) Erickson has a great site and is very knowledgeable on the golf swing. I appreciate his willingness to allow me to make available some of the knowledge Lawson Mitchell and my self have obtained from the Real Moe Norman. Glad you ordered the book and hope you enjoy the read and examination cover to cover.
There is some interesting stories, swing secrets on instruction, pictures of Moe from the early sixties and swing sequences that will truly inspire your practice sessions to reach your potential.

Thank you

Authors Greg Lavern and Lawson Mitchell
The Real Moe Norman
www.therealmoenorman.com

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Thanks Lag
From: Greg Lavern

I might mention that The Real Moe Norman book provides a swing series of Moe taken from a 8MM camera by Lawson Mitchell in 1961 that clearly shows a much fuller backswing in the same capacity as Ben Hogan. A longer more fluid swing with lots of hip and shoulder rotation.

Thank You

Authors: Lawson Mitchell and Greg Lavern
The Real Moe Norman

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The third and 4rth frames on page 72 offer a rare behind Moe view that are really fantastic, and give a view of Moe not typically seen in later footage. It’s great that you guys unearthed this stuff and made it available.

I think Moe’s pre shot routine is interesting in that you (Greg) mentioned Moe never stood behind the ball but always entered address from the side so that he always visualized the shot from that perspective, not from behind.

Any additional thoughts on this?

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Thanks for your response…Did Moe ever show you how he filed his leading edges to make them sit square? I have no idea how to do this…I’ve got some old Hogan’s that sit open…Do you know if he filed the sole of the toe to remove some weight or maybe the heel of the face/leading edge?

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I am wondering about that also…grinding/filing the leading edge.

The write-up on these Arnold Palmer irons indicate the leading edges were ground.
cgi.ebay.com/Arnold-Palmer-Perso … 2763wt_909

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If you are going to shave the front leading edge sharp, you have to take it off the bottom essentially removing bounce.
If you grind from the face side you would be removing grooves, or grinding a bevel from the first groove down which would not lead to as sharp a grind.

Removing bounce is not as big an issue for a swing with a flatter entry. It’s more the steep diggers that need more bounce on the club. A precision ball striker is not going to have to rely upon bounce to hit solid shots. As Moe said… “bacon strips not pork chops”

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Hello Lag
From; Greg Lavern

In the 1961swing series of The Real Moe Norman on page 72 frame 3, Moe has total full rotation of the shoulders and hips and the club is actually over parallel. In the following frame 4, Moe makes his vertical drop with both knees driving forward creating tremendous lead and lag. This is a rare swing sequence that will clear up any misconceptions of how The Real Moe Norman swung the golf club much different then the shorter swing of Moe at a older age. Everyone should order a copy for their own personal viewing of the best striker of the golf ball in the world that won lots of tournaments and set many course records. www.therealmoenorman.com

The Real Moe Norman would arrange his thoughts while walking to his next shot with a complete picture in his mind what he wanted to do. This was one of the reasons he did not take very long over the ball. His approach was from the side and did not believe that you had to waste time going behind the ball where he already knew where the pin or fairway was. When he walked in from the side he was walking into his set-up. The visualization or picture of the flight of the ball was ahead of time before he walked in from the side. His target oriented view of where he wanted to hit the golf ball happened with one look and two waggles of the club head and the ball was struck at his intended target.

Thank you
Greg

Authors: Lawson Mitchell and Greg Lavern
The Real Moe Norman

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Mashie 72
From: Greg Lavern
Yes, Moe showed me how he would grind his irons. Lag is right you grind it from the bottom right up to the last groove. After you grind then you can buff it or use some steel wool to smooth out. I have a old set of Hogan irons that i am looking at now with the leading edge taken off. If you put the club on a flat surface like a floor you will see that the face sits perfectly square. It suited Moe’s set-up with the left arm connected to the shaft ahead of a square club face.

Mashie i hope this also helps to what John (lag) expressed.

Thanks
Greg
Authors: Lawson Mitchell and Greg Lavern
The Real Moe Norman

129

eagal
From: Greg Lavern
Hope the response to Mashie 72 answers your question.
The Arnold Palmer clubs with the leading edge already off could be fine.
If you find they rock a little you can take some off the bottom up to the bottom groove for a little more squareness.

Thanks
Greg

Authors: Lawson Mitchell and Greg Lavern
The Real Moe Norman

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Yes Greg that helps me picture it more clearly…So basically whatever is protruding on the sole below the leading edge gets lopped off level which then results in the club sitting flat with the ground…Makes sense and thanks…

I remember Lag saying that in order to swing like Hogan, you probably need to be swinging his custom clubs as well…So it’s nice to have you as a resource for the clubs also…Appreciate it…

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Hi John (lag) Erickson
From: Greg Lavern
Someone that delivers the club on a steep angle and releases to soon will have pork chops for supper while the
golfer that moves lower into the ball and continues with a low and long club square club face will be having bacon for breakfast.
There is more spin with big divot pelts where bacon strips provide less spin with more consistent distance control.

Thanks
Greg

Authors: Lawson Mitchell and Greg Lavern
The Real Moe Norman

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Mashie72
From: Greg Lavern

Glad to help. The Real Moe Norman or Ben Hogan were always customizing their own clubs. With grip thickness, leading edges and lead tape to increase swing weight these great strikers in essence were customizing their own clubs. It was important to have golf clubs to suit their individual make up that look square to the eye and felt good, certainly not something off the rack. When (Lag) talks about custom clubs it is built for the individual which is the way to go. There is nothing like a set of soft forged blades and persimmon woods to customize that the Real Moe Norman and myself certainly preferred.

Thank you
Greg

Authors: Lawson Mitchell and Greg Lavern
The Real Moe Norman

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Moe, Snead, Hogan, Knudson all played very heavy gear. No doubt that heavy increases force (f=ma) and also puts more feel into the players hands.

It’s like a chicken or the egg question.

Do great strikers hit so many balls that they simply outgrown lighter gear through building muscular golf strength?

Or, do they start playing heavier gear so they can increase their body’s golf strength?

Paul Henrick talked about both Moe and Knudson swinging 1 pound golf clubs which would be crazy heavy by today’s standards… yet these guys were
both legendary strikers.

Greg, would you have any idea when Moe moved into heavy gear? or who influenced him to do so? or did he just find that on his own through trial and error?

Maybe it’s not a question any of us know.

My first exposure to hitting super heavy gear was picking up John Morse’s clubs on the range at Ft McMurray. He talked to me about feel and control. It was so heavy to me I couldn’t relate to it at the time… but I remembered it… and he was always a really solid player and super straight hitter who later that year won the Australian Open. Somehow he had gained that knowledge from somewhere.

Of course I am a huge believer in it now… and the body does adapt over time. What once felt heavy feels normal over time… and suddenly you play golf with more feel, distance control is shockingly better, and you hit the ball straighter with more compression.

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Thanks Greg. Price precludes me from bidding on those AP Wilson irons! But I am trying to understand what these guys were doing to their clubs, and if Palmer as doing the same things as Moe…and why. Did this grinding merely help with how the iron sat, or was it functional? On another thread that Lag recently posted, Tom Wishon says Hogan had very sharp leading edges.

The book came this week. It is chock full of information and I can see it will take a while to digest. What I have read so far are the stories about Moe from those who knew him, and that gives good insight. Gonna keep it by the bedside.

One thing that strikes me was Moe’s wonderful posture…and not just playing golf. Do you have any comment on that?

My family used to vacation in Daytona as a kid and we played some of the courses there. I played Tomoka Oaks in about 1967, and faint memories of a lighted par 3 course where my dad would take me. That is a great area …I hope to go back.

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Much respect for lag, greg and everyone else on this board so I hope I don’t come across too testy, (and I am not trying to belittle his skill but rather and playing Devils Advocate a bit like what I did for Yogi) so…

Moe was obviously a world class ballstriker, But how much of it can be attributed to his unorthodox swing that is peddled and how much of it is really some obsessive/compulsive ball beating by someone who was a few marbles short of sane? I mean from all the videos’ I have seen of the guy giving clinics and even more so in his interviews, it is obvious that Moe was slightly coo-coo for cocoa puffs. I just saw a video on Youtube where he rambles on about “400, down the middle. Straight”. He is delirious. If he drove 400 I am Hugh Hefner.

He probably had very little exposure to common teachings and modern concepts of swing theory (for either lack of money, interest or technology like ABS forums…) yet from messing around at the range so much he experimented himself into what WORKED FOR HIM and then beat balls with those ideas until his blisters bled, calluses formed and movements were deeply ingrained (I’ve never even seen tour pros have as beat up hands as Moe did). He probably has hit a million balls in his life judging from what I have read about how much time he spent at the range and course.

This does not mean he has a “secret” swing that the PGA conspiracists tried to keep from the masses by ostracizing Moe at the 1-2 tour events he played. It doesn’t mean you go try to look like him and you too are on fast road to scratch while others are stuck in their common looking swings. Moe “dug it out of the dirt” just like Hogan did, and just like Trevino did and just like every other tour player you see to a lesser extent; all who have been beating balls since probably before age ten with enthusiasm for improving.

Moe’s swing failed to hold up under pressure. This awesome range striker shot a 78 at the Masters in 1956 and WITHDREW! We then get the story of how others were making fun of him and it immediately gets looked over. He shot course records in his comfortable environment of home courses and is singling out bridges 200y away to roll ball over yet Withdrew from Masters one year and next year misses cut!

A few questions.

  1. How is this “Real Moe Norman” book any different than the stuff being pitched as Moe’s swing such as Symple Swing, Graves, Scott Hazledine’s IMA (lower your handicap instantly by 40%!), Kuykendall, etc? (other than the author being in contact with Moe but as was Graves).

  2. In 50+ years since we here in USA were ‘exposed’ to Moe through his 1956 Masters sighting, how come NO TOUR player has EVER swung like this? Surely they would since it is so accurate and simple…

  3. how come in one video of Moe later in life at a clinic states he was “wrong his whole life” regarding his swing?

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I would probably be a skeptic also had I not met Moe and seen him strike golf balls. Even some of the tour players on the Canadian Tour would write him off as some kind of circus freak.

However… I have never seen anyone in my life flush golf balls like Moe did… one after another, day in day out, week in week out, year to year. Call it what you want, but I can honestly say I never saw Moe hit a poor looking golf shot. His method was rock solid, it worked, and from what I have studied and learned personally, I see no flaws in his technique.

As far as Moe being off his rocker… well… maybe so… but there have been many geniuses throughout history who received great animosity from the masses. Flushing golf shots and having a great swing are only part of posting a score or winning tournaments. Moe didn’t play much in the US. Not comfortable there, anymore than Peter Thomson failing to dominate the US Tour as he did winning 5 British Opens.

As far as The Masters, who hasn’t shot 78 before? I think there is a story behind this about a conversation Moe had with Sam Snead. Greg might shed some light on it.

I believe Moe was a ball striking genius. Let me re phase… Moe WAS as ball striking genius. Moe also had a phenomenal tournament record in Canada, his home country. When I played up there, or even Australia for that matter, there are players there who just love to play golf in their country, set their own goals within their own country’s tour, and really couldn’t care less about the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour is just one tour of many. Lots of great players, but not necessarily the best. I say this because when American players go to play oversees, they often get humbled by difficult conditions or simply don’t have the right feel or technique to play the very diverse conditions that can be offered up. Canadian golf is different. Canadian cities are not typically 4 hour drives apart. Sometimes they are 20 hour drives. The money there was never big enough to justify flying that tour… most of us drove. Get out a map… look at a drive from Vancouver to Edmonton, to Regina, to Winnipeg, to Windsor. Montreal to Halifax. These offer challenges all their own. It’s not a cushy tour like the US PGA Tour with perfect greens putting all the same speed week to week. Nothing homogenized up there.

The Asian Tour had courses where the greens were literally crab grass… yes… crab grass. Personally I have always respected guys who could win on extremely diverse conditions. One of the reasons I make an argument for Gary Player being the greatest of all time. Player won everywhere.

No one swings like Moe any more than anyone swings like Hogan. There might be swings that “look” like Hogan, but if you slow it down… I will rip them down in a hurry… mine included. To me, Moe was “the Hogan” of swinging.

Moe did hit a million golf balls… but Moe loved it… and just loved hitting balls. He lived for it. Loved it more than anything.

My traveling partner Vic Wilk and I would pick Moe’s brain all we could. We would always stop and watch Moe hit it. I learned a lot from Moe and I have some of Moe’s concepts deeply rooted into my own swing.

I have never given Moe’s method a try like Greg has. I can see it working with Greg’s swing. He is the only guy that I have seen that gets it. The other guys I have seen who try to peddle Moe’s technique don’t hold a candle. They lack Moe’s post impact pivot work. It’s not Moe’s set up… or backswing… it’s how he pulls it through with such left side power “through the ball”. When I saw Greg’s videos I could see he was getting it.

Moe did lot’s of clinics. A main source of his livelihood, and he learned to be a showman also. Moe was fun, and had a great sense of humor. He would work the crowd, and get everyone laughing, while amazing them with his stellar control of the golf ball. Moe didn’t hit it 400, but he made you think it was possible… even for a moment… you walked away realizing you were seeing something very special. I know I did.

Greg’s book is an excellent truthful account of Moe on many levels. It is 100% consistent with my experiences around Moe.
The other people he writes about I know many of them also. Believe me I would be the first to call him out if I thought for
one moment it was fiction. Greg also has mastered Moe’s technique better than anyone else I have seen, and there is no better way to understand a golf swing than to ask someone who lives inside that kind of action. I have already learned from Greg and look forward to learning more. We are fortunate to have him here to discuss Moe and his take on Moe’s
technique and views toward the game.

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A million balls? That’s it…I’ve got that number beat…and I’m as wacked out as they come…so I think I can chime in on part of this discussion from a rat perspective. :laughing:

If I been asked once, I’ve been asked 10,000 times why I change my action so often. My response: because I can, that’s what I love to do. I think I’ve said before, if I had 4 hours to live and had a choice between playing a course of my choice, or hitting balls for 4 hours, the choice for me is clear…I’m at the range with my cokes and smokes. However, if I could play the course by myself…then I would choose Augusta National to spend my 4 hours. Big chance of that happening! Not…

A range is my place where I can do what I want, have no rules to follow, use time as I see it best used, can get lost in my own thoughts and feelings, no distractions, no emotions, testing the limits of normalcy, changing impossibility to opportunities…the list is longer, but might give a glimpse into the notion that one can get what they want from this game which uses a moving instrument and a stationary object.

My sense of things says that Moe was, as Lag says, a showman of sorts and liked the crowds watching him as the feeling of accomplishment may have tempered some other feelings of shyness- hard to be shy in your own home. Also, if the reports of Hogan’s last stand is correct in that he laid down 3 balls and after working them into the fairway put the clubs away for the last time, shows that he and Moe were cut from the same cloth: they both loved practicing their art.

What I would like to know from Greg or Lag is…did Moe warm up “behind the scenes” prior to his ball striking demonstrations and come right out of the chute warmed up, or did he loosen the grease in front of the crowd at the start of the demonstration by hitting a particular club. and if so what club was it. My guess is that it would only take him about 10 balls or less to fully warm up.

It might be the other way around?

If the sun’s up, there are balls to be hit. :slight_smile:

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This single statement alone holds extreme weight for me. Great post Lag, Thanks for that.

Just came across this analysis from a popular Youtube line-drawing swing guru:

http://www.waynedefrancesco.com/video-on-homepage/moe-norman-golf-swing-analysis/

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Someone should tell Mr. Wayne that toe lines are irrelevant for comparative purposes. :exclamation:

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Mr. Wayne D is undoubtedly a really good golfer, and teacher. I like his observation regarding what he calls “compression”, which is akin to Lag’s observation and recommendation about lowering the body in order to promote the use of ground pressures. You don’t see many, if any, others recommending it like they do. It is clear that many great golfers incorporated it.

However, I thought Mr. Wayne’s comments about Moe were surprisingly negative. Maybe Moe was beyond his prime, but if so, respect would still be in order. Maybe no disrespect was intended. Moe’s accomplishments are very well documented. How many 59’s has Mr. Wayne, or anyone else shot? Has he ever had any rounds hitting 6 pins? Based on what seem to be reliable reports, there was clearly something very special about what Moe Norman did with a golf club and ball.

Just my 2 cents.