A Scent of the Secret

Serious golfers all know what "Inside Out" means. We all want the clubhead to swing from inside the target line out to the ball, or square to that line, and then back inside on the follow-through. That much is clear. I've known that every since I started trying to learn a good swing, and that was over a year ago. In my last post, I recalled how my swing coach pointed out that my swing path was outside-to-in, which explained why most of my shots started out left of my intended target line before fading or slicing to the right. JJ gave me a drill to use (trying to hit just right of a target placed in front of me), and I went home to practice for as long as it would take to get this path problem fixed.

As I've said before in my posts, this is yet another example of my tendency to think I'm doing one thing when, really, I'm not. Part of the reason for this tendency, I think, is some kind of wishful thinking. I so eager to do the correct thing that I convince myself I've already learned it. Another explanation is simply that, as complex as the golf swing is, there is a limit to what I can absorb at any one time. A swing idea might go into my brain when I read some instruction in a book, but the thought tends to stay there for quite a while before it starts to show up in my swing. Perhaps each swing improvement needs some gestation period.

Eventually, good things will happen. “All in good time,” as Cervantes reminds us. Valuable lessons rarely come easily. Even if they did, it would be highly unlikely that a golf insight would be one of them. No, golf reveals its secrets grudgingly. Golf’s stubbornness requires patience and practice. Fortunately, I enjoy practicing and am content to keep on practicing as long as it takes for the next feature of the swing to kick in. Each time I sense an improvement, it feels like a revelation, a golf gift that we sometimes call an “epiphany.” I haven’t been counting, but by now, after more than a year of learning, I wonder how many epiphanies I’ve had. It’s certainly dozens at least.

At about this time, I came across another book that eventually made a huge difference in my understanding of the golf swing.

The Secret of Hogan’s Swing is a great book for anyone who is trying to learn golf. Not only is the author, Tom Bertrand, a great teacher in his own right, but he also operates with the unequaled advantage of having studied with one of the few people who actually learned from Ben Hogan himself. And that person was John Schlee. Bertrand and Schlee hooked up for a number of years, and Bertrand took note of everything that Hogan had taught Schlee.

The book falls into two main parts. First, Bertrand talks about his relationship with Schlee. For me, that was interesting because I remembered Schlee as a Tour player I used to watch on TV. After Bertrand goes through the etiology of what Hogan taught Schlee, he gets to the heart of the matter in two chapters that distill the essence of Hogan’s book. Condensed and targeted as Bertrand’s summary is, full of photographs and explanations, I was able to absorb only so much on this, my first exposure. I had to return to this book several other times, as I will relate in another post. This time through, I was able to concentrate on a couple of details.

One was that Bertrand took me back to Hogan’s emphasis on keeping the arms together as a unit. The second is the role of the left elbow in the downswing. I’ll go into more detail in a subsequent post, but for the moment, as the left elbow turns toward the left hip, that movement squares up the clubface at impact, obviating the need for a conscious, “handsy” attempt to get square. Be sure to view Bertrand’s video on YouTube where he discusses this move in detail. I found the video extremely helpful and important. According to Bertrand, the role of the left elbow is “the ‘missing link’ in the ongoing analysis of Hogan’s secret.” Without Bertrand—both his book and his video—I doubt that I ever would have understood this crucial feature of the downswing.

One of the great advantages of Bertrand’s book is that it drives you back to Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. Bertrand got me to start studying Hogan all over again, revisiting Hogan with a fresh eye for what he was trying to impart.

Now that I was improving the path of my swing and had a scent—a whiff— of Hogan’s Secret, I felt I was finally making real progress. Suddenly, it started to appear that I might actually have a swing good enough to take out on the course in the coming spring. Of course, there was plenty to do in the meantime. That will be the subject for the next post.