The Best Swing Hogan Ever Saw
Day 1 on “Golf the Wright Way” by Mickey Wright
All I wanted to do was hit, hit, hit.”
Mickey says, “When I was seven, my father bought me a toy set of golf clubs. I swung so hard with those little clubs, I broke every one.”
When she was 11, her dad took her on his weekly pilgrimage to the driving range. She swung so hard, he made her use one of those beat-up clubs borrowed from the pro shop.
“I stood swinging away with all my might,” she recalls. “All I wanted to do was hit, hit, hit.”
She began taking lessons and playing golf after school. She found every canyon and every bunker. Mickey says, “I was long and I was wild and I loved every minute of it.”
But the carefree season of childhood doesn’t last. As she grew older, she wanted to play better—and swinging hard wasn’t enough.
“A gradually accelerating swing.”
Mickey’s first teacher was a patient golf pro named Johnny Bellante. Johnny believed in hitting the ball hard—but the power came from rhythm, not force.
Mickey says, “Johnny tried to teach me the feeling of a free, rhythmic, gradually accelerating swing.”
That’s a hard lesson for any of us, let alone a teenager who loved to smash the ball.
Johnny walked her into the shade of a tall eucalyptus tree. He showed her how the branches swayed in the breeze. Back and forth, natural and easy. The branches were part of the bough which was part of the trunk which was balanced in the earth.
He cut a thin branch, stripped the leaves, and handed it to her. “Mickey,” he said, “I want you to swing this branch until you can make it sing.”
“The best I’ve ever seen.”
For months, Mickey walked around swinging that stick like a golf club. She writes, “If I tried to make it sing by forcibly assisting it with my body, my arms, my hands, or my shoulders, I just wasted its momentum. It wouldn’t sing.”
It took time, but she learned to feel her rhythm. To feel her body flow into the swing. To feel the acceleration build until the momentum released through impact. The stick sounded like a flute as it whistled through the air.
Six months later, young Mickey Wright was crushing 200-yard drives straight down the fairway. In a few years, Ben Hogan would say, “Mickey has the best swing I’ve ever seen.”
Helen Keller said, “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen. They must be felt.”
Swinging that stick was a lesson Mickey never forgot. She often picked up a golf club at home and swung it back and forth, just to feel her swing. When was the last time you did that? Not as a practice swing or to check your technique. But to feel your natural rhythm. To feel the gradual acceleration.
According to Mickey, this simple exercise is one of the best things you can do for your game. Because if you want to trust your swing, you gotta know how it feels.
That’s all for now. Until next time, keep imagining what’s possible.