The Heartbeat of the Swing
Day 3 on “Ben Hogan's Five Lessons"
“I ran the gamut of grips.”
Hogan was born left-handed.
The first club he owned was a lefty 5-iron. But like all the poor kids in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, he got his clubs out of a barrel at the five-and-dime store.
There were no left-handed sticks in the barrel, so he learned to swing right-handed. He tried the cross-handed grip, interlocking grip, and everything in between.
Hogan writes, “If any golfer ever ran the whole gamut of grips, I did.”
“Designed to fit on a club.”
Hogan was a scrawny 19-year-old when he made his first run at pro golf.
It was 1930. The Great Depression had crashed the country.
But at some tournaments, a middle-aged Walter Hagen would show up, well-dressed and laughing as if depression wasn’t an option.
Hagen won his first U.S. Open when Hogan was two years old. By the time Hogan joined the tour, Hagen won 10 more majors. Bobby Jones made everyone want to be an amateur champion. Walter Hagen made Ben Hogan want to become a professional.
Hogan says, “Hagen had a beautiful grip, delicate and at the same time powerful. It always looked to me as if his hands had been especially designed to fit on a golf club.”
Change your grip, change your game.
We think of Hogan as so serious, the man who stared at a competitor the way a hawk stared at a rabbit. So I love the image of Hogan sitting with Hagen, listening to stories.
Hagen said, “A lady asked if I could look at her swing. She was in a tournament the following day and wasn’t getting the full power from her drive.”
Hagen changed her grip slightly to keep the clubface more open. The woman was skeptical, but thanked Hagen and left.
Hagen said, “She came back after her match, excited and grateful. ‘I hit the ball beautifully,’ she told me, ‘and I won my match. I brought you a gift in appreciation.’ She unwrapped a fresh loaf of homemade bread and gave it to me.”
Hagen laughed, and I can only imagine young Ben Hogan laughing too. But he also learned the moral of the story: changing a golfer’s grip can change their game.
Tour de France champion Greg LeMond said, “Practicing the basics is the foundation for mastering the extraordinary.”
You might be wondering, “Do we need a whole story about the grip?” According to Hogan, we do. Many of us just use the grip we started with.
If you’re struggling with consistency, Hogan recommends you test and find the grip that suits your body and your swing. He writes, “For most golfers, the grip is the drabbest part of the swing. There’s no glamor to it. They see the grip as nothing active, nothing decisive. But far from being static, the grip is the heartbeat of the action of the swing. Good golf begins with a good grip.”
That’s all for now. Until next time, keep imagining what’s possible.