BEN HOGAN GOLF SWING LESSONS [The Ben Hogan Backswing]

Hey there Segudo golfers, Tom Segudo here, PGA member and founder of Segudo Golf. In this episode, we're diving in to Ben Hogan's golf swing. In a short little series, I'll be talking about Ben Hogan's backswing today. Simple, compact, powerful backswing that you can implement into your game to help you be more consistent, powerful, and hit it like him. Who doesn't want to hit it like him after all? I'm really excited about today's episode because this is going to simplify your backswing to a whole new level. Just like Ben Hogan had that nice, short, sweet, smooth, flowing backswing, you're going to get that today in a really simple way. I'm not trying to rhyme, but it just happens. Before we get started, subscribe to this channel if you want to have the best ball striking of your life because I'm going to help you get there in a body-friendly and simplified manner. It's all about you playing your best golf right now. That's what's going on at Segudo Golf. Let's get started with the Ben Hogan backswing series. Before we get started with the Ben Hogan backswing technique, let's just talk a little bit about why Ben Hogan's backswing is so awesome and simple and successful. One thing that he did in his backswing that really simplified the entire golf swing, you take his hands and he put it behind his right shoulder like this. What this does is it puts the club in an awesome position to deliver to the golf ball. The most efficient way to deliver the club to the golf ball and the most powerful is one where the club goes through the middle, lower part of your back, right here. Oftentimes people refer to that as the slot in the downswing where they try and get the club in the magical slot. The beauty of Hogan's swing is he just puts the club in the slot in the backswing. It removes the need for you to do any dropping or lifting or looping and hooping. You just put the club in the slot and you hit from there. That's so simple. Golf doesn't have to be so hard. Hogan had the answer. One of the things we're going to focus on today, as you can imagine, is getting the hands behind the right shoulder or behind the trail shoulder just like he did. There's a certain way that I want you to accomplish that. The other thing that he did to help have a compact swing was keep his arms very connected to his chest and keep his arms straight. Now I'm not talking about keeping your arms locked straight. That's too much work. That's too much tension. I don't want you being tense over the golf ball. I want you being comfortably athletic like you're going to kill the ball nicely. It's a nice passive aggression. Our arms are straight, but they're not locked where you can see all your veins. I don't want you showing off all your muscles just yet. Arms are straight and your upper arms are connected against your side. That enables him, no matter what day it is, to put the club in this position. Everything's really connected, tricep against the side here. You can't screw it up. You just can't screw this up if you're connected and your arms are straight. The last thing that made his backswing so powerful and repeatable is the hip turn and keeping his body centered over the golf ball. He would set up with his weight slightly forward like this and he would take the club back allowing his hips to turn, straightening the trail leg, straightening his right leg. What this does is it frees up your body to turn by allowing the leg to straighten and keeping the weight on the front side allows the hips to turn more. It also allows you to get the club back in here and it gives you more power. The more you can turn, the more you can rip it. The more you can hit it with the wrath of God. You're going to be learning those three awesome keys today. It's a very simple, compact backswing. No lifting of the arms, so no lifting. No dropping of the club. No chopping. All those variables that you're used to seeing in almost every swing today out there in the amateur world, lift, chop, most common, over the top, none of that happens when you keep a simple, compact Ben Hogan backswing. How do we do this? Well first, step one, the pre-flight. Set the weight slightly forward by pushing your hip just a little bit to the left or toward the target, 55% of your weight here, shoulders over the hips, over the knees in a straight line. You're centered over the golf ball, just like he would have been, and then next step, connect the upper arms to your side, gloom in there, not going anywhere, gloom in there, not going anywhere. Stay. Next, arms straight, hanging down naturally from that point. Those things set you up for a beautiful, buttery backswing that doesn't take a lot of work. And I'm serious when I tell you this, 95% of your swing happens before you even swing the club. It's in the foundation of the set up. Heck, I'd even bet that about 99.9% of your swing is in the set up and it's the 1% is how you move your body. So we're going to start off getting connected, should feel really tight. If you're not used to being connected, you need to glue those arms to your side, eventually it won't feel as tight as you get used to it, but in the beginning it feels like glue, so you really got to get them cemented in there. Keep them that way, all right? Keep them glued in there. The reason we do this is we want the club to trace the same path every single time. If you want to be consistent, you got to do that. Club's got to travel the same path every single time. Step two, the backswing part. I want you to make sure the hands get behind the trail shoulder. How do we do that? We've got this connection here, simply don't lift your arms. No up and down motion. If you stand up straight and you turn your chest away from the target, that's turn. It automatically brings the club around your body. Biggest problem I see today is people go up, not around. They spend too much time doing this, not enough time doing this. If I was a baseball player hitting my shot off of a tee, you know how baseball players hit off a tee right here, boom, off a tee, down that way. If I was a baseball player and someone said, I want you to lift your arms and hit that ball, you couldn't possibly hit a ball far down to the target because you'd have to do this to a baseball on a tee. It just doesn't work. Lifting arms does that in your golf swing. We're going to do away with lifting the arms. Mr. Hogan did not lift his arms. He took the club around his body. We do that by turning our chest away from the target, or for right-handed players, turn your chest to the right. He also did another thing. He tilted. You turn and tilt, turn your chest down to keep your body's relationship with the ball. That puts your hands in this spot right here. The turn gets the hands over. The tilt gets the hands traveling up the proper path. Perfect backswing right there. How awesome is that? This swing is so simple. I was going to say simple, didn't say easy. It's simple because if you stay connected and you have your body turn and tilt, this is what you get. That's that all day long. It's a natural motion. If the body, the upper chest, does the work and you've got the arms straight and you're connected, it's a zero-thinking backswing. It all just happens. How nice is that? It's powerful. No work. All right. Let's get set. Connection. Arms straight. All right. So, good ol' golfer. So, we talked about the swing. I just want to go back in to do a little brief analysis on Ben Hogan's swing, show you those moves that he's making so you can see it a little bit more clearly. Nice setup of the ball, really comfortable, relaxed, comfortably athletic, killed the ball nicely. Passive aggressive golf. It's the best way to play golf. Get passive aggressive. We're going to first take a look at the hands-in concept, take the hands behind the right shoulder. In the process, you're going to see something really important here, and that is the connection between the upper left arm and the side, glued, as well as the upper right arm and the side going to the top. Check this out. Right there. Only way you can get in that position is if you're glued together. Anything else becomes a lift. If you disconnect, you lift. Don't know what to tell you right there. Just don't disconnect. It's the most depressing thing that could ever happen in your golf swing. If you disconnect, your arms lose contact with your body and the club can go all over the place. There's many different paths you could take, but if you're connected and keeping those arms straight, the arms will naturally fold and stay connected against your side just like this. The Ben Hogan backswing is not as much of a mystery as a lot of people think. It's as simple as connection and arms straight, and just ensuring that you take those hands behind the right shoulder, as you see right here. Look at that. Hands behind the right shoulder, the trail shoulder, and the hands through the middle of the bicep. That's a position we can all strive to emulate. It's really easy to deliver the club to the ball from there, which brings me to that simple downswing move we were talking about. Shaft plane, club travels up that in the backswing, nice and connected at the top, and then he's already in that downswing slot because he put it there in the backswing. Right back to the ball. Here we go. Whoop. So simple. Boom, boom. Instead of, like most people, they go all over the place. Right through the ball, and he's done. Next we're going to look at the hips and the trail leg straightening, so check out the way the hips swivel here. As he takes the club back, the hips are swiveling, turning, pivoting, whatever you want to call it, and the connection, once again, you see the connection here. But look at these knees. The front knee is going to go down toward the golf ball, and the only way you can do that is if you've got weight on your front side. The hips have to turn for this to happen, and the weight on the front side helps the hips turn on more of an angle. So that puts pressure on the front side, which he's going to use as a power source, and the trail leg, conversely, is going to straighten a little bit. Look at that. So Mr. Hogan saying you've got to flex the knee, well, feel versus real, he's straightening the leg, pivoting, straightening. This is a great body-friendly move, takes the stress off the back because you're allowing the hips to turn. It's a beautiful effortless motion. Allow the hips to turn. If you start restricting, that's when you get pain. Lastly, let's look at the straight arms in his swing. Here's the relationship he gets at address, and he doesn't look tense. We're not talking about locking the arms, once again. Just keep the arms straight. If you keep the connection, keeps the arms straight, helps you have one contact point. We want one contact point, don't we? At the top, lead arm is still straight, trail arm is folded, because it's connected against the side, it's got to fold, and on the downswing, the lead arm is still straight, trail arm is still tucked, we'll get into that in the downswing episode, and then everything explodes at the ball. The trail arm punches through that golf ball, and the arms stay fully extended on the way through. Both arms don't get straight again until just after impact, like this. It's a powerful move. You're storing power in the trail arm, and it's punching through that golf ball. These are some of the most important backswing keys if you want a simple, concise, short, compact backswing that's effective like Ben Hogan's. It doesn't take a lot of effort, as you're seeing in the episode, and you can achieve this. Anybody can achieve this. It's so simple. Turn the chest, keep the connection, do the things we talked about in the episode there, and you will hit the ball very pure. So Sagudo golfers, thank you for tuning in. If you liked the episode, drop a like, comment what you thought, and if you'd like to see more episodes like this, let me know in the comments section below. And if you're looking for a simplified way to play your best golf right now, check out my website, Sagudo.golf. I've got a simplified golf swing and golf game learning program that takes you step by step from foundation to finish in short 3-5 minute videos showing you exactly how to implement this type of golf swing. I look forward to seeing you more on the channel, and have an awesome day!