Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf

I’m brand new to playing golf, and was unsure where to start learning. I’m a self teacher, so my search always starts with a book. Did I just ver find one?! This is THE tome of golf wisdom. Ben Hogan is renowned as one of the greatest golfers of all time, and when he originally wrote these 5 essays in 1957, he turned the world into potential golfers. This book won’t teach you everything about golf, but everything about playing golf starts with the lessons contained. From the forward by fellow legend Lee Trevino, to the original artwork detailing each point, and the second half of the book with articles and interviews detailing Ben’s life and legacy, this is the first book every new golfer should read. I’m 1/4 through, and I’ve already found a few flaws in what I would have been practicing. While I’m sure it can’t replace lessons with a real teacher, if you’re like me and can easily apply what you read, this book will get your game off the ground.

I cannot figure out why I never had this book decades ago. It's an easy read giving Hogan's methods for the swing. I recommend it to all golfers. The back section of the book is a set of articles and interviews of Ben Hogan over the decades. Those are informative. Sometimes these old books (1957 for this) are hard to find, so glad this is in print now. Don't think a book written in 1957 is irrelevant. Wrong! It certainly is.

A classic. Painstakingly takes you through the essentials of hitting a golf ball. Starts with the grip and proceeds to the set up, backswing, and forward swing. Good diagrams. Has helped my game.

This book is all any starting novice golfer will need for proper instructions on full swing. For short game, I will recommend Getting Up And Down by Tom Watson. I found numerous videos for tips in Youtube largely useless or misleading especially for the novice. To learn powerful and repeatable full swing, this book is best because it explains all the steps from the grip to downswing as one coherent system that is what Mr. Hogan refers to as chain actions. Having said that, this book elicits some questions, as well. For example, though Mr. Hogan devoted Chapter 2 to stance and posture, unexplicably he does not talk about how to address the ball in detail. In two other equally great books, Getting Up And Down by Tom Watson and Golf My Way by Jack Nicklaus, the authors emphasize address should reflect so called hitting geometry in which the hands are ahead of the ball location. The reader of this book can only guess what Mr. Hogan's thought might be on proper address from one of the illustrations in the book, where remarkably to me at least, the club is held almost perfectlly vertical (pg. 24)! I can confirm the same vertical address in numerous videos of him. Another example is the position of the grip at the top of backswing that he aptly refers to as the crossroad. He emphasizes in this book the left arm and grip should stay in the backswing plane which is a plane extending through the shoulders and the ball at address. This is a point I found very useful and follow. However, it is widely known that, as a player, his grip at the crossroad was far below this plane (shown in iconic Aug. 8, 1955 Life Magazine cover) and, as a matter of fact, one of the flattest of all PGA pros according to Jack Nicklaus. I wonder therefore whether his emphasis on supination (counter-clockwise rotation of the hands/wrists in the hitting area) is a way to compensate for his low top position. The starting golfers however should not mind this discrepancy. Instead they should focus on his teaching in the book to stay on the backswing plane and that will work nicely. All in all, I have no doubt this is the first book any starting golfers should read and refer to whenever questions arise as they practice full swing. They will benefit immeasurably.i P.S. Since I wrote my review two years ago, I have gained an additional insight on supination. I was baffled by the fact that some golfers did not underscore its impotance as much as Hogan did in this book and this is why. His grip, the famous Hogan grip, is essentially a fade grip and without conscious turn and control of his left hand, the face of the club will open at impact. If it is done properly however it will become a power source as the speed of the club head will increase by this turning. When it is combined with the right hand release, the result? Long and deadly straight ball to the target with slight fade at the end (Hogan's power fade) even for amateur golfers.

I owned this book several years ago and sold it; it was too tedious for a beginner/novice. Now at least 10 years later, I have been taking lessons and looking at videos from several teachers (PurePoint, Consistant Golf, PerfomMax, Shawn Clement, etc.) who all seem to follow him very closely. The grip remains good even today. Posture is classic. The fundamentals of the backswing are ever so slightly different from modern teaching. The hip movements in the backswing have to be practiced as he advocates -- slightly sliding to the back then leading with them on the downswing. The downswing is closer to what the current long drive hitters advocate -- starting with the hips before the backswing is completed. If you can follow his instructions in conjunction with modern teaching, you can have a solid, repeating swing. His clear descriptions of how to hold your arms and place your elbows and keep them close have helped me begin to rid my slice. Some teachers will argue that some of his techniques are not the best, like lifting your left heel (righthanders) on the backswing which might produce different results as one can't control how much it lifts in quarter of inches. Reading the book is not easy, although the drawings help, as it is written in a run-on almost rambling manner laced with lengthy paragraphs in all capital letters. This is the reason I give the book a "4." One has to extract the instruction. Fortunately, it is a short book with basically one chapter for each lesson. He suggests practicing each lesson before moving on. I recommend this as it easier to read one lesson at a time. Rereading is not a bad idea either. One of the more confusing elements is his description of the swing place as a pane of glass with a hole in the center for your head. It is not an easy idea to comprehend. I have had instructors refer to this as if the plane were parallel to the ground as in a baseball swing! A pure beginner should start somewhere else and the come back to this to cleanup and strengthen. Any one who wants to read this book should google for "Hogan's swing" for a great many examples of just how he did it as well as a number of videos of instructors trying to find his "secret!" Overall, not a bad role model for any one.

I’m a relatively new golfer, but my husband is a fantastic golfer who has played his entire life. I decided to read this book after hearing it referenced on several golf podcasts referring to former pros who learned to play the game by adopting the advice of this book. It has stood the test of time! My husband was skeptical, especially since chapter one suggested he move from his interlocking grip to an overlap grip. He tried it and couldn’t believe the results in how he hit the ball. We are still working our way through it because you don’t want to move to fast when changing everything, we work one chapter at a time and give it time to feel natural before moving to the next! Would definitely recommend this to any golfer. If nothing else it’s interesting as he explains the why behind the movements.

T’is a suggested formula to hit the ball far and true - to a spot, as it were. This way, the most important shot becomes the next one, the ball with the best lie, the one in the right place, on line with the easiest putt, the one you line up in the back of the hole. We have a chance to see how Mr. Hogan custom built his swing to be the one that gave him a pretty good miss every time he hit his ball - because it wound up right where he wanted it. Listen to the sheer logic of this past mast master of the baton. If your swing is on plane and the club face hits the ball first and the turf right away after that, “...you can’t look anywhere else.” He started off as a caddy - cadet de les batons. Monkey see, monkey do. He made his bid for greatness by looping the guys with the skills he wanted and understood. It doesn’t get any better, and here was his secret. There is nothing doing if it’s not essential. In the final analysis, all the great players do essentially the same things in the grip, the address, the takeaway, the backswing, and they start the downswing with their hips, then they let their hips turn their shoulders, their arms, and their hands back to a square strike of the ball! He’s a man with a plan, and he’s quick to let his students know that the mythical average man has everything it takes to get the job done. He is just at a loss when it comes to knowing just what to do. Look no further. The lead statement is as classic as anything the great philosophers ever wrote. “The golf swing begins with a good grip...” Try it! It’s a humdinger. Lets you fingers control that stick, as if the dude swinging it owns it. It doesn’t get any better. - Legendary

Some things never change. You may tweak the way you play the game, but the fundamentals always remain the same. The Grand Old Man, Ben Hogan, wrote this book nearly a half century ago, and it'll be a conversation piece on your coffee table because of it. Chock full of hand-drawn pics (nary a photo in the book) and capitalized phrases for emphasis (known as shouting in this day and age), Hogan sits you down on the front porch and tells you how the cow ate the cabbage. It's all about your grip, your stance, the angle of the club throughout your swing, the pivot of your torso and your vision of the shot. There will always be a new school of thought backed up by the accomplishments of the Next Big Thing. Only the basic principles can never be entirely discarded, and Hogan urges you to allow muscle memory to lead you to success. As I said, there will always be the idiosyncracies and nuances that make the game interesting, and playable for those of us who just don't get it the first time. I'm an ex-hockey player (for the time being at least), and I have been translating my slap shot into a driver swing. Most players would think I'm whacked, but it actually helps me power the shots across the green rather than develop the perfect form that Hogan advocates. Granted, I'd probably be doing a lot better learning the right way. Only I might've just as well given up a long time ago. The best of both worlds is learning the game by hook or crook and improving as you go along. And books like Hogan's are just what you need to eventually succeed. For all golfers, this is an excellent primer for the newbie and a checklist for the intermediate player. For the lifelong enthusiast, this is a piece of golf history and a keepsake you won't want to be without.