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speaker-0: the lion, why they do the lion. A
speaker-1: Very nut bro.
speaker-0: lot of you are gonna hate us. Exactly. No free course. Show the data. Show the proof. That's if you wanna call it pilot, go ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, your favorite, hard-hitting, golf instruction-based, but not all golf instruction, all the time, podcast. Hosted by yours truly, Brian Manzala, coming to you today from New Orleans, Louisiana, and
speaker-1: Sam Osborne coming to you from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, by way of London, England. How are we doing, everyone? How are you doing, Brian?
speaker-0: Still hot down here. What about what about Wisconsin?
speaker-1: Well, as you can see from the hoodie, it's getting a little bit chillier. We've we've had good weather, but right now it's raining and a bit chilly. So we we probably envy you and you probably envy at least the temperature here.
speaker-0: How similar overall is the is the weather there to England, where you're from?
speaker-1: Yeah, so right now it's not too dissimilar. It's it's actually probably the same, but give it a couple of months, it'll be a lot colder here, a lot more snow, despite England.
speaker-0: Even though even though it's lower on the
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Lat latitude, England's England's hundreds well, hundreds of miles higher north. It's up it's up level with Canada, somewhere in Canada. But the Gulf Stream, you know, they don't get any snow and they can play golf year round. So that's the one thing they've got on Wisconsin. Yeah.
speaker-0: Those those suckers. So you you can pretty much play you around out here too. So today's big lie, which is what the show's all about. This might be the biggest lie that we've talked about in this show. Boy, that's saying a lot.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's a big.
speaker-0: Definitely that doesn't have anything to do with golf science. The biggest lie, I I I I mean. Okay. Ben Hogan wrote two books, Power
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Golf. They stopped printing probably in the 60s with the pictures and a hard cover. but it's a fabulous book. It's a good read, and the pictures are so good that several golf pros, including my teacher Ben Doyle, used the sequence, the definitely the iron sequence of Ben Hogan in power golf for their model. Yeah. So that's but the book that everybody's familiar with. Got a copy right here, the latest version, the green cover. Van Hogan's Five Lessons, often called Five Fundamentals. No, there's eight fundamentals. You can look it up. I argued with Grok one day and it it waved the white flag because I knew the answer. So, okay, the lie is that the book that came out in 1957 has been overall bad for golf instruction and turned. Golfers who are already kind of slicers into more slicers than they have ever been.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: That's the lie. Okay? The truth is it's a good book. And if you follow it, you're gonna hit it pretty good based on copying the book. And I don't think the world slices it more than they do now. I think they slice it less. So The whole thing is just a lie. It's been told I've heard it over the centuries, right? John Jacobs, right?
speaker-1: Yeah, so John you know, I remember Harvey Pennick saying that and John Jacob saying that specifically.
speaker-0: RV Pennick's been gone quite a while. So they thought it was slice-based instruction. I I'm not saying those two guys aren't two of the best 50 teachers of all time. I'm saying I'll I'll I'll get in an anti-slice contest with those two guys if we go to the big golf course in the sky one day where nobody probably slices it. Right. It wouldn't be any fun if you couldn't slice it. So hopefully you could if you could play golf up there in the clouds. with the man upstairs, then you know, though every course looks like Augusta and you can still hook and slice it. Okay, let me read you, Sam, to get your real comments what some people have said
speaker-1: Are they not people? Are they just claiming to be people?
speaker-0: Well, because one of them is a is a golf forum and one of them is a is an is a organization.
speaker-1: Okay, I take it back.
speaker-0: And two of the and two of the names on here I've never heard of. So they may be people, they may be f it may be bots. Okay, here we go. Brandel Shamblee, gang.
speaker-1: right.
speaker-0: Who wrote a book? Basically Kelvin Miahara's golf swing ideas. Without enough credit. That's that's what I would call that book, The Anatomy of Greatness or whatever the hell it Interesting. Okay. Okay. Which not a terrible book either. Okay, so here we go. Randall Chambly. The origin of bad golf instruction for decades was Hogan's book.
speaker-1: Mm.
speaker-0: Let's let's let's do these one at a time. What do you think about that? And
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean
speaker-0: Hogan writes a book, nineteen fifty-seven, they push it out. There was five magazine articles. A lot of people might have bought the magazine articles and that they didn't need to buy the book and they just put them in a binder. Whatever. But Hogan's book comes out in nineteen fifty-seven and for decades, because nobody questioned Ben Hogan, which is garbage, but golf instruction was worse because of the book, What Says Sam.
speaker-1: I think that just framing that question it's nonsense. I mean I I I don't believe that for one second. I don't think a lot of thought went into that answer. I don't think I need to say any more than that. It's just rot, you know, that's not true. I I you know, we're gonna go through the book bit by bit here and and and line up which bits we you know we can identify as ruining a golfer and there's not a lot in there that's gonna that's gonna do any sort of damage like what he's talking about. So it's
speaker-0: I know a little bit about, you know, like you like I I I agree a hundred percent. So let me get get to the let's kill the first part of this first. People are bad teachers who are bad teachers for the following reasons. A, they
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don't give up shit.
speaker-1: Yeah, fair.
speaker-0: That'll do it. Like you're really not, you can just watch them give a lesson. It's like, they're there, but they're not even really there. Right, right. Okay. So I would put that in the communication. They're not good communicators. They're not thought in enough. Yep. They don't study enough, which would mean this would be study material, but not the only study material. And whatever it is that they wind up teaching. Is just if you did it, it really wouldn't produce good golf. And then the final one that nobody wants to talk about, but is the thing they can't get anybody to do what it is that they think they ought to be doing because they can't teach. They can tell you, hey, whatever. Okay. So you mean to tell me, Brandon, that from 1957 to 2007, let's just say 50 years, that If everybody would have taught straight out of Hogan's book.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: And tried to get everybody to swing like the book says, not like Hogan's because there's things in the book that Hogan didn't do, blah blah blah. The Gulf overall w would have been worse. Yeah. Out
speaker-1: No.
speaker-0: of here. So you agree, you agree that that's just the dumbest thing ever.
speaker-1: I I do, yeah. I think it's absurd. And and and just before we move on, you know, to the end of his life, you know, Hogan was still getting questions about the book, about the secret, which is something else, you know. But the book itself, he was they said, well, you said this in the book. And he stood by he didn't he didn't retract anything. He didn't say, well, we've moved on from that now. He didn't retract anything. He said, you know, it's all right there. What I what I did is written in the book. Yeah.
speaker-0: That's and then now you could you could see the the Hogan experts. I got a lot of quotation marks today. Those people would tell you, he said if he ever really wrote a book, it'd have been this thing. No, then we ain't talking. yeah. Okay, he did say that. Yes. Wish he would have. Guess
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: what? We're not talking about that. We're talking about this book. Okay. Shamblee goes on. His weak grip amplified amateur slices instead of fixing them. Okay, we're gonna deal with the grip in a second. Okay. it misled him as a kid to copying pictures. Didn't you make it on tour and once won a tournament and once led the masters after one round?
speaker-1: is in the point one percent of all golfers, but
speaker-0: Yeah, really ruined you. Okay. Golf WRX, the forum. Okay. That used to be a competitor of mine in the Manzella Forum days and we whooped them in the instruction part of Yeah. But I got pretty tired of it. estimated that seventy-five percent of readers end up slicing. Okay, like like like the good question would be, out of how many were already slicers, or did it turn? What do you think they're trying to say there?
speaker-1: Yeah, I again I think that it's one of those that's just bandied about like, if you gripped it like the Hogan book then and you're not a good player, then you sliced it. you know, I mean it's just one of those, you know, eighty percent of all statistics are made up, you know. So you know, okay, yeah, seventy five, we'll call it that. It's yeah.
speaker-0: Golf and golf digest, which was probably Luke Kurdine, you know, because it seems to be said Hogan's three anti hook moves only work with tour level torque. Which torque, Luke? Alpha torque?
speaker-1: No, well, you know, okay. So so I we could have thrown that one out before you actually said the quote, you know. I you know.
speaker-0: No, no, no, no. Again, this is conflating the article in Time Mag Time Life or what what on the secret which had three moves: weaker grip, roll the left arm, cup the left wrist. That's three things that would make it harder to hook it. But he didn't implicitly.
speaker-1: That wasn't in that wasn't in the book, right?
speaker-0: so they didn't they and then USGT the United States Gulf Teachers Federation said the grip was weaker than Tura. Okay. I've heard a lot about the grip. Okay. So I have this book right here, you know?
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: And the Anthony Ravielli, you know, scratch technique, beautifully illustrated book. Okay. So Hogan advocates in the book, this has to be. mentioned 25 more times on this podcast.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: We're talking about the book. The lie is the book made golf instruction works. The lie is the book made people slicers. We're going to deal with the slicers. Hogan says get it under the heel pad and be able to pick the club up with just the heel pad and the forefinger. Okay. When he when he demonstrates this in the pictures, his fingers are angled like 45 his the the remaining fingers 'cause he's got under the heel pad and it's in the forefinger, thumbs up in the air. The remaining three fingers are on an angle to the grip, like forty degrees. He had it much closer to ninety, again, but a million thumb. We're not saying what he did.
speaker-1: We're talking about what he's prescribing in the book. Yeah. Okay.
speaker-0: So he wants it under the heel pad so that you could pick it up with the forefinger and the heel pad. How many people
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: with their normal grip could pick it up with the forefinger and heel pad? So well, if if you can, your heel pad is on the top. Yes.
speaker-1: Of the
speaker-0: How many people out of a hundred that play golf out of funnel research says a hundred and forty-eight million golfers that's on course? But also counting people who go to top golf and hit balls and people who have never hit a golf ball outside, they just play simulated golf inside. 148 million. What percentage of those people grip would be able to just let go of the last three fingers and the thumb and pick the club up?
speaker-1: Well, I I defer to you on this one, Brian, 'cause you see more people playing golf than I do, but if I had to guess, I would say
maybe like sixty percent of golfers are able to, you know, closer. I mean, that is just
speaker-0: Yeah, it's just something to to a good player it's something that you you learned when you got twelve.
speaker-1: Yeah. I mean, 'cause you to grip it in your palm, it just you know, that feels 'cause you can't the the for for everyone listening, you know, you can't if you've got the club in the palm of your left hand or and certainly the palm of your right hand, your wrists don't work correctly, you know, the the it it just
speaker-0: Straight garbage. Feels awful. But that's what people do. And if if you have the heel pad on top of the club, you don't wear out the little spot on your heel pad. Right. And most people that are, you know, average novice golfers, they're playing with all-weather gloves that are hard to wear out anyway, that have another extra piece sewn on top because they don't have their heel pad.
speaker-1: They still go through it.
speaker-0: And then he said the V's, Sam. He said the V. of the left hand, which is a garbage way to do it. Hold the club up and look at it this way. But the wrinkle from made from the thumb and the forefinger points at the
speaker-1: Right eye, I think, is what he said. Okay, yes. Yeah, so that that's you know, that's for for some people's money is is on the weaker side, but it's you know, it it's not it's not pointing at his left eye, it's pointing at his right eye. So that V, you know, created there, you know, you've got the thumb thumb, you know, maybe slightly off center to the right of the grip. So that's you know, th I'm okay with that. I and and in my opinion, it's more important for a slicer to get that bit, get that heel pad on the top, correct?
speaker-0: Have twit you'll have twist leverage and you need twist to play golf. Gamma rotation, twisting the shaft about itself. That's what the left hand grip does. The other thing that having a heel pad on top of the club does for you is when the club is uncocking, it just doesn't keep uncocking so much that the toe goes straight to the ground. It runs into your heel pad. It stabilizes that with a little torque the other way because it can't go through. All of that meat and bones and muscle and all that kind of stuff. And then the right hand grip in the fingers, right? Mm-hmm. In the lifeline, you know, like b hiked up with the lifeline, a real pretty thumb and forefinger, famous for that. He's got one of the prettiest grips of all time. Yeah. And the the wrinkle he calls of the of the right hand pointing at the chin, which is a little weaker than I would teach 90% of the people.
speaker-1: But yeah, yeah. Yeah, so so and you might say, well, he said to the right eye with the left hand and to the chin with the right hand. but interestingly, when you do that, when you have the right hand on slightly weaker than the left hand, you will get it even more in the fingers. so so he's very much, you know, obviously most people are going to be gripping it quite well in the fingers anyway, but you know, he's definitely prescribing that kind of grip, which is gonna gonna give you a lot of you know a lot of kick at the bottom and and a lot of feel too that's where a lot of the feel comes from with the right hand. same with Sneed, which is you know, Sneed had a slightly stronger left hand, probably more three knuckle grip with his left hand to use old terminology. Yeah. and then his right hand was in a similar position, which interestingly when he showed the grip from this angle, Brian, I'm sure you everyone's seen Sneed do this. And it's pinky Well instead of
speaker-0: His overlapping finger did not go 90-ish like the wrinkles like Hogan did. It went
speaker-1: No. It was almost on the grip. Yeah, almost forty five to the left hand. because of that the the the the you know, but that really when you've got a strong left hand and a weak right hand or a weaker right hand, really beds the hands together, which is how Sneed gripped it.
speaker-0: And then Holgan puts this picture up. I mean, again, it's so good that you call him pictures. Braviali illustration in the book. Where he takes the forefinger after this grip is completed, he takes the forefinger and the thumb off, like a little like water pistol,
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: and says, you know, you know, fool around with the club with the thumb and the forefinger off. Let me tell you this, folks, if you hit a ball like that, you may slice it. You may draw it for the first time in your life because you're gonna think that if you twist it the wrong way and open the face that you're gonna lose it and you're gonna rotate the club so that the forefinger is on the club and the club is blowing back into your forefinger, it feels like you the club's not gonna come out of your hands, which it wouldn't. Right. And that's the only other thing he says about the grip. So if again, if you took everybody who ever read the book. And they did the grip as prescribed. You gotta realize how bad people's grips are. This would be on the weak side, sure, but because it's under the heel pad and the right four fingers in a decent position, I would say that if you taught this grip in 2026 to every human being in the world, now I would probably screw up Scotty Scheffler because it's weaker. Doesn't matter. We ain't talking about those people. Everybody knows who we're talking about. Everybody else. Okay, a couple of people who play good with strong grips would be worse. That would be like three percent now. Now you got ninety-seven percent left. Okay. How many of those people would play better with that grip than what they currently play with? yeah. I don't know. More than half.
speaker-1: An incredible amount, yes. It it's certainly like you said, if you could click your fingers and have give everyone that grip tomorrow, you wouldn't have you know, a ton more slices. That's the point that w we're making, I think, right, Brian?
speaker-0: Would have less slicers.
speaker-1: Exactly.
speaker-0: Okay. Yes. stance and posture, right? Chapter two. So basically, the the the the key point. Now, you know what's interesting in the book, Sam, is there's several times that Ravielli draws Hogan's grip, like in the feet should be set apart, the width of the short. And it's weaker than the in the grip chapter. Which proves to me, because Ravielli could draw like a son of a gun, yeah, that Hogan advocated for a little more conventional grip than he actually did, which I didn't know until I read it this five hundredth time.
speaker-1: Yeah, interesting.
speaker-0: So the stance, square right foot, square right foot, open left foot, ball on the left heel, right foot ahead of the left for the short irons, in the mid irons, like seven, six iron, pretty square, and then long irons, fairway woods, and driver, the right foot pulled back, ball always on the left heel. What do you what do you what what do you have to say about that? The stance, foot flare. ball position and moving them up what what what what what says Sam.
speaker-1: Yeah, I I have no problem with that whatsoever. I mean, starting with the feet, you know, the the right foot square, left turned out is okay. I mean I I You tried I definitely did when I was young, yeah, I did that, you know, for different spells and and varying success. But I never really landed on a spot where that you know, I thought the feet were incredibly important in terms of you know, how open they are at at address. I I know some methodologies put a lot of stock in that. I I I feel like I walk into the ball and my feet land how they land. And you know, I it
speaker-0: You taught whatever you taught a long time ago.
speaker-1: Exactly, exactly. But I'm not offended by that. You know, the Hogan thing is is good.
speaker-0: about the ball position because you know what you don't know what what what people would say and they probably will say on YouTube because they love to comment if you put the ball on the left heel they won't be able to get low point in the right place. It's too far forward for regular people. It'll ruin
speaker-1: Right, right. What do you think? No, I think it's fine. I think it's fine. Look, you know, obviously we now we're talking about the book and you know, as you bring the the stance in, your your mass the your center of mass of your body is further forward with the short irons and everything. So even though it's technically off the left heel, it you know, you're where you're gonna hit the ground is getting closer and closer or ahead of where the ball is. So I'm okay with that. and specifically the movement of the feet around you know I I I would think that the Italian style and Brian Manzella would would be quite a fan of this because it it's it's got that D plane element to it, correct? Sure.
speaker-0: Does. He's basically advocating for a left or swing with the short irons and a right or swing for the long clubs, which you know, the resultant path of the D in the
D in the D-plane, the bottom of the D-plane, that's going to fix up pretty good. But again, slicers. So people who slice it, what do they slice more than anything else? The driver. How many of those slicers have the right foot pulled back from the left foot? 1%. How many people would Slice it less if they pulled their right foot back. 90%. 90% of slicers, if they pulled their right foot back a couple of inches out of whatever stance they're using, would slice it slightly less. So again, this whole thing is garbage.
speaker-1: Yeah. This is we're just proving the lie here, yeah.
speaker-0: And the number one teacher of where the club hits the ground that ever lived, Bentley J. Doyle, Blue Locks Perlane, Monterey, California, my teacher could teach anybody to walk in a bunker with a firing squad waiting and take out whatever, you know, a a little dot of red paint on one grain of sand, which would be on the left heel. It's hand placement, folks. Hand placements where that's the that's the that way how far you slide your rear end forward. Hand placement. And obviously Hogan had hand placement. And maybe you could make the point if you took regular golvers and taught them to put the ball off the left heel, they'd become better than just letting them put it way back in the stand so they could flip it and still hit it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I hate that. I hate that. but just before we move on, Brian, this is a slight aside. But I remember you on the forum, this is donkeys years ago now, but you said when somebody's trying to hit it low, I don't want them to move the ball back. Do you st do you still stand by that, bearing in mind, you know, we're you know we're on that sort of topic? A little bit. You're a you're a
speaker-0: A little bit, yeah. I I'm less dogmatic. You know, Ben Doyle gulp dogmatic. Ben wanted you just to get closer to it. So once you got closer, the distance from your left shoulder to the ball was reduced, and the only way you could not stick it in the ground was to have your hands way, way forward or way, way back, which you wasn't gonna do trying to hit the ball low. So what do you think about the stick seat, right? He calls it a spectator sports stick.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: But because you could do a little little little dove hunting or something off the s
speaker-1: Well, they hunt the foxes, yeah. It's but the people that aren't shooting are are just sitting there waiting or you know.
speaker-0: Yeah, okay. So what do you think about the Hogan advocated posture? It's less a i well, let's say this without saying the word ASS. It's less booty up in the air, right? Belt buckled down than definitely what except for maybe the last ten years, the back has gotten rounder and the and the butt is a little more under the golfer. I know Jacobs like hit likes hip hinge. Just remember this, folks, again. Not what Hogan did. He did this. And then he bent over way more at the top than he was bent over at the at at a dress. Would the Holgan posture make golfers worse or more slicers applied across 148 million golfers?
speaker-1: No, no, never in a million years. I I think that this this is good. I mean, you know, he's sort of you know, if you're not looking at the podcast or, you know, you haven't seen the book, he's he's perched on the shooting stick just just lightly his sort of rear end just on the shooting stick in a similar way as they used to say, you know, on a higher bar stool, you know, if you were just getting onto it, you know, so you've got some live tension in your legs. you know, your legs aren't bent a ton, they're not dead straight. You know, you've just got that little break in the knees. So, you know, I I think this is this is good stuff. And and to the average player this would be great.
speaker-0: Didn't didn't want in the book, headbed comfortably. I mean, obviously he has the arms turned under. Most people's arms are all over the place. Trying to turn them under is not gonna make the average Joe worse.
speaker-1: Just give him Especially the slicer, yes, for sure. That that's more important than the arms under thing, which which he didn't really do and not many people really do anyway. but you know, I don't think that that would cause a slice, you know, which which is partly what we're talking about here. So no, I I I I think that's all good stuff for the slicer.
speaker-0: I'm gonna make I'm gonna make a I'm make a funny ready. I'm I'm gonna actually say ahead of time I'm I'm being facetious when I even say it.
speaker-1: Okay.
speaker-0: The next part of the book, he talks about something that will really screw everybody up. The waggle. Hey Brandle, hey Golf WRX, hey whoever thinks the book is good make up. Do you really think teaching a proper waggle, which by the way, 98% of modern tour players couldn't do with the with you know for the cash, do you really think that regular golfers out there, the 148 million, 147.8 million of them can't beat me? Okay. That those golfers learning the waggle as prescribed by the king of the waggle, Ben Hogan, is gonna make worse and slice it more.
speaker-1: No, so we w you know, Hogan Waggle is pretty famous and and and the fact that he's in the book describing how he did it, you know, my right elbow goes to my right hip and and he he took the club head back on a plane and then looped it slightly, you know, I mean that's that's great stuff. And it all good for a slicer too. So we can we can dispel that one straight away.
speaker-0: He wanted what the golfing machine called a delayed pivot. He wanted you to swing the club away. Mm-hmm. He wanted you to shift. He talks about shifting, but not a lot. He had that that that stick in the ground or whatever he, you know, for the right leg. He did not want that right leg angled losing the angle. He didn't want you to reverse your hips either, by the way. Right. I'm looking at the top of the backswing position that he advocates, Ravielli's scratch drawn, the f the famous ninety
degrees of shoulder turn, forty five degrees of hip turn.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Does it look like a slicing position to you, Brian?
speaker-0: I would have made a lot less money.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: But it looked like that's a top. Yeah. You know, come on now. There's nothing slice about that top of the backswing position. It's plenty of hip turn. I I would say that if you look at the picture, which the 45 and 90 thing is not going to mean anything to anybody, the picture is going to mean something to them. And if you did that, you you he's making a pretty damn free hip turn and he has no real you know, overtly weird upper body position, except it's turned a lot.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And that and the the he really emphasized that right leg, you know, that's a post. You do not your knee doesn't go away from the target going back. You know, it turns inside that. And obviously for him, th th it became slightly more acute the angle of that right leg going back. But you know, with
speaker-0: Doesn't say to get it more acute though in the
speaker-1: No, no, but he he just says don't, you know, he does have that picture with the post. Yeah. Stay inside that and then combined with that. upper body position where it you know it's it's it's not leaning towards the target, you know, it's slightly angled away, very slightly. that is not a sliced move. That's, you know, if anything, that's that's that's getting you primed for that kind of the what we're gonna talk about next, the, you know, that that that start down move that he advocates.
speaker-0: Well, most people probably move their right knee too far to the right. And
speaker-1: Yeah, horrible move. I just like that.
speaker-0: and you're you're you're you're dead underwater. But the most famous thing from the book that today's No More Lies is about the pane of glass.
speaker-1: Yes, the famous.
speaker-0: That'll screw up everybody, Brandel. They'll all slice it if they learn to do the pain of glass. Are you kidding me? Yeah. I would say that the pictures that he show, first of all, first of all, what what would a young teaching pro or newly avid golfer who started digging into golf instruction found a little Italian fellow with a strange accent? And started researching backwards from you know October of 2026 backwards, because that's how everything would be in the socials, right? That's where they would have found me. Even on YouTube, Funnel Golf X on YouTube, you would look backwards. What is the thing like Hogan's instructions most famous thing is the pane of glass? What is the Manzella golf instructions most famous thing? If if you started searching now.
speaker-1: wow. well I mean the man I mean probably
speaker-0: The sickle, the curved backswing. look at this picture in the book.
speaker-1: there you go.
speaker-0: I you know, I don't know where the you know, if if if if somebody doesn't have this version, but when he starts talking about the backswing plane and he's showing the
curve of the sh basically of of all points in a shaft, like he had a bunch of little diets on the shaft, and he's showing it go back, it obviously goes inside that p that. Cane of glass, a pretty damn decent amount, and curves to just under the glass where he wanted that left arm basically on the glass. Let me tell you this right now, all you Van Hogan book haters.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: I got two nice houses I'm helping pay for with my pretty little wife Lisa because of the sickle. That
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: that that makes me a lot of money. a lot of money because people are being told to take the club straight back and flop it. Like they
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: take what Hogan's advocating here and flipping it the other way.
speaker-1: Yeah, so for for everyone l watching i you know, that the the the sickle would be the the the plane going up this way and then the butt of the club, if you tracked it, didn't just go in a straight line that way, it would it would gradually
speaker-0: Because what the sickle is, is the path of the club head. If you just traced it out to the top, it would curve the whole way back and then would come underneath that path early in the downswing. And you know, mid-downswing, it might be over the path that that the that the that the backswing made. But the point is, except for the fact that I would say that a lot of people would be in modern golf, would be a little flatter if they did the paint of glass. Hogan shows. The steep plane of that he would advocate for a tall guy and they would wind up. I don't think any modern golf instruction would hate anybody to have the left arm position at the top underneath the glass. And for all the people that would be worried about him anybody taking a club back too straight, he advocated taking it way inside and getting to the cane of glass. How exactly,
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: how exactly would that make people slice it more? Or play worse golf.
speaker-1: And and then from that position that we're talking about, he advocated dropping the plane slightly coming down, to a more inside or into out path on the way through. So those things combined, there's not a lot of slice elements in there, Brian, is there?
speaker-0: No. So the first exercise that he suggests not only is well illustrated by Ravielli in the book and just regular, not in a scratch motif, mostly a little scratch, but just the simple drawings. He says the training exercise. The second thing I'd recommend to you practice is the training exercise. And the training exercise, folks, if you want to see it, just Google Ben Hogan Ed Sullivan show on the famous variety show. Ed Sullivan, really, really good showed and I've got Ben Hogan gonna do a golf lushing, right? He said, okay, put your arms kind of, you know, in their dress position and feel where they are to your sides and your ribs, and then leave them there and swing the club back and forth and back and forth. And he and he's showing he's got arrows back and forth and back the Number one most important drill and golf, the back and forth swing drill, but not just the back and forth swing drill all the way to top and all way through. Just as far as you could go without lifting the arms any. So just the bottom, like the first half of the back swing and the first half of the finish, and the back and forth. And if you saw this, Sam, I'm gonna show the people who are watching on YouTube, and Sam can describe what. They're demonstrating through the ball here. Does that look like anything that's handle dragging slicey? Look at
speaker-1: no, no.
speaker-0: this so look at this picture by my finger.
speaker-1: Yeah. So if you look on the right hand side and to the people listening, the club is going past the body, you know, so it's on the way back, little hinge, you know, coming down, all nicely sequential movement. But then on the way through, the club has past his body, past his hands, past everything.
speaker-0: Went up the right arm just past impact.
speaker-1: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
speaker-0: And the butt and then the butt of the club back at the ball.
speaker-1: The club is swinging. The club is swinging. And that's you know, again, that's all you know, any any anyone that was learning the game from this book as as we're sort of describing in this episode, you know, that is not gonna that's not gonna be a slicing that's not gonna cause slicing. And it's certainly not gonna hurt your game. That's a nice drill.
speaker-0: Absolutely. Now, nothing so far over a group of people is gonna make you slice it more from the book, except we finally got to the point that baby might. The famous like belt drawn like a little dotted line from the left wrist to the waist. And he's saying the turning of the hips inaugurates the downswing. This movement of the hips automatically lowers the arms and hands to a position just above hip level. And he demonstrates it again in a way he didn't do. But again, it's a book. Okay, now what you what he what what he is demonstrating is the the butt of the club, and he's keeping he's keeping all the angles. He's keeping the right arm angle, he's keeping the left arm angle, and he's advocating for the arms to fall. into this position somewhat caused by the hips.
speaker-1: A free ride, as he called it.
speaker-0: Yeah, okay. Would that maybe make a few people slice it more? Yes. Would that taught to everybody in golf make more people slice it than l maybe? But it would also make a lot of people who are throwing the club outside their hands too soon in a downswing, which is a bunch of people. Yeah. Not do it. And then he follows that part of advice with the famous one-hand ball throw and the basketball pass to basically take the angles out. So he's saying, okay, preserve the angles, and then he's showing you to take the angles out. And damn it, I have to give you this one, and then I'll shut up and listen.
speaker-1: Ha ha.
speaker-0: Then he does the second most famous
thing in the book, the famous impact position where he talks about supinating, but he really is demonstrating art risk, but he's saying that you're supinating, which is going palm up. Through the ball, and then you see the famous pictures one, two, three, and then impact, and then four or five past impact. And again, I'm not gonna put the picture up. I'm just gonna say it and let Sam talk. He's demonstrating from a cupped left wrist, butt of the club at the ball, halfway down position, that the wrist would flatten then arch, which is exactly what it does, by the way, if you get on hack motion. Then come a little out of arched as it supinates, then get out of arched and wind up bent in the butt of the club back of the ball. Something that if you did it, 90% of all slicers, even with the grip in this book, wouldn't slice it again. So, I mean, this is a lot of the book here, Sam. Whoa, whoa, whoa, what's that?
speaker-1: No, I mean I I think I I think part of it is that he's a before his time. I mean the fact that he's describing the release in such minute detail so accurately, I don't think that that that you know a lot of people knew what they're looking at. but that no, this is I mean, it's fantastic stuff. And I the other thing that I would mention is that when he's talking about the release here. He's not talking about hanging on. He's not talking about dragging the club. He's talking about releasing the club. And, you know, three right I wish I had three right hands at impact. You know, that this is Ben Hogan saying this. and you know, all the illustrations, as we say, on the way through, the the club isn't low or yeah, you know, his arms way up by his shoulders with the club head still below the the handle, you know, he's he's releasing the club. No, so you know, if everyone actually did this, the letter of the of the law, the the way he's describing it, no, we would have we we wouldn't have anyone in the world playing golf that was over ten handicapped, but but you know, p Brandall thinks differently, but
speaker-0: Here's what i the most important thing that we said in this show. What Sam just said. He said ten handicapped. So what Holgan believed and wrote in the book, that if if if you applied yourself to what I was putting forth in the book, what he was putting forth in the book, that he believed that practically everyone has enough talent to break eighty. And he didn't say on their home course, but sort of Inferring that, not you know, in the qualifying for the U.S. Open at Oakmont. And he's right. So I just don't see how the book, because there's a lot of Hogan aficionados in the teaching world, hurt golf instruction. I don't see any evidence that there wasn't massive pushback on anything that people didn't agree with in the book. And the idea that it would make people more slicers. Who are you talking about? People who ho who who who are these people? People who hook the crap out of the ball would s would hook it less and maybe hit a slice every now and then, yeah. But how many people are those? Like less than ten percent. So overall, the lie that this book has hurt golf instruction over the seventy year, whatever it is, fifty seven to s next year's twenty twenty seven in a few months. How many years is that? Seventy.
speaker-1: Sixty nine.
speaker-0: Seventy sixty-nine years. Part of the bad golf instruction in the world was from this book. Get the out of here. Total baloney. This book has added to the golf instruction. The base of knowledge and golf instruction has been helped by this book. And more golfers, I think, have been helped by the book. If they followed it, not say it's the easiest book to follow. Yeah. Right? Because every time I read it, including for today's show, I find something that I didn't find. It's a lie, folks. Don't stay away from the book because Brandle or Golf WRX or the USGFT or whatever told you or anybody says it's a bad book. It's a good book. Hogan saying if you apply what I tell you in this book and you're just a regular Joe, shoot 90, you can break 80. And I say he's right.
speaker-1: I totally agree. I think that Hogan did a fantastic job, was way ahead of his time. I mean, that's written in nineteen fifty-seven. if you change the language a bit, that could be written right now and and you know, wouldn't look out of place. except it's the pictures which are amazing. The sketches, should I say, are amazing. But no, I think it's a fantastic book. I can't
speaker-0: Would you like to have an original Anthony Ravioli that wound up?
speaker-1: Yeah, I know. And that's what I was gonna say is that, you know, I can't say a bad word about Hogan either. Like, you know, he's I think most of us have a soft spot for Hogan and his swing and all of his all of his writings and all that. But I think that that this is a lie. I think we've proved it piece by piece throughout the book. We checked in each time saying, Is this a slice element? No it's not and then moved on to the next and none of them were really, except for maybe the grip bit and maybe the hip turning bit, but All in all, that swing that he's describing is a good swing, good way of playing golf. and I stick by that.
speaker-0: And you're right. Great show, buddy.
speaker-1: Yeah, thanks Brian. Thanks everyone. talk again soon. Cheers.