The Fundamentals of Hogan
by David Leadbetter, Lorne Rubenstein

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Book Reviews of The Fundamentals of Hogan

Book Review: The Ultimate Hogan . . . Updated and Adapted by Leadbetter
Summary: 5 Stars

My best score on a championship 18 hole course is 83. So I am part of the prime market for this book. I will share with you what I learned from the book in my quest for a slightly lower score.

David Leadbetter is one of our most talented teaching pros. If you are like me, you are accustomed to seeing him on television so his ideas will seem familiar.

Mr. Leadbetter had a great resource to start with. This book is an update of Ben Hogan's famous book: Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf that was originally published as five articles in Sports Illustrated in 1957. The book, illustrated with drawings by Anthony Rivielli, has been a primary resource for those who wanted to understand the pure ball-striking ability of Ben Hogan. And Mr. Leadbetter was much aided by the recent discovery of the photographs taken by Mr. Rivielli, upon which the drawings were based. Eighty-five new photographs of Ben Hogan are included, which were mostly designed to be illustrative of the material in Five Lessons. So, if all you got were the new photographs, you would be way ahead of where anyone has been before now.

The first part of each of the sections in the book (The Hands, Addressing the Ball, Backswing, Downswing, and Summary and Concluding Thoughts) is there to summarize Mr. Hogan's original message, along with the proper illustrations and captions.

In the second part of the section, Mr. Leadbetter goes on to describe why Mr. Hogan achieved the results he did with his approach, and what some of the problems are that that approach could present for other players. This section was fascinating. Mr. Hogan had a tendency to hit wild hook shots, and many of his adjustments were to open the club face in order to make solid contact. He had several unusual physical characteristics, including very large and strong hands and arms that presented special opportunities and challenges. This discussion basically contradicts Mr. Hogan's advice in many areas, and points out places where Mr. Hogan's demonstrations of his own style were inaccurate versus what shows in films from the same era.

Finally, Mr. Leadbetter takes what the average golfer can use from Mr. Hogan, and adds other elements that are complementary. You will find this material the most familiar to you. It is well done though, because it addresses ways to compensate for current weaknesses in your game.

My own lessons from reading the book related to developing a much better understanding the objective one is looking for from a good grip, more ways to adjust the grip than I had ever dreamed of, helpful ideas about how to take the grip properly, how stance affects timing and club head direction, and mental concepts to use in creating better timing and coordination. I think I learned more about these mechanics as variables than I had learned in 24 years of playing the game (and taking more than a few lessons). There is also a lot of good material in here about how to practice, and the value of watching videos of your swing. Most importantly, the book reinforced what I am doing right and made me sensitive to what I need to work on.

By the way, breaking 80 requires being as good a putter and short game player as you possibly can be. For those subjects, you need Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible and Dave Pelz's Putting Bible (you can read my reviews of each on Amazon.com). Those will get you under 80 faster than this book will . . . because there are so many more short game shots for average golfers than full swing shots.

The main weakness of the book is that Mr. Leadbetter does like to provide lots of detail. Usually, this is helpful. Sometimes, his material for average golfers is a little confusing to me. You may understand it just fine, but I cannot accurately anticipate your reaction.

After you finish reading this wonderful book, I urge you to select one aspect of your full swing where you could benefit from a change. Then use the ideas and methods here to start to make that change. After you are successful, pick a second area and continue the process. Now you have the makings of a true Ben Hogan approach, because that's exactly what he did.

Hit 'em straight and long!

Summary of The Fundamentals of Hogan

Surprise! Ravielli modeled those drawings on several rolls of film he took of Hogan, and those photos, recently discovered, are the heart of The Fundamentals of Hogan. For golfers, they are like finding a piece of the true cross; there has never been a more perfect swing than Bantam Ben's. If some of the pictures in Fundamentals are just explanatory poses--Hogan gripping the club, Hogan standing at address--and the majority of the swing sequences are actually not true sequences at all but, given the technology of the time, individually posed photos at appropriate intervals of the swing, no matter. They convey what they need to, providing a closer glimpse of the master's mastery.

Swing guru David Leadbetter tees up the accompanying text, analyzing Hogan's swing, parsing Hogan's swing theories, and adapting what Hogan knew to fit the rest of us. Leadbetter knows most of us can't possibly re-create the effortless power of Hogan's fluidity, but that doesn't mean we can't incorporate bits of Hogan's technique into our own herky-jerky hacks. Like Hogan, Leadbetter is obsessed with golf's mechanics, and while Hogan managed to breeze through Five Lessons with the help of the splendid writer Herbert Warren Wind, Leadbetter often gets mired in the kinds of technicalities that lead to the "paralysis by analysis" that plagues over-thinkers when they step up to the ball. Still, the team of Hogan and Leadbetter makes a twosome you can't help but learn from if you're willing to pay attention. --Jeff Silverman

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