Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
My great friend and mentor Phil Ritson, who I regard as one of the best teachers on the planet, has always said: “The name of the game is underhand!” That was his favorite expression. I have continued that mantra throughout my teaching career and will always get a beginner to take a soccer ball, stand in their golf address position with the ball between their hands, and get them to throw the ball to me underhand. That immediately gives them an understanding of the golf motion, including shoulder turn, weight shift, extending down the line, and the follow-through. Thanks to Dennis Clark of Golf Wrx for this great instructional article!
Ben Hogan relaxing at home.
“What is the secret of the golf swing?”
That’s one of the eternal debates in our game, and as with anything as dynamic as the golf swing, I don’t think there is ONE secret. There are similarities to be noticed among the greats of the game, however, despite their variety.
That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but if you think about it, we can notice certain motions that most elite level players have in their swing. Not all, but most. GolfWRX readers know me as a teacher who places more emphasis on impact and not how to, but today I want to discuss something that most amateurs get wrong and almost all pros get right. In a very general sense, I’ll state it like this: the golf swing has two components, a vertical one and a horizontal one. Better players get both, but most amateurs get only the vertical part.
The vertical is necessary because the ball is on the ground. The horizontal is required because the ball is aside the player. The VAST majority of mistakes I see club golfers make is that they get too vertical, and not sufficiently horizontal. Golf is very clearly a sidearm game, and the great Ben Hogan may have illustrated it the best.
The name of the game is underhand!
Most boys growing up, at least in my era, learned to play baseball pretty much before anything else. If they were fortune enough to play infield, I think they had a head start in the game of golf. In the cover image, Hogan is clearly demonstrating how an infielder might throw to first base. This almost completely mimics the motion of a golf swing. Notice I say almost. It is not entirely the same, because remember, the golf ball is on the ground. It still does require some up-and-down motion, but we deal with most of that simply by bending correctly at the hips when we address the golf ball. So to complete the analogy, I think it’s safe to say that golf is baseball with the torso tilted forward.
“IT HAS ALWAYS SEEMED TO ME THAT, IN ITS GENERAL CHARACTER, THIS MOTION IS QUITE SIMILAR TO THE ONE AN INFIELDER MAKES WHEN HE THROWS TO FIRST BASE AFTER SCOOPING UP A GROUND BALL,” BEN HOGAN SAID.
Of course, there is nothing new in this information. Many instructors have written about it, and Ben Hogan’s 5 Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf was published some 60 years ago. But I will say this: If you have a junior learning to play golf, you would be wise to START with this horizontal orientation FIRST!
The future is here – Golf Clubs marked by degrees, not numbers!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Wow, something I predicted about 5 years ago has finally happened!
Golf club manufacturers are labeling the clubs by the degree of loft instead of numbers! I have thought it would be logical for all irons in the bag to mark the club’s loft, which allows club fitters to test each club for launch angle and ball carry for each individual golfer. Welcome to the future of club fitting, and well done to the Ben Hogan Golf Company. Thanks also to Claire Rogers of Golf Digest Stix for bringing us this interesting story on new developments in the golf equipment industry!
The Ben Hogan club fitting offers advice and recommendations on your golf clubs based on your current setup.
Ben Hogan Expands Web-based Fitting System
We do pretty much everything online these days, and now you can add “clubfitting” to the list. And one of the more surprising adherents to the trend is a brand you might think of as old-school but might just be new school, the Ben Hogan Equipment Company. Ben Hogan has expanded its online performance center, where you can receive a quick and personalized clubfitting without even looking up from your phone.
The system analyzes what should be in your bag based on how you play. By filling out a short 15-minute online questionnaire with information such as what clubs you play, your average distances, handicap, how often you play, and your ball flight, the site can familiarize itself with who you are as a player. From there, the database offers valuable tips on what to look for in your next set of clubs and is able to save your information for future fittings. The system helps solve the problems of compressed lofts throughout your set and inconsistent loft gaps.
Are “Forgiving Clubs” ruining the game of golf – What’s your take?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
When I first started playing golf in 1963, my dad bought me a set of John Letters Irons and Sam Snead Blue Ridge woods. Back in those days, it was thought that the English golf manufacturers made better irons. And the Americans made better woods. Almost all the irons on the market those days were forged blades and had to be hit right in the sweet spot to get any type of good feeling out of them.
Why am I telling you this?
Because it lends credence to the story by Stephen Altschuler of GolfWrx that today’s technology is ruining the game. Players never got to feel the pleasure of a sweetly struck iron shot that fires right out of the middle of the clubface with the feel of melted butter. So maybe you need to reconsider when next you go out to purchase that new set of forgiving cast irons in favor of a set of blades. Might they make you a better player? What do you think?
Taylor-Made forged blade.
Club manufacturers have glommed onto the term “forgiving.” To coax golfers to their products. And I think it’s done more to detract beginners from learning the game properly and eventually dropping out. In the process, people try the game thinking their forgiving clubs will essentially do it all for them, almost by magic.
Back in the day, blade irons and 200-cubic-centimeter persimmon drivers were the standard. With sweet spots about the size of a pencil eraser. You had to learn to hit the ball in the absolute center of the club face — on the screws, as we used to say. Or face the consequences of contact that felt more like mashed potatoes (maybe that’s where that stupid crowd reaction came from).
Learn to hit the ball in the center of the clubface!
Bobby Jones purportedly had to change the screws on his drivers (yes, they were constructed with four screws holding a plastic plate that covered the sweet spot) four times during the course of a competitive season.
The moder-day “forgiving” clubs.
Today, with irons looking more like garden tools, and drivers more like battle-axes, forgiveness is the keyword. As the commercial for the XE1 wedge says: “The XE1 is awesome. It just popped the ball right up,” says a guy with a swing not unlike Charles Barkley’s.
Effortless? The club does all the work? Right! All you have to do is take the same lousy swing you’ve brought to the course for 30 years, and it bounces right on the green. I kid the XE1. It’s probably a fine club, but we all know down deep the club is probably not much better than Gene Sarazen’s sand wedge he invented in 1928. You still need to swing the club properly to make it do what it was intended to do. That takes good instruction and lots of practice.
With a 200cc driver, you had to have a pretty darn good technique to make solid contact.
Are “Forgiving Clubs” ruining the game of golf – What’s your take?
The emphasis for the recreational golfer was solid contact and not so much club head speed. Swings then were smoother, slower and more athletic.
My models were Bobby Nichols, Ken Venturi, Gene “The Machine” Littler, Bobby Jones videos and later, Freddy Couples, Tom Watson, and Ernie Els. Guys like Palmer, Nicklaus, Trevino, Player, Miller, Price, Ballesteros, Norman, Faldo, and Woods could make those smaller club heads dance like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain, with as much control.
Bobby Jones, using even less sophisticated equipment than they had in the ’60s, could hit his driver 300 yards when he needed to. Forgiveness? Bobby’s swing was all the forgiveness he needed.
But in one of the greatest marketing ploys in sports history, golf club manufacturers have convinced us that salvation was in larger and larger club head sizes for both irons and drivers, digging out huge cavities in the backs of irons, switching to whippier and ever-lighter graphite shafts, and fatter, flatter, less tapered grips (Billy Casper must be having a good laugh in heaven at those grips).
With drivers, we can change lofts and shafts with a few clicks. (but just about no one does.) With putters, we can adjust weight and lie angles with a device that can bend the shaft and add weights to the head. (again, hardly anyone does.) And, of course, with hybrids you can make-over your entire set to look and act like woods (which just about everyone does).
One of the most famous scorecards in golfing history!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Wow, when I saw this article by John Strege of Golf Digest, I just had to share! Look at the signatures on that scorecard, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Norman Von Nida and Georgia golfer Charles Harrison! This has to be one of the most famous scorecards in golf! Not only did Charles have the privilege of playing with the game’s greats, but he also beat them soundly! As they say in the south, “He opened up a can of whoopa**” I hope he also kept the $35 he plucked from Hogan’s pocket! That should be in a frame along with the scorecard. Congratulations, Charles Harrison, you are my idol!
Charles Harrison is a Georgia golf icon, a career amateur who is in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. He qualified for the U.S. Amateur 16 times and played in two Masters.
Harrison had many memorable moments in golf, but maybe none as impressive as the round he played at Augusta National on April 1, 1960.
It was the Friday before Masters week and he was playing a practice round with Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Australian professional Norman Von Nida.
On Thursday, the website ClassicGeorgia posted on Instagram a photo of the scorecard from that round. It shows Harrison shooting a 65 and beating Palmer by eight shots, Hogan by seven and Von Nida by nine.
You Will Never Believe What Ben Hogan said about Putting!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Ben Hogan is one of my golf idols, as he is for many golfers. Of course, his career is legendary, with 63 wins in 20 years, despite being interrupted by World War II and a near-fatal car accident in 1949. The entire world considers Hogan to be among the greatest ball strikers ever.
But I’ve never heard that he said this to a reporter in 1957.
“If I had my way, every golf green would be made into a huge funnel. So that when you hit the funnel, the ball would roll down a pipe into the hole.”
What? Why would this Grand Slam Champion of golf (one of only 5 in history) talk about trying to eliminate putting? Blasphemous or understandable, given the circumstances?
Ben Hogan had just missed the cut in the very first Masters that ever had a cut, the 1957 tournament. He was in the Augusta National lockerroom, not happy over the state of his putting.
And that’s when The Hawk told UPI sportswriter Will Grimsley that we need to eliminate putting from golf.
Grimsley’s quote by Hogan in his article that appeared in newspapers on April 6, 1957.
Sayeth Hogan:
“I have always contended golf is one game and putting is another. One game you play in the air, the other you play on the ground.
“Every golf green should be made into a huge funnel. So that when you hit the funnel the ball would roll down a pipe into the hole.
“That way there would be no expensive upkeep of grass on the greens. And there would be much less misery among the golfers.”
Ben Hogan Had His Own Personal Math for Club Specs!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
This is a terrific story by Tom Stites, who worked for Ben Hogan in the engineering of golf clubs.
The details about the unusual loft and lie machine that Hogan and some engineers built is fascinating. And Hogan had no education in engineering or formal physics!
The life lessons Tom Stites learned while working with the famous and complex Hogan, make this a great read. Find out what incredible, unknown talent Hogan had (outside of playing golf) that Tom will never forget.
I hear that great people do things that are different.
I never thought when I went to work for Mr. Ben Hogan, however, that the man would have his own personal set of numbers and math.
I learned this about Ben Hogan when I tried to reconcile the number of degrees on a personal wedge Gene Sheeley was making for him. That same wedge design and specs would later need to be forged and duplicated at a Chicago factory.
Sometime long before I came along, Mr. Hogan, Gene and previous engineers developed a unique fixture to measure the loft and lie angle on irons and wedges, which you can see below. It was a rotation turret table pitched at an angle with some extra engineering measurement features welded on. With this fixture, one could fix or press the face of the club to a plate and turn the turret handle until the butt of the club pointed at a target lie measurement scale (in the shape of a sweep radius). After the club was aimed correctly, one could site out and read the lie of the club on the scale radius. At the same time, the loft could be read on the turret gauge.
The Ben Hogan Company loft and lie machine, which is on display at the Ben Hogan Museum in Dublin, Texas.
With no engineering or formal physics schooling, Mr. Hogan knew instinctively that the loft and lie of an iron combined to determine the launch vector.
He must have come to realize these specifications were synergistic while “digging his game out of the dirt,” and Mr. Hogan and Gene had come up with this ingenious fixture. It was very creative thinking for its time. After they built that one fixture and it was used to set and gauge all of Mr. Hogan’s clubs — both his personal clubs, and his company’s clubs. It became the only standard for Hogan touring pros, the factory and all things Ben Hogan.
Years later, Gene gave me this historic fixture.
I have since donated it to the Ben Hogan Museum in Dublin, Texas, where it is on display. I think Gene and Mr. Hogan would have wanted that. I would implore anyone who loves Hogan lore (or his real clubs) to make a trip there some day. The museum is full of Mr. Hogan’s things and is a wonderful tribute.
Back to 1988 in Fort Worth. The one problem with the ingenious loft and lie machine was that the fixture did not travel. It was massive — about the size and weight of a modern washing machine. And while Mr. Hogan’s loft and lie fixture was very consistent and the products of this machine fit his eye and expectations, it did not read in true engineering degrees. That’s right, when Hogan thopught his machine was 56 degrees it was not really 56 degrees. Hogan degrees were about 1-to-2 degrees different!
As the head of the product development team in Fort Worth, I needed to communicate the actual and accurate degrees and dimensions of irons and wedges to vendors in California and Chicago, so I was in a box. As a side note, Mr. Hogan was a patriot and would require all clubs and components under his name to be 100 percent made in the USA. I will give you more detail in a story of how I know this a little later.
Ben Hogan Had His Own Personal Math for Club Specs!
Earlier in my engineering training, I had learned engineering standard measurement technique for machined parts that required a sine plate and a Bridgeport-type mill.
Yes, the same sine as you might have learned in high school trigonometry. Early in this club degree dilemma I tried to have a discussion with Gene about it, but he didn’t see a problem. As far as he was concerned, he, Mr. Hogan and their bulky fixture were right and the trigonometry and engineering worlds were wrong. “Case closed,” Gene said, and he would never bring it up with Mr. Hogan. I considered pushing the math matter higher up the company food chain. If I did, however, it might appear to embarrass Gene and Mr. Hogan. I also had to consider the fact that sometimes the messenger with bad news is killed, or in my case, let go!
Only recently during one of our jaunts up to his office had Mr. Hogan shocked me by asking me a question. Mr. Hogan asked me how much hook I saw in a wood Gene was showing him. Without knowing when, I must have crossed over a trust line and paid the final installment of my dues.
“It does look a bit hooked,” I stammered.
That was a safe response, because Gene had told me Mr. Hogan sees everything a couple of degrees more hooked than it measures, and I’ve run across many elite players over the years who see face angles the same way. With Mr. Hogan actually talking to me now, I wasn’t ready to blow up the new trust by telling him and Gene his machine “lied” consistently by a couple of degrees. With that, I quietly developed a chart and formula that would convert all Sheeley/Hogan fixture degrees to true engineering sine-plate calibrated degrees. With this secret formula and chart, I was able to do my job properly and those two incredible and historic men of the club I loved could stay happy.
A bit later, however, I made an eror and got bit in the butt. By this point, I could go in and see Mr. Hogan alone. One morning I went in there to show him one of Gene’s new prototype models. I don’t remember where Gene was. When I got to his office, Hogan dropped the wedge to the floor and eye balled it like he always did. Just a few seconds later, he told me it was 0.75 degrees too weak.
I’m sure Mr. Hogan could see my skeptical reaction and read my thoughts. In my head I was saying to myself:
1964 Classic Match between Ben Hogan and Sam Snead!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
The rivalry between Ben Hogan and Sam Snead was classic. The free-flowing “Slammin’ Sam” against the technical machine of “The Hawk” conjured up memories of great rivalries of the past like the Red Sox and the Yankees! Between them, they won 146 PGA Tour events and 16 Majors. This is Mohammed Ali and Sonny Liston on a golf course, ready to take the other man apart! Thanks to Al Barkow for GOLF Magazine for bringing back the past!
Photo: Golf Magazine
Hogan and Snead, both 51, tee off in their historic final face-off at Houston Country Club.
by Al Barkow
Posted: Thu Aug. 6, 2015
It was, in a sense, the Match of the Century. Two of the greatest players in golf’s long history faced off in an 18-hole stroke-play competition. Appropriately, it would be seen by one of the largest TV audiences recorded at the time for a golf event: 3.47 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Who wouldn’t want to watch Ben Hogan go mano a mano with Sam Snead?
In 1961, the first Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf challenge match aired.
1964 Classic Match between Ben Hogan and Sam Snead!
The series, which ran for nine years and was later revived for another decade, from 1994 to 2003, pitted notable players of the day against one another on courses around the globe. Not all of the showdowns had the firepower and appeal of Hogan/Snead, who combined to win 16 majors and 146 PGA Tour events.
The series’ second and third installments featured dust-ups between Ted Kroll and Chen Ching-Po and Jay Hebert and Flory Van Donck. But some—like the Gene Littler/ Byron Nelson battle at Pine Valley, in 1962—were indelible television. The Hogan/Snead match was effectively an exhibition, an entertainment. And there wasn’t much money or glory involved: $3,000 to the winner, $2,000 to the loser; no green jackets or glittering trophies; only a few column inches in the sports pages.
That took nothing away from its significance, symbolic or otherwise.
Given their larger-than-life personas and competitive records—against the pros of their generation and between each other—Hogan and Snead could have played for marbles on a muni in Muncie, Ind., and they’d have commanded the attention of even the most indifferent golf fans.
It was a given that these two proud and fierce competitors would play the match as though it were a major championship, and they did. Contested at the Houston Country Club in May 1964 and airing the following year, it marked the last time these Goliaths of the game would meet in competition. And unbeknownst to them and to everyone else at the time, the clash would have momentous consequences for the future of the game.
A bit of transparency. I was a young writer on Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf, having been hired only two weeks earlier for my first job in what would become my lifetime profession. It was a baptism by fire.
The show was the brainchild of Monroe Spaght, then president of Shell USA and an ardent golfer.
Spaght was spinning off the first such made-for-television, one-on-one links series, All-Star Golf, which was produced by Chicago’s renowned public-course operator Joe Jemsek and his partner, Pete DeMet. From 1957 through 1963, they aired a series of 18-hole matches between the game’s best pros (including Snead, Gene Littler, Cary Middlecoff, Julius Boros and Tommy Bolt), with most of the battles played on Jemsek-owned tracks. The production values of the black-and-white show were primitive. Hole diagrams looked as though they’d been pulled from a pre-teen’s coloring book, and only a scant few camera shots of flighted balls were captured.
Jemsek himself said of those pioneering but crude shows, “We were making home movies.” Despite that, All-Star Golf had attracted a substantial viewership. Spaght noted the success and decided to take it a step—in fact, a few giant steps—further. The Shell show matches would be played in every corner of the world, on famous courses, whenever possible, and filmed in vibrant color.
The distinguished golf writer Herbert Warren Wind was brought in to consult.
He came up with the basic format, suggested which courses to play, and was instrumental in recruiting the storied player of the 1920s and ′30s, Gene Sarazen, as host. The Squire appeared on camera in tailored knickers, a smart sport coat, shirt and tie, and a panama hat. Spaght burnished Jemsek’s concept, and it worked. Landing the elusive Hogan only heightened the show’s luster.
Bantam Ben, who won his nine major championships between 1946 and 1953, had become increasingly reclusive in the ′60s. At most he was playing four tournaments a year, and he showed little interest in the perks that come with legend status. Designing courses, commenting for TV, or promoting a tournament in his name.
I once asked Hogan if, as a Tour player, he ever considered himself an entertainer.
His response was a curt, unequivocal “No.” So it came as a surprise that he would deign to participate in a glitzy exhibition. Shell had a coup, and, as was often the case with the stone-faced but mesmerizing Texan, Hogan became the story.
He wasn’t doing anyone a favor, mind you. Quite the opposite. To prop up a struggling line of golf equipment he had launched in 1955, Hogan had a pressing need for publicity. He also needed cash, and he got it. A $25,000 appearance fee he was paid on the side was kept secret for years. Maybe he had a payroll to make. In any case, Spaght was willing to break precedent. Everyone else played only for prize money, plus expenses.
Sam Snead wasn’t as exclusive or expensive as Hogan. Around the time of the made-for-TV match, the ageless Slammin’ Sam was still playing the Tour—and still playing it at a high level—and he would win his 82nd and final Tour title at the 1965 Greater Greensboro Open, just two months shy of his 53rd birthday. Snead just loved to play, especially against the Hawk, “because he never says anything to you, except now and then, “You’re away,”” Snead once explained.
Indeed, Hogan stayed true to form. During the Houston match, they conversed little.
Play got under way at 9 a.m. on a gray day with a forecast of heavy rain. A downpour started in the middle of the second hole, which the warriors played out. Tee shots were hit on the third, but with the arrival of thunder and lightning with a particular Texas violence, the spectators had to evacuate the course. A few of us, including Hogan and Snead, took refuge in a room just off the pro shop. Hogan sat quietly with a towel wrapped around his shoulders. Snead, on the other hand, was rarely quiet. The Virginia mountain boy was a colorful storyteller, whose yarns rapidly escalated from raunchy to filthy.
With us in the room was our script person, Edna Forde, a proper Irish woman, and Maureen Orcutt, a champion amateur golfer. Maureen, four decades earlier, had become one of the first women in the country to write about sports, when she covered golf for the New York Times. Orcutt had an air of early-twentieth-century propriety. But never mind that—Snead got hold of a banana and waved it around as a lewd prop. Not surprisingly, his suggestive groaners left the ladies limp. Hogan managed only a strained smile, then exited the room.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Rivalries have been around since Cain and Able. The rivalry is what competition thrives on.
The strongest survives! The gladiators in the arena of sports. Whether it be baseball, football, basketball, tennis, or chess, rivalries make us watch. Who watched chess until Boris Spassky played Bobby Fisher? What a great rivalry! What great trash talk!
They incite heavy interest and emotion amongst the fans.
They give the media and television networks appealing storylines to pursue from a promotional standpoint.
And whether the rivalries actually exist in the minds of the athletes or it is simply a matter of the participants knowing that a particular game or match is receiving more attention than usual, the on-field competition tends to reach a whole new level when rivals face off against one another.
Rivalries are easy to identify and become emotionally involved in when it comes to team sports.
North Carolina and Duke face off against one another at least twice per year on the hardwood.
The Red Sox and Yankees play numerous games against one another during the course of the season.
Ohio St. vs. Michigan is an event that rivals few others each and every autumn.
But what about golf?
There have obviously been a number of truly great players whose reign at the top happened to coincide with the careers of other great players.
But has rivalries in golf ever truly existed in professional golf?
In the last decade, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods have become fierce rivals!
The answer to that question may surprise you.
Let’s take a closer look at what many consider to be the greatest rivalries in the history of golf.
Ben Hogan’s Golf Tips are Timeless – Check these out!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I started golf at the age of 16.
Having played the two most popular sports in South Africa, rugby and cricket, I also represented my province in gymnastics, played tennis, and competed in swimming and diving. Therefore I thought golf would be a pushover! Boy, was I wrong! What did help tremendously, though, was the very first book I read on golf instruction. Ben Hogan’s “Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.” Not only did I learn the basics, but that book inspired me to practice hard, and I turned professional two years after picking up a club for the first time.
So when I saw this slideshow by Golf Digest and Alex Myers, I just had to share, with the hope that this will inspire someone else to take up the game and feel the enjoyment I have felt for the last 50 years!
Ben Hogan’s nine major championships speak for themselves, but he also had an authoritative voice when it came to golf instruction. Hogan wrote two books on the golf swing — “Power Golf” in 1948 and “Five Lessons” in 1957 — that are still sought after by golfers of all levels. Known for his meticulous practice habits, Hogan constantly worked on trying to perfect his swing and these books were his outlet to share the knowledge he’d gained with the general public. Along the way, Hogan’s lessons were sporadically published in Golf Digest as well. Here, we look back at some of these gems that are just as applicable today as when he doled them out.
They say records are made to be broken – but not this one!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Sports psychologists say “The Zone” is the state where no conscious thought occurs, and everything is automatic. They also say that to get into the golf zone, where we play a shot and then have to wait five minutes between shots, is very difficult to do. Byron Nelson stayed in The Zone for an unprecedented 65 tournaments in a row! Now that is consistency!
Will anyone ever break Byron Nelson’s record!
The name Byron Nelson rings a bell for most of us golfers. Many think he is one of the greatest golfers ever. And rightfully so! The guy has an INSANE record…
For four consecutive years, Nelson never placed out of the top-10 in any tournament. That is 65 top-10 finishes in a row! 34 of those came with wins; 3 of them majors. Hot damn.
I’m going to say it right now. That’s one that will never be broken. In this day in age, the competition pool is too big. The tournaments are full of guys who all have a very good chance to win. For someone to come along and have that many consistent top-10’s pretty much seems impossible.
And if that does happen… it’s going to have to be the next person to change the face of golf – see Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus.
