I went down a strange golf YouTube rabbit hole last night, as a I often do, which is how I stumbled upon this rather fascinating tip from none other than Ben Hogan. Appearing on a late night talk show, he uses an exercise that was featured in his book, Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, designed to help people form the building blocks of a golf swing.
Basically, it’s a three-step process, Hogan says. Here’s how to do it.
1. Elbows to chest
In the clip, which you can watch in full below, Hogan suggests starting by making small swings, with your elbows connected to your torso the entire time to give you the feeling of a starter golf swing.
“Try moving your body, keeping your elbows at your sides,” Hogan says.
2. Lengthen your swing
“But you can’t go around a golf course doing this all day,” Hogan says, “so you need to lengthen the swing somewhere.”
Once you’re comfortable with the starting motion, it becomes time to lengthen the swing, Hogan says. The speed and tempo of the swing looks relatively similar, and the relationship between the elbows and torso stays intact, but the arms move further behind you on the backswing and extend further on the follow through.
3. Add speed
And finally comes the time to add speed, Hogan says. You can notice the arms lengthen even more, his left heel comes up on the backswing, and the hips are more aggressive through the ball.
“Isn’t that simple?” Hogan asks. “Anybody can do that.”
You can watch the entire video below.
