Golf In New York City Blog

Jack Nicklaus: Simply the Best! By Martin Davis

There have been many books written about the career of legendary Jack Nicklaus, but few are as informative and photographically outstanding as Martin Davis’ latest, Jack Nicklaus – Simply the Best!

Davis starts off the book with an overall tribute to Nicklaus’ many accomplishments. “Jack’s basic numbers are easy to remember. It’s just a straight arithmetic progression – 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 – as in one NCAA Championship, two U.S. Amateurs, three British Opens, four U.S. Opens, five PGA’s, six Masters and a member of seven winning Ryder Cup teams.”

From there, the book is basically divided into three sections, the first part filled with vignettes by some of Nicklaus’ better known on-course competitors, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Lee Trevino and Tom Watson. Each speaks about the great respect that they have for Nicklaus, along with some his attributes, which really struck them.

“Jack was a different animal altogether, unlike anything I had ever chased” says Palmer. “It was uncanny how he could concentrate on the task at hand. I have never seen anyone who could stay that focused the way he did.”

Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer from the New York Times, provides a lengthy biographical essay entitled “He Always Made the Putt (…Well, Almost Always).
Humorist Dan Jenkins talks about his “precautious” playing style, acknowledging his twenty second-place finishes in Majors. “Jack was first or second in 39 major championships. Think about that for a moment. How many more majors he might have won.”

“He had a way of knowing just how good he was and he never let his self-confidence, and often stubbornness, melt into arrogance,” adds broadcaster Jack Whitaker in his essay entitled “Always a Presence.”

The middle section of the book is filled with extensive photographs of Nicklaus’ swing and putting stroke, dating back to when he was 13 years old, with analysis by golf instructor Jim Flick.

The remaining two-hundred pages provides a complete reporting (both in writing and photos) of the major events in Nicklaus’ life, starting with the 1956 Ohio Open, and including his twenty major victories, a few misses, some team championships, his golf course design business, photographs from the Jack Nicklaus Museum and much more.
The finale comes with a 5-½ foot timeline of his life, folded into a two-page spread of Nicklaus being honored by the Ohio State University marching band during their football half-time tribute to him.

Between the well-written essays and more than 600 photographs, this coffee-table sized book is a “must-have” for any true historian of golf.
(Available at local books stores and also on-line. It is published by American Golfer, and retails for $60. It is the fifth book in a series on the world’s greatest golfers).

Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, written in 1957, still remains today the cornerstone of the modern theory of the golf swing.  

Hogan, who became a golf professional at 19, dedicated the next twenty-five years to becoming arguably the greatest golfer of the twentieth century.  No one, except for possibly Tiger Woods, worked harder on improving his or her golf game.  His legendary book gives us Ben’s thoughts on learning and playing the game.  Although many of today’s golf  gurus have written books and devised methods based on Hogan’s theories, why not get it from the master himself?

Hogan developed a systematic approach to learning and mastering golf’s fundamentals.  He arranges the information into five lessons.  Each lesson is complete with wonderful drawings and great drills.  This book is filled with simple and great advice.  A great tip is to bring a pencil and paper with you when you practice and keep a record of your thoughts.

The book’s first lesson starts with a focus on the grip. At the beginning we find, “GOOD GOLF BEGINS WITH A GOOD GRIP.”  Hogan believed the player’s only contact with the ball is through the clubhead, and the only direct physical contact with the club is through his hands. In the golf swing, the power is originated and generated by the movements of the body. As this power builds up, it is transferred from the body to the arms, which than transfers it through the hands to the clubhead.  In a good grip both hands will act as “ONE UNIT.” 

This pressure should be "active," the kind of pressure that makes your hand feel alive and ready for action. Some golfers grab hold of a club so ferociously they look like they’re going to twist the grip right off it. There’s no need for overdoing the strength of your grip. In fact, there’s a positive harm in it: you automatically tighten the muscles in the left arm and create too much stiffness. A grip that is too tight will also immobilize the wrist. A secure, alive, and comfortable grip is what you want, for, as the weighted clubhead is swung back, the fingers instinctively tighten their grasp on the shaft.

In golf there are certain things you must do quite precisely. The grip is one of those areas where being half right accomplishes nothing. On the other hand, when you practice and eventually master the right techniques, gripping the club correctly comes easily.  Hogan devoted 19 pages of his book to the grip.  He did not take the grip for granted!  GOOD GOLF BEGINS WITH A GOOD GRIP.

Hogan warns us about proceeding too fast. For at least a week, he suggests, “ PUT IN 30 MINUTES OF DAILY PRACTICE ON THE GRIP. LEARNING THESE NEXT FUNDAMENTALS WILL THEN BE TWICE AS EASY AND TWICE AS VALUABLE.”  The next lesson focuses on the fundamentals of the stance and posture.  Hogan devotes 24 pages to this area.

Hogan writes, “The proper stance and posture enable a golfer to be perfectly balanced and poised throughout the swing.  Only then will his legs, arms, and body be able to carry out their interrelated assignments correctly”.  He works from the feet up.  Width of stance, foot position, elbows, arms, weight distribution, knee flex, hip bend, and erectness of the back and head are all discussed and precisely described.  “The fact that an apparently insignificant detail like the position of the left foot can affect your entire swing for better or for worse is an intrinsic part of golf.”   Hogan suggests using a full-length mirror at home to develop these moves.

The First Part of The Swing is his third fundamental.  Hogan emphasizes the importance of the waggle.  For him the waggle was the bridge that linked the address with the start of the golf swing.  The waggle is like a miniature practice swing.  It is done with the left hand.  Hogan devotes five pages to the waggle.

The order of movement in the backswing is hands, arms, shoulders, and hips.   “Actually the hands start the clubhead back a split second before the arms start back. And the arms begin their movement a split second before the shoulders begin to turn.  As a golfer acquires feel and rhythm through practice, the hands, arms, and shoulders will instinctively tie in on this split second schedule.”

The shoulders start turning immediately.  The hips do not. You want to turn the shoulders as far around as they will go.  Your head remains stationary.  At the finish of the backswing your chin should be hitting against the top of your left shoulder.  Hogan claims to have worn out his golf shirts at this spot.  There are great drawings illustrating the amount of shoulder turn opposed to the amount of hip turn.

He also introduced the golf world to the concept of swing plane.  For Hogan swing plane was, “simply described an angle of inclination running from the ball to the shoulders”.  Not very simple is it?  Hogan devotes seven pages to the backswing swing plane.  As you look at the drawings this concept is very well described. 

The second part of the swing is Hogan’s fourth fundamental.  “The downswing is initiated by turning the hips to the left.  The shoulders, arms, and hand in that order release their power. The great speed developed in this chain action carries the golfer all the way around to the finish of his follow through”.

Hogan talks about the plane of the downswing, which is different from the plane of the backswing.  When the golfer is on this less steep swing he must hit from the inside.  It eliminates the over the top error.  It also allows for maximum strength and club head speed.

“Imagine that, at address, one end of an elastic strip is fastened to a wall directly behind your left hip and the other end is fastened to your left hip bone.  As the shoulders turn the hips on   the backswing, the elastic is stretched with increased tension.  When you start turning the hips to the left, the elastic will snap back to the left with tremendous speed.  Same thing with the hips”.

“The main thing for the novice or the average golfer is to keep any conscious hand action out of the swing”.

Lesson five is what else, summary and review!

Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons – The Modern Fundamentals of Golf stresses the technical parts of the golf swing and forty years later is still a must read for any serious golfer.

No golfer has come close to Ben Hogan’s remarkable achievement of winning nine of the 16 majors he competed in from the 1946 PGA through the 1953 British Open. He won four U.S. Opens, two Masters, two PGAs and one British Open. He won PGA Player of the Year honors four times and is one of only four golfers (Jack Nicklaus, Gene Sarazen and Gary Player are the others) to win all four major titles in his career.

In 1949, Ben Hogan’s car was smashed when a bus, swinging out to pass a truck, hit Ben Hogan’s car head on. The impact drove the engine into the driver’s seat, the steering wheel into the back seat. Ben slid from the drivers seat to the passenger side in an effort to shield his wife Valerie from the impact. Ben Hogan’s heroism saved his wife from serious injury and probably saved his life also. Valerie Hogan received only minor injuries, Ben suffered a broken collarbone, smashed ribs, a double fracture of the pelvis and a broken ankle.

After his bones were set Ben developed a blood clot, and doctors performed an abdominal operation and tied off the principal veins in his legs, preventing the clot from reaching his heart.

Many thought Hogan would never play golf again. But few had his determination and strength of character. “People have always been telling me what I can’t do,” he said. “I guess I have wanted to show them. That’s been one of my driving forces all my life.”

Sixteen months after the near-fatal accident, Hogan won the U.S. Open at Merion in Pennsylvania. His remarkable 1-iron shot on the difficult final hole forced a playoff, which he captured the next day by shooting a brilliant 69 to beat Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio. The Hawk, who had been the best golfer in the world when the accident occurred, had regained his throne.

From the time of his discharge from the Army in August 1945, just after his 33rd birthday, until the car crash, Hogan won an amazing 37 tournaments and twice was leading money-winner for the year. A controlled left-to-right ball flight and sound course management were the main reasons for his success. After the accident, Hogan didn’t play more than seven tournaments a year because his legs couldn’t take the stress. Yet he won 13 more tournaments. Hogan retired with 63 tournament victories, third all-time to Sam Snead’s 81 and Jack Nicklaus’ 70. Only Nicklaus with 18 and Walter Hagen with 11 have won more professional majors.

After his professional career declined, he concentrated on managing his successful golf equipment company, the Ben Hogan Company, which he started in the mid-1950s. With Herbert Warren Wind, he co-authored perhaps the most quoted golf book of instruction: Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.
Hogan, who was diagnosed with colon cancer surgery in 1995 and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, died at age 84 on July 25, 1997 in his home in Fort Worth.