Gerry Hogan Golf by Ken King

Further insights from Gerry Hogan (now in his 70’s) from a forum website (iseekgolf.com), post is “Ask Gerry Hogan” that he briefly participated in during 2010: I had reached a point where I had decided to start from the very beginning and to carry no baggage or garbage into my research. My approach took the following format; The human mechanical machine is an exceedingly complex multi-lever assembly where the bones provide the rigid structures that act as levers that move about joints. There are 206 bones in the human body, the majority of which are involved, in some way or other, in both the upswing and the downswing. And every movement that the golfer makes must occur within a precise sequence of individual mechanical events, the satisfaction of the fundamental needs of each such event is totally dependent upon the function of the bone movement that preceded it. All bone movement is powered by muscle contraction. Muscles can PULL but they cannot PUSH, it is well to remember that! Invariably muscles act in groups, seldom individually, if ever. Muscle contractions are controlled from within the very deep subconscious brain, invariably far removed from conscious controls. The subconscious brain receives messages from the conscious brain relating to an intended motion or sequence of motions (such as the golf swing). The subconscious receives an image which it proceeds to interpret and then to pre-program into a sequential flow of motion. Be careful what you ask for, you may not like what you get! Since we are dealing with levers (the bones) every movement made is governed by The Laws of Levers and Leverage. Since we create motion, every movement is the total servant of Newton’s Laws of Motion. There are no exceptions, you obey the Laws and the Rules or you pay accordingly. This is merely the tip of the iceberg relating to where I have been and how long it took to seek my answers and understandings. I see no possible relationship to, or association with, anything that Homer Kelly ever did. If I have touched on some few areas that Homer chose to use then it was pure coincidence, nothing more. It is not my intention to tell anyone what to think or how to think, it never has been. If I can merely persuade you, induce you to ask questions for yourselves and to seek honest, truthful and provable answers without personal or hidden agendas to serve, I will have done you a very great service. Incidentally I see constant references to pp#3 in TGM terminology and suggestions that I cannot or did not understand this #3. Perhaps someone could enlighten me on what this “pressure point #3” is and it’s possible relevance to the acceleration of the clubhead? Good luck Gerry hogan The #3 pressure point is the proximal phalanx of the right index finger, the meaty part of the first joint. It’s used to sense and meter the pressure of clubhead inertia, or lag pressure, for power regulation. ie. the feeling of heavy or light rather than quick or slow (jerky). It’s also used to direct thrust or trace a clubhead delivery line, either the true geometric base plane line or a visual equivalent. It is associated with power accumulator #3, the angle of the clubshaft to the left arm, vertically, and always in line with the plane of motion of the left wrist cock/uncock. As the left wrist rolls (def. left) to any degree into impact that angle at the time determines the amount of clubhead travel in the rotational plane around it, controlled by the straightening right arm. It can be zeroed out with either a left hand palm grip or a totally uncocked left wrist. Thus is clubface control established by the flat left wrist, not the right hand. Once established with the lag loading, pressure at PP#3 is never relieved. The three imperatives in The Golfing Machine are a flat left wrist through impact, a straight plane line and a clubhead lag pressure point. Those control the clubface, the clubshaft and the clubhead. 50

“To the extent you lose one, you lose them all.” From Loren (Lynn Blake) Loren….Thanks you for your response. I would like to offer a thought or two here for your considerations. Please bear it in mind that I am a servant of the truth and the facts, I have no personal ego to serve, no axe to grind, no dog in the fight. While the explanation given by you may have a valid base of fact in the appropriate environment, it must be remembered that the human golfer is not a robotic device and cannot be considered as one. It is never sufficient to say that compliance with physics alone is sufficient as proof positive, it must also be asked if the mechanical apparatus involved is capable of actually executing the physics stipulated. Let’s consider time and motion briefly as applicable to the human systems of locomotion involved here. Here I will be as brief as possible but I can also go into great a depth as may be required. Here are some FACTS that should be considered when trying to apply this pp#3 fundamental of TGM. I didn’t invent these FACTS any more than I devised, discovered or invented the Laws of Motion or Levers and Leverage, they are simply ‘there’, they cannot be ignored. If you unknowingly place your hand on a hot surface you will burn yourself, possibly seriously. Yet you can dab your finger on and off that same surface without harm or even pain. Why is that so? It’s all about TIME. There are various types of sensory and motor nerve systems in the human body. Sensory nerves carry messages from the body to the brain while motor nerves carry signals from the brain to the body. Sensory nerves have differing levels of priority, from very strong to very weak. A powerful pain impulse, for example, travels faster and has priority over all other sensory signals. Yet it only travels at around a quite sluggish 30-32meters per second. That’s about 70-72 miles an hour. It isn’t mystical or magical, it’s electro-chemical, from point to point. It’s a little like a burning fuse, it happens progressively. In the example above of the hot surface and the hand; the hand comes into contact with that surface and no sensation whatever is felt initially. Pain does not register in the hand, it registers in the brain. Nerve ends are stimulated in the hand involved and signals commence travelling to the brain, via the sensory pathways. It takes about 2/10ths of a second to travel from the hand to the brain and all that time your hand is sizzling away and you feel absolutely nothing. A powerful burst of sensory information enters the brain where it’s decoded and the brain takes remedial responsive (mechanical) action to remove the hand from the hot surface. This time it’s the motor nervous system that is involved in getting that hand off that hot plate. A program of muscle involvement must be drawn up by the deep involuntary brain to electro-chemically stimulate all of the appropriate muscle groups to act in ordered sequences to move the bones required to free the hand from it’s torment. That also takes at least an additional 2/10ths of a second. Many studies have been done to determine the time taken in the golf swing. In the study done by twelve scientists for the work “The Search for the Perfect Swing” (Cochran & Stobbs) the average time taken by a selected group of tour professionals for the full swing was 0.89 seconds and for the downswing from top to impact was 2/10ths of a second. Subsequent studies have differed fractionally but to no degree of consequence here. The claim made in TGM relating to the pp#3 must therefore be questioned. A ‘feel’ nerve sensory impulse has much lower priority and speed values than a powerful pain nerve. The brain of the golfer cannot register the feel sensations emitted through the hands for at least 2/10ths of a second after the nerve ends have been stimulated. The human golfer can never know where his/ her hands actually ARE when in motion in the downswing, they can only hope to guess where they may have BEEN about 2/10ths of a second before. pp#3 also seems to suggest that changes can be brought about to the travel and alignment of the clubface during the downswing. How does the player know where the clubface is and what it is doing at any given time? They simply cannot, it’s quite impossible to define what is happening, it’s only possible to identify feel sensations that have 51

previously happened. How can the player change what has already happened? And in the time frame available! How can the brain totally reverse motion pre-programming that is already under physical execution? In the same work previously mentioned these tour players were placed in an environment where the light could be turned off without any form of afterglow. Instant darkness could be achieved. They were asked to address a ball and hit it but were to stop their swings when the light went out. None could do so when the downswing had commenced, some couldn’t stop once the backswing had commenced. (Perhaps) Homer Kelley should have considered the limitations imposed on his assumptions by the very nature of the mechanical device that he was actually dealing with; THE HUMAN GOLFER. A Ferrari will offer extraordinary speeds but won’t knock over trees or pull a plough yet a big Caterpillar tractor will march through a forest of trees but won’t do much of value on the race track. Both are piston driver combustion engines. There is vastly more here that I can offer, if required, but this may be of assistance to you in making your own mind up over what is provable and what is not provable. During my own decades of work and research there were countless times when I knew that I had it all worked out only to find some area of some science, no matter how remote, that tore it all down, just as a sudden wind will tear down a house of cards. No disrespect intended to you, Homer Kelley or any or all TGM enthusiasts/ believers. Regards and good luck Gerry Hogan Follow up post: If golfers could come to understand that the human brain can hold only one thought at any one time their performances and their love of the game would alter immediately and quite dramatically. You create a conscious intention on the conscious levels of the brain where you do have some control over input. But that’s really about where all conscious controls must end. Your selected intention is passed into the far deeper levels of the subconscious brain where it’s interpreted. The subconscious brain then draws up an entire program of individual mechanical events that must be executed with extraordinary precision in a precise sequence of coordinated motion. It’s really all a subconscious reaction chain triggered by a conscious intention. You cannot change any link in that chain with altering the primary trigger that initiated it. Gerry “Fart over your left heel” It’s extraordinary how much positive feedback I have had over the years from that little image (especially from women golfers). My note: See pg. 45 in this document (the scanned image page 83 of the book itself) for this topic. The intention is very simple, in the purely mechanical sense. The player has a certain knowledge, at all times, where the fart will exit from and an equally certain knowledge of where their left heel is located. Remember that the human golfer is bipedal, has only two legs/ feet to balance upon. In human terms, shifts of critical body masses in one direction automatically and involuntarily trigger shifts of masses in opposite directions to maintain body balance and our gravity lines, which determine balance. A shift of (say) the head to the right and in will trigger a shift of the hips to the left. The golfer must swing the clubhead about their spine at an angle of roughly 90 degrees to the axis of the spine. Centrifugal forces determine that. Isn’t it therefore truly fundamental that the spine be placed in a location ideal to that purpose? You may need to think carefully about that. The spine IS inclined bottom back to top forward at address. The swing plane must be inclined because of that. It’s not possible to swing vertically as in a ferris wheel shape. The arms/ hands must come to the inside at some stage during the backswing so why not do everything possible to make that as easy and as natural as possible? Stats released by the USGA and USPGA show that only one player in 10 or 10% of golfers will break a 52

hundred on a regulation golf course. I find that staggering. My own experiences and research also indicates that at least 90% of all players swing outside to in across the ball. If the bottom end of the spine (viewed from the rear) is right and the top end, the base of the skull, is left at commencement of the downswing, the spine MUST be inclined from bottom right to top left. I find it less than possible to do anything other than swing outside in across the ball from this spinal position. If the spine is inclined bottom left to top right the player can actually swing outside in relative to the shoulder alignment but still swing inside to out and back in again relative to the target line. That one needs a little thought but it is true. Here is a further thought for your personal consideration; In the approximate forty years that I have observed, studied, taught golf to all levels, I have never once encountered a player who could break 100 who was actually all SQUARED to the so-called target line at IMPACT. I can therefore find no useful mechanical reason what-so-ever why the player should be SQUARED to the target line at address, can you? Additionally, I refuse to teach anyone, at any level, to hit the golf ball straight for any price or for any reason. I only work in right to left or left to right shapes, never straight. If the player can shape the flight either way, or both ways, then their true target lines are either to the right or the left of where the ball eventually comes to rest. It’s absurd to hit fade or draw yet still set up to an initial target line that is straight. A pulled hook is really a draw that starts in the wrong direction just as a pushed slice is a ball that starts too far right, relative to where it ends. That may be worth some thought time too. Setup to the line on which you intend to start the ball for the first few feet or yards, completely ignoring where the ball will end after it’s curved flight. It takes some courage and some personal discipline to master but isn’t that what golf REALLY is all about! Seriously? It’s all about courage, discipline, self control and strategy, it’s not about stupid bloody numbers. Not to me anyway. Sincere regards Gerry

Farting I’ll just touch on this for the moment as I’m pressed for time. A simple question for your very serious consideration: which comes first, the backswing or the downswing? I’m deadly serious, so think about it! Even the totally brain dead player knows that the bloody backswing comes before the downswing, what a dumb arsed question. Well, here is another one for you; why do you all set up for the FORWARD swing when, in reality, you KNOW that the backswing comes first? The vast majority of all backswing difficulties emanate from this very simple fact; golfers preset their entire physical and mental processes for the forward swing to (seldom through) the ball when they must first move in exactly the opposite direction, using the opposite muscle activity to do so. You all need to think about that one! Preset yourself to make everything in the BACKSWING as simple, as reflexive, as natural as you possibly can. You may find an entirely new and wonderful world open up for you. Deliberately set yourself to encourage an inclination of your spine from bottom left to top right. Move from the toes, feet, ankles upwards as a dancer or a boxer must. Stop being a weightlifter/ grappler/ strongman. Golf is all about ROTATION and ANGULAR MOMENTUM, it’s about agility and freedom of motion. It isn’t about ‘power’. Set up to the line on which you intend the ball to START, either to the left of where it will end or to the right of it. You are going to bend it, one way or the other. Place the ball where you can get the job done that you are trying to do. Think about that one, seriously. There are no bad shots in golf to an intelligent, thinking player. When you hit a shot that is not what you 53

wanted, be grateful for the learning experience it offers. I’m deadly serious about that. Most important of all; be ever grateful for the privilege of simply “being out there”, it is a privilege, not a right. The day will come, all too soon, when you will hit the last golf ball that you will ever hit, the problem is that you know not when that instant in time will be. Love it with a passion and to hell with the bloody numbers. I’ve been there, done that, and it hurts. Gerry Hogan Showing God the time If the left elbow rolls over to point downwards from the top of the swing, the left hand/ forearm also roll. If the left wrist rolls so too does the elbow. You can prevent this with conscious control but, unless you do constantly consciously control it, it must happen because it’s all a part of our genetically inherited programs of reflex motion. It allows the arms to return to their positions of ‘rest’. It’s called TONUS. Always remember that the human was never designed, didn’t evolve, to play golf. There are many aspects of human motion/ locomotion that are quite contrary to the invented needs of the golfer. The right hand/ arm has always been blamed as the culprit for the dreaded ‘hit from the top’ but that is seldom the case, in reality. The left hand on the end of the left arm was never intended to visit the position that it must at the top of the backswing. There has never been a genetic purpose or survival need for it to do so. It is highly contradictory to human genetic patterning and is actually far more difficult to achieve than you might yet imagine and much more lifting with the right hand/arm/side occurs in the upswing than you are aware of. The human system is also fitted with ‘stretch receptors’ that trigger when a dominant muscle group become active. This is involved in the ‘TONUS’ factor that guarantees the return of all active parts to their AT REST status positions. In summary here;... the left arm/ hand are already powerfully triggered to return to their TONUS position at the left body side. In reality, the right hand/arm/side is still active in it’s lifting mode. Because of this the very first reactive move from the top can be an utter disaster that will happen if you don’t prevent it from happening. The left arm will instinctively pull downwards and leftwards, initiated by a turning/ dropping of the left elbow which rolls and pulls down the left forearm/ hand. This happens while the right hand/arm/side is still active in holding UP. The result is that the left hand rolls and drops below the right hand. The right hand now has nowhere to go but out and over the left hand, it has no other option. It is the victim of circumstances, not the perpetrator of evil deeds. By forcing the left wrist to remain ‘looking upwards’ (so that God could read the time on your wrist watch) you prevent the left elbow from dropping and rolling to point downwards. This allows that critical fraction of time for the right hand/arm/side to drop downwards below and inside the left arm/hand/side. If the right hand is also forced to remain supine (palm facing up) it forces the right elbow to snap down and inwards to lock the right upper arm into the right side. This also totally alleviates the dreaded ‘chicken wing’. The two hands/arms/sides can now be pulled right through impact and beyond by a simple rotation of the body, working from the toes upwards through the ankles, the shins, the knees, the hips, the torso, the arms, the shaft and finally the clubhead, in that order. It can never be successfully executed the other way around, from the clubhead back and down through the body to the ground. Newton’s Third Law of Motion flatly guarantees that. Jack Nicklaus is still the greatest achiever in majors the game has ever known. As I recall, he won 2 US Amateurs, 18 majors, 19 second and 7 third placings in majors (44 top three finishes in majors! Tiger has much to do yet to meet that record). Sam Snead won more tournaments in a career (Roberto de Vicenzo may have topped him but with some very obscure victories). Bobby Jones played as an amateur all his career and won 13 majors in about 8 years and retired at age 30. All three of the above literally ‘turned their backs’ on the target at the top. Their hips turned about as far as 54

their shoulders and their left foot raised up on tippy toe to get to their top of swing positions. They swung UP from the toes upwards and they swung DOWN from the toes upwards. And they could all play a bit! They make a mockery of the still lower body junk that is out there now, don’t they. No, I’m not advocating anything. I’m just trying to get you to think and search for yourselves instead of becoming obsessed with CULT mentalities. Enough said! This also relates to my needs to LOCK THE HANDS at the top and this is the also the heart of the true SWING PLANE. A brief word on my difficulties here;..I must be exceedingly brief because this is a forum. I cannot offer critical illustrations. You already have heads full of all manner of thoughts and theories that you (probably) believe and want to hang onto. I can only point you in a direction and leave it for you to some serious and very honest homework yourselves. I’m an ex cop and intensely proud of what I did and why I did it. Had I been as prepared to accept every bit of supposed ‘evidence’ , hunch, theory, peer suggestion etc as you have all been so prepared to do when seeking to better your golf games and experiences, a great many people would have spent a great many years locked in prisons who were totally innocent. I know, with an utter certainty, that no person I ever arrested and convicted spent on day ‘inside’ that they shouldn’t have. I have conducted my research in exactly the same way that I conducted my Police Career…without fear or favour. Only the TRUTH is sacred and the seeker must follow obediently where the evidence may choose to lead you. Never ever search of support for your own pre-conceived thoughts and opinions or those of others. Genuine sincere regards and best wishes to all Gerry Hogan

Pre-programming This is an area where one needs to be very careful about presumptions. The human brain is, without doubt, the most complex mechanism in the known universe. Add to the brain the human body itself and trying to comprehend the enormity of capabilities does become very daunting indeed. Literally countless critical computations are being carried out in the brain every second and your golf game/ golf swing is way way down the pecking order. In fact, that it rates at all is often quite extraordinary. TRUE!! As previously stated in another post here, sensory feedback (FEEL) is transmitted to the brain by various nerve priority pathways and much can get overridden or completely lost or distorted. Nerve pathways are fitted with synaptic junctions that act as filters. (This is very difficult to describe fully in a simplistic manner so bear with me here). For a nerve impulse to continue through a synaptic junction it must have an energy strong enough to literally ‘jump the gap’. If the impulse is too weak it cannot cross. It’s also rather like emergency vehicles with flashing lights and sirens getting priority over other vehicles at traffic lights and intersections. You cannot always trust what you think you feel. The brain is far too busy taking care of real and critical business to bother with the mundane, the trivial and the useless. There is another and far greater danger here. Remember that you only have time and distance in your downswing for one thought, and one thought only. The deep subconscious has no knowledge or understanding what-so-ever of golf or the golf swing, that’s all conscious level stuff. Be very careful how, when and where you spend the only penny that you have! If you become consciously aware of this finger #3 pressure thingie that you refer to, that will be where you spend your only penny. To succeed you need to select an image that will create an entire flow of motion that will exhibit itself as your 55

visible golf swing. It’s very unwise to get tangled up in conscious attention being placed on any of the links, the irrelevant bits and pieces, of the reaction chain. If any change is to come about in timing etc, as you have suggested, it must be done by some form of conscious intervention/recognition process because it will require the CONSCIOUS mind to realize that timing is off, in the first place. That does not lie in the realm of the deep subconscious. Obviously no offense intended here. You need to understand a great deal more about the many levels of brain functionality before you make judgments. If you have read ‘stuff’ or heard talk about the brain it may be wise to do some further checking for your own sake, just to sort the wheat from the chaff. Good luck and thanks for your feedback Gerry Hogan The Check Lists A long time ago I put together a little number called “The Check Lists” It’s all about us as a species and the real things that drive us to do the things that we do. It may help you to begin to understand why learning to play better golf is so absurdly difficult and could/ can be so easy. I have no personal agendas to serve in doing what I intend to do here. I can find no protocols or forum laws/ rules that suggest any prohibitions or restrictions so I have copied the extract from my files and will now paste it herein for your consideration. If I do transgress in any way just delete the entry and advise me accordingly. Please bear in mind that the material is fully covered by copyright in my name, I ask that you respect that.

Check Lists We are human beings and, without question, we are (currently anyway) the most complex and advanced mechanism in the known universe. However, that regal position brings with it its own baggage, an extraordinary amount of it. Housed in the region of the brain stem, we still have remnants of our very ancient past. The great scientist, teacher, researcher, writer, Carl Sagan once summed ‘us’ up rather succinctly in a simple one liner when referring to the fact that we are reptilian, mammalian and primate, all existing together, in the one brain, in a very uneasy truce. What could that possibly have to do with the golf swing!! Far more than you might imagine! This area of the brain is the seat of aggression, ritual, habit, social hierarchy, territoriality and that can tell us an enormous amount about golf, golfers, golf teaching, golf dogma, lore and literature. It can tells us a massive amount about ourselves too, if we want to listen. And it can also tell us a great deal about cults and cult followers. It can show us why there has been an ever growing stockpile of mindless rubbish that continues to grow with every passing year, and is passed off as ‘golf teaching/ golf instruction.’ If vast scientific and medical opinion is correct then the golf world must accept that the human golfer is very powerfully influenced by ritual, habit, hierarchy, territoriality etc. If so, then they must also accept the check list. Golf is dominated by ritualistic behaviour. I am not going to become either specific or in depth about matters that relate to the power, and uses, of ritual in controlling human behaviour. I’m sure you are all aware of the power and existence of ritual, habit creation, mind control and don’t need any help from me in identifying it. I have a profound belief that, not only are we humans highly susceptible to the influences of ritual, we actually seek it. We are comfortable with ritualistic behaviour. Look at almost anyone on the driving range or on the tee. They work their way through an entire program, from head to feet, and include all of the ‘appropriate’ geometric associations with golf ball, club face, target line, squares, parallels, etc. 56

If you consider the huge influences that patterning and geometric imagery have on behaviour and in communication and marry that to the power of ritual, then you have a very messy environment in which to exist and function! It may, at first, be difficult to see what relevance this has to the golf swing. Two simple questions can answer that: 1. Can it contribute a value to the mechanical performance of the golf swing or to the learning process involving the golf swing. 2. If it cannot contribute, can it impede the learning process or detract from the performance. We are dealing with the process of elimination. It is therefore fundamental to know what we can or cannot eliminate in the search for simplicity. A very wise Frenchman once said; Perfection can only be approached when there is nothing more to take away. The path to simplicity is the elimination of all worthless trivia! Everything that we involve as a part of the golf swing, consciously or otherwise, contributes to the accumulation of confusion. If it has no useful values then get rid of it. Try the old ‘fly on the wall’ trick around any number of people, professional or otherwise, teaching other people to play golf. As soon as you become aware of what is really happening you may have to walk away to prevent yourself from rolling around on the ground, doubled up with laughter. Usually it’s the grip first. There will be the ‘long’ thumb and the ‘short’ thumb and the left thumb will be exactly here and the closed left hand will ‘show 2 ½ knuckles’ and the pressure will on the finger and not this one and on and on it goes. And that’s only the left hand. Where does this all come from? It is getting to the stage where the golfer’s check list will be more complex and more time consuming than the countdown for a space launch. Golfers seem to be of the belief that, if they can do an entire step by step ‘component’ check and, if everything checks out, all will be well and the golf ball will submit passively to the will of the golfer. The major problem there is that the golf ball isn’t in on the arrangement. Of course, when the ball heads off into uncharted territory (yet again!) the golfer invariably disappears into his next check list in a desperate attempt to find what went wrong with the last check list. Let’s look at this from another direction. A highly complex, multi-levered action that contains areas of learned skills that are quite contrary to genetic motion, such as the golf swing, must be pre-programmed by the subconscious brain. We know that the time constraints involved severely limit the number of consciously controlled events that could possibly be executed, in both backswing and downswing. The downswing, for example, can only be a sequence of motion in the form of a reaction chain, it can’t be anything else. In the time available, there can only be one specific conscious image and that will evoke a subconscious pre-programming that will result in a multi-event reaction chain. Some ‘position’ that the golfer, or teacher, takes a fancy to and tries to emulate is merely a link in a reaction chain. You can change the primary trigger but you cannot influence the links without changing the trigger. While the check list may well be the teaching professional’s greatest ally, I believe that it is the player’s worst enemy. 57

Teachers can progressively meander through a seemingly endless maze of positions’ and do’s and don’ts and, even if a long term student never improves their performance, or, as in so many cases, actually gets worse, there is always the loophole, the way out, the face and reputation saver. There is always the bloody Check list “I can understand your frustration (Sir/ Madam Whoever) but look at the progress we have made over the past (weeks, months, years).” Readily available to the teacher is the check list of all the nicely visible ‘stuff’ that is now ‘different’. Over many generations, an image has evolved ‘identifying’ what the correct golf swing should look like. “You have a great ‘looking’ golf swing but you can’t break 90, great swing though!” “ Man, that Jim Furyk can get it around a golf course, how good would he be if he swung like Freddie (Couples)!” I agree, Freddie sure does look good. Yet the only similarity between Freddie Couples and Ben Hogan was that they were both males. Funny isn’t it. Back in the late 1800s there was the Scottish Swing and it was the Classic Swing. (And it was a shocker!) Then along came Harry Vardon and he pretty quickly became The Big Dog of golf and the Scottish Swing disappeared into history. As Vardon’s career began to fade, a teenager with a great gift but a bad attitude came along who would undergo a transition and evolve into the immortal Bobby Jones. The scepter and crown of the Classic Swing were stripped from Vardon and Bobby Jones was enthroned. Pretty soon, Samuel Jackson Snead emerged from the Virginia mountains and he became the King of the Swingers. At that time there was an ugly, violent slash belonging to one, William Ben Hogan that left shudders running down many a spine. In 1940 this same Ben Hogan made some very sudden and extraordinary changes and he instantly became the epitome of mechanical perfection. His was the swing to die for! It still is. Then along came Jack, later to be revered as the Golden Bear. And the armchair critics and the analysts and the eternally Wise Ones all agreed that Big Jack, Fat Jack, could never last, he utterly shattered the mold that Hogan had created. The super upright swing plane, the flying right elbow, it was all too horrible, but it sure knocked The King, Arnie, off his winner’s perch. It didn’t take long before the accumulator of majors, the nemesis of the pack, was The Man, the One to be copied, the ultimate golf swing…The Golden Bear. And the Tiger arrived! Our lives literally run on check lists. “Did you send that memo to …? “I’ll check my files” “Where were you on the night of… at 9.45am sir?” “Ok, that’s six weeks ago next Friday, I’ll check my diary.” Your car mechanic hands you the bill and, sure enough, there’s an organized bunch of little squares with little ticks, yep, another check list. You go to your doctor and give him a bunch of symptoms. He goes through a pre ordained routine matching up 58

your symptoms (your check list) with his disease identity check list trying to find matches for your check list and suddenly we have a…diagnosis. Your wife is about to bake a cake or cook an exotic dinner and out comes the recipe book. Yes, another check list. Ok that exotic meal is a dinner party for a dozen guests. I could write an entire book on the check listing and the ritual, the hierarchy and the territoriality that will exhibit itself before that night is over. Everywhere you look there is another check list. Your life is one endless check list. Why not include your golf game? However; do you have a check list for banging nails into exotic furniture?...nope! Do you have a check list for slashing the razor edge of an axe into a log with the blade missing your toes by scary margins..err..Nope. Do you have a check list to help you drive 1,500 kilos of motor vehicle down freeways at scary speeds or through traffic that a rabbit couldn’t get through…nope Odd, isn’t it! We, as a species, could never have survived without all of this baggage that we cart around with us. However, in so many ways it is equally to our detriment, and golf is one of those areas that suffers immeasurably!. This is not criticism, it happens to be the truth. Currently, golfers are paying very dearly to learn useless check lists but they are not learning how to play the game of golf. Proof of the true fundamentals of motion will forever eliminate the check lists. Imagine cruising along at around 330kph (200+mph) in a pack of other Formula 1 cars all hell bent to get past you. Don’t have much time for check lists then! Layton Hewitt and Andre Agassi in the final of a US Open, naw, not much use for check lists there either. Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson playing scrambled eggs with each other’s brain’s? No way! On the other hand, you are running a business employing 100 people and turning over millions of dollars, well, you cannot survive there without endless check lists, every hour of every day. You are the President of a nation of some 300 million people, well you need a whole bunch of them there. There is a place and a need for check lists but not in golf! Hope this helps some. Gerry Hogan Putting With your putting, this approach may be of interest to you. I can produce a lot of good players, including tour players, that have fallen victim to this little bet. I do this a lot when in the States, in particular. I love stirring the locals! I’ll bet them around the putting clock, for money, using their driver as a putter and they can use whatever they like. I was a pretty ordinary putter, for my level, when I stopped suddenly one day and asked myself my two questions that govern my life; 1. what the hell am I actually trying to do here? 2. why am I actually trying to do this? I realized that all I had to do was put the ball in motion for the first foot or so, in the right direction, and then let physics and gravity do the rest. No stances, no alignment, no grip contortions, no stroking, nothing, just waddle in, give it a bit of a dab, a pop, a bump whatever got it rolling. My only though is to have my clubface facing where I want the ball to start for a few inches after the ball has left it. The trick is to be strong enough to completely ignore where the ball will end, don’t give the hole a thought after you have decided where the ball has to start. Just give it a dab, whatever, and let it go do it’s own thing. Try it sometime, it can be a lot of fun and it can also turn your putting into a think of beauty and a joy forever. Putting itself is a walk in the park. It’s the fear of failure that turns it into an agony. With all things considered, 59

speed break, etc. it’s only the start that matters so why worry about the hole. Nobody is going to steal or shift it while you’re not looking. If you START it in the right direction and at the right speed it has little option but to end up in the hole. Alternately, if you don’t start it right it can never succeed. Gerry Setup I believe in keeping everything in life simple and easy. Everything! If you are going to swing to the inside on the backswing then make that as easy as you possibly can. ‘Set’ yourself both physically and mentally to swing to the inside. It’s far more a mental ‘attitude’ that creates a physical ‘positioning’ than it is an address ‘position’. Look at it this way; You are about to knock a nail in with a hammer and you want this one in at 90 degrees to the horizontal. Don’t you quite automatically and completely subconsciously shuffle yourself into the most ideal physical position to get that job done? If you are going to bang the next one in at 90 degrees to the vertical in the same piece of fixed timber you certainly would not stand or ‘position’/ set yourself in the same spot and attitude where you were for the last one, would you? You REACT subconsciously to your intention. Slope your keyboard off at about 45 degrees from where you instinctively have it, relative to your sitting position, and try typing a lengthy email from there. Why should golf be any different? Work out what you are actually trying to do, and why you are trying to do it, and then set yourself up in the most ideal ‘position’ to get that specific task done. Think about it; the backwing comes before the downswing and the most difficult part of the backswing is getting the damn thing started. That’s primarily because you place yourself in a completely incorrect location to get the job done. Take a 5 or 6 iron, tee the ball a fraction off the ground and, instead of setting up to swing at the BACK of the ball, try setting up to swing at the INSIDE of the ball, from the inside. Don’t make any big deal out of it and don’t presume any ‘results’, just cut your dog loose and have some fun, for the sheer hell of it. (You tee the ball a tad just to make this new task as easy as possible to execute and learn from) Remember, I have utterly no interest in straight balls, hate them more than wet days when the fish don’t bite either. If you are going to DRAW the ball don’t you have to START IT RIGHT? Well set up to do just that. Of course, there is an optimum position to place the ball relative to where you are standing to make the job the easiest possible. So, forget all of the bullshit and shuffle around until YOU find YOUR spot to get YOUR job done the easiest way possible. You may find that the ball needs to be back a lot further than you ever thought possible. If you find that the ball wants to go to the right all the time from this ‘attitude’ all you have to do then is “DIAL A SHAPE”. Get the clubface to return to the ball a bit closed to the line that it’s then travelling on and there is your right-to-left spin and right-to-left ball flight. Don’t stand there trying to work out “how” to do it , just find the necessaries to get on with and do it. Don’t try to control what happens, just do it and see what happens. Good luck and have fun. A fade is even easier but let’s do DRAW first. Gerry

The Conquest of Fear – by Gerry Hogan …it has always seemed to me that 90 percent of golfers never manage to extract from golf more than 10 percent of the pleasure that the game offers. This is a very sad state of affairs, and if this book did more than help readers get more enjoyment from golf by reshaping their attitude to it, then I feel it had succeeded. Golf is a game of penalties-the trees and the water and the sand aren’t put on the golf course for golfers to admire but for 60

golfers to fear. Yet what precisely is the golfer afraid of? The trees and water and sand cannot themselves do any harm. No, the cause of the fear is the system of penalties-the numbers game. Humans have been rearranging the landscape for thousands of years, but only in a few instances have they succeeded in matching or improving on the beauty of nature. The golf course is often one of them. The hours you spend going around the course ought to be hours of delight and freedom from everyday cares. The golfer might well respond to this by saying, sure, he would enjoy the delights of the course a lot more if he could only hit the ball a lot better. Well, herein lies a paradox. You first must learn to hit the ball without fear of the possible consequences and, only after that to write down the numbers. This not to say you should adopt a billat-the-gate attitude. Rather, you should first weigh up all the variables; second, decide what you have to do; and third, execute that decision without fear of what may happen. What I have suggested here is actually the essence of positive thinking. It leaves the golfer no way out, no easy excuse path, and no cushions. Either you have the courage to do what you have decided should be done or you don’t have it. If you don’t have it, you cannot buy it, steal it or disguise from yourself the fact that you don’t have it. Courage has to be earned the hard way. You can buy books and videos and study how the champions swing a club, but that alone can never make you a great player. If you watch, say, Jack Nicklaus in action, all you see is the external, visible dimension of his golf swing. You don’t see the courage that underpins every shot that he plays. Courage is the fuel that drives the human machine to greater heights. If you want to play like Nicklaus, I suggest you have a long, hard talk with yourself before you go pounding thousands of balls a week in pursuit of a dream. Nicklaus freed himself of fear, so he was able to soar like an eagle. If fear has reduced you to a sparrow, no amount of lessons or new clubs will help you fly any higher… …Here is a rule of thumb that has served me well over the years: if you don’t like something, change it. If you meet it head-on but cannot change it, then walk away from it and forget it. If you choose to do neither of these, then learn to live with the misery that will surely come your way…. …You might collect a few scars by taking this positive approach, but remember that scars are always found on heroes, rarely on cowards.