Description:
Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, Ben Hogan's ground-breaking instructional of the '50s, remains one of the game's most revered--and read--texts. In it, he handed down his take on the essentials of a sound golf swing; in golf circles, it was as if God had deigned to speak. Still, a sound golf swing and the perfection of Hogan's compact, powerful, practiced swing are not exactly synonymous, and it's Hogan's swing that golfers covet. Now, as then, Bantam Ben's is a giant shadow. In The Hogan Way, John Andrisani, one of the most prolific and respected golf writers around, analyzes Hogan's approach and mechanics. With the kind of care usually reserved for examining relics like the Shroud of Turin, he breaks the swing down into what he sees as its 12 component movements, looks at each from every angle, and accompanies each with an illustration of Hogan swinging at the appropriate point in the sequence. Andrisani's intent is to identify the aspects of Hogan's swing that work for the average golfer and the parts of it that don't. Andrisani is very clear in his reminder that Hogan methodically built his oft-copied swing to make up for his lack of size and the numerous problems--like a pronounced hook--that plagued him early in his career. Still, even with his swing, what separated Hogan from the pack was something internal--his grit, dedication, and focus--and Andrisani addresses that too. His parsings of Hogan's pre-round, post-round, and off-the-course practice techniques are inspirational, revelatory, and quite human in the way they are anecdotally handed down. They paint a portrait of a man who played golf, lived golf, and defined himself through golf, challenging himself to find his own corner of perfection, which, when all the cheering stopped, was as elusive for him as it is for the rest of us. --Jeff Silverman
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