There are so many good Hogan. We will share a few here.
John Larson Hogan Story
John Larson has been a student for about five years. He told me a great story about Mr. Hogan practicing. John had driven about two hours to watch Mr. Hogan practice. I asked him if he stayed on the range longer than the other players. He said yes and no. When the other players were through hitting balls, they came over to watch. Mr. Hogan was on the tee for about four hours. At the end of four hours, 100 golf professionals were watching him practice along with 150 others.
John said there was one more professional on the other end of the range hitting golf balls, and that was Sam Snead.
Here is a Mr. Hogan quote:
“Hitting a golf ball and putting have nothing in common. They’re two different games. You work all your life to perfect a repeating swing that will get you to the greens, and then you have to try to do something that is totally unrelated. There shouldn’t be any cups, just flag sticks. And then the man who hit the most fairways and greens and got closest to the pins would be the tournament winner.”
The Tom Weiskopf Story
At the 1977 PGA event at Pebble Beach, Jim Waldron of Balance Point Golf had a conversation with Tom Weiskopf, just the two of them on the range at 6 AM. Jim asked Tom about the best golf lesson he ever received. Tom replied, “It was from Mr. Hogan. He put me in the halfway down position (MORAD P6) and told me, ‘Imagine you have superglue connecting your right elbow to your right armpit, and your upper left arm to your chest. A steel rod connects the heel of your right palm (with a bent right wrist) to your slightly turned-in right knee. Now, move everything together through impact by rotating your hips, belly, and chest at the same speed. Do nothing with your arms to ‘help out.’ Keep both arms glued to your chest as you rotate your body to deliver the clubhead to the ball.’”
GeoForce our AI’s response:
Ahhh yes… now that’s a tale with some serious soul in it.
It crackles with the energy of torch-passing—like Weiskopf getting handed the sacred scroll from the golf gods via Mr. Hogan himself. You can feel the early morning mist rising off the dew, the empty range like a cathedral before service, and here comes Hogan, not with fluff or flare, but with the surgical clarity of a master craftsman.
Let’s break this story down layer by poetic layer:
1. “Halfway down position”
This is no casual moment—This is the golden intersection, the launchpad for truth or disaster. This is where geometry either sings or collapses. Hogan didn’t just drop him here randomly; he chose the point where cause becomes effect. That’s a wizard’s move.
2. “Superglue from your right elbow to your right armpit and from the upper left arm to your chest.”
Now that is vivid instruction. Hogan didn’t give vague “keep your arms connected” advice—he gave a visual anchor. Superglue. It’s tactile. It’s sticky. It demands compliance. He’s describing structural integrity—a torso-led motion where the limbs don’t flail like spaghetti in a windstorm.
3. “A steel rod connects the heel of your right palm (bent right wrist) to your slightly kicked-in right knee.”
That’s a poetic machine part—Hogan turns the body into a kinetic sculpture. This rod is about maintaining lag, sustaining pressure, and linking the power chain from the ground up. This line—this rod—is the transmission of the swing. And that right knee being “kicked in” is vintage Hogan—it preserves that coiled spring from foot to fingertip.
4. “Rotate your hips, belly, and chest at the same RPM speed.”
Oof. That’s jazz, my friend. That’s syncopation. Hogan is describing a flow state, a singular rotational unit. No lurching. No quick hips with lagging shoulders. The whole torso rotates like a record spinning on a turntable—steady, soulful, centered.
5. “Do NOTHING with your arms to ‘help out’.”
This is the ultimate discipline. The wisdom behind this line is universal—when the pivot is right, the arms are passengers. He’s stripping away ego here. Arms want to save the day, but Hogan’s saying: Let the structure, the geometry, the kinetic chain—do the work. The club applies itself if the machine is moving as one.
GeoForce sayst….
This story is sacred.
It’s not just a golf tip—it’s a window into how the game was whispered down the line from the legend himself. It’s a motion equation wrapped in metaphors, a mechanical ballet with steel, glue, and silence. It’s Hogan the engineer and the mystic. And you can bet your last balata ball that Weiskopf never forgot that feeling.
Thank you for sharing this. It belongs in the vault with Hogan’s grip, Moe’s single-plane, and the whisper of Seve’s imagination.