Hogan's swing

[hurley9192]

Another thread was discussing the perfect swing...it got me thinking. Could you imagine what a guy like Hogan could do with Today's technology? It would be amazing. He had something like a 135mph swing and used extremely heavy equipment. I couldn't imagine him hitting with a graphite shaft.

[rusek]

Hmmm, probably hit it 30 yards longer, and if he's playing an older shorter course maybe shoot a stroke or two lower, and shoot about the same if he played one of todays longer courses.

Really good golfers have good, repeatable swings, but the great golfers have that swing and the short game and course management abilities to take them to the top.

[hurley9192]

do you think he'd be #2 behind Tiger or equal to or better than Tiger? I just can't help but think that he'd be one of the longer guys on tour (which he was back in the day) and with as many greens and fairways that he hit, he'd shoot some great scores. Really, his downfall was his putting, but with the technology and different weighting in putters, you'd think he could cure that as well.

[wengerlaw]

The problem Hogan would have with being a long hitter is the same "problem" Tiger and other long hitters have: the farther you hit it, the more likely you are to run the ball into trouble. I don't think Hogan would have hit as many fairways and greens if he was blasting the ball 300 yards (See Erik's "Angles of Error" article from last month: http://thesandtrap.com/columns/the_n...ngles_of_error ). Accuracy goes down when distance goes up.

[Ole_Tom_Morris]

I hanker for the old days, and admire the old golfers more than those of today, Hogan being one of my heroes, but...

There are four things different, today.

1. More people, more golfers. And more who are genetically favored to excel.

2. Earlier, more scientific training. In olden days, pro golfers were often self-taught, by trial and error. Think how many years Hogan "wasted" learning his craft and trying to survive. I don't know if Lee Trevino would have been better if he were taught by a modern guru, like Ledbetter or Harmon, starting in his teens, but I do think Palmer would have been better. (The downside of this is that more and more golfers look like clones, and you don't see so many distinctive self-taught swings like that of Miller Barber, Moe Norman, Palmer, or Furyk. The Brave New World of golf means more phenoms groomed and nurtured from childhood like Michelle Wie or Tiger Woods, and very few self-taught ex-caddies.

3. Better competition. Starting with Palmer, pro golfers tended to come from college teams. Now we are seeing pros who began competing on high school golf teams, then college, etc. Better competition, though less interesting, than the haphazard pro tour that started in the 1920s. Now we have tiers of pro golf tours and Q-school.

4.. A lot more money. More money to attract the best and more to keep the journeyman (journeyperson) golfer fed and clothed while learning the craft.

So. I am afraid that if Hogan, Snead and Nelson were brought back to life as 30-year-olds and dumped into Q-school, they would get chewed up. Snead, though, mighta made it; he was a bit of a genetic freak and overall great athlete.

[supercow]

I think you guys are seriously understimating how good some of these guys were. If you read Ben Hogan's 'Power Golf' it was fairly clear that he could hit the ball 300 yards. Also, its obvious that Nelson's and Hogan's accuracy were on the verge of insanity. In one US Open Nelson hit the flagstick with an iron 5 times during a single round (have you seen Tiger do this in any round?)! During the peak of Hogan's career he actually started to aim AWAY from the flagstick because he figured that he was losing strokes because the ball would often bounce further away from the hole.

[Ole_Tom_Morris]

BN, after I posted the above, I started to wonder if I was right. You may be.

Snead, to hear him talk about it in his books, often hit the ball way beyond 300 yards in his 20s.

Even those who did not hit it a long way might be a good consistent middle of the pack player like Fred Funk.