Atria Books Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf

I'm a novice golfer that has been away for the sport for several years. Getting back into it I wanted to find a resource that took a simple and direct approach to the golf swing. I think I have found it. In a sea of technology, social media marketing and five steps programs to driving the ball 300+ yards, this book gets right down to business and what the golf swing is really all about. If you take the teachings and then go online and see the many slow motion videos of Mr. Hogan's swing, then you can really see how it all comes together. And the illustrations in the book are very effective and well done too. I'm a visual learner, so that was important to me. Lastly, I'll say that I love the way this book is written. Somehow it seems to give you a sense not just about the swing, but about the man behind perhaps the most beautiful swing in golf history. Very beautifully executed book.

I purchased this book the first time in 2015 and then again a couple of years later when I'd misplaced it. This is the only book I've needed to find a successful golf swing. Everyone finds their own tweaks for improvements but the fundamentals are all in this book. I struggled for years with addressing the ball and the old adage "put the ball in the center of your stance" just never worked for me. It always stuck in the back of my mind what a friend told me when I was first learning to play, which was to play the ball off the heel of my left foot. Unfortunately, my interpretation was lacking and this book put that single concept in perspective with a diagram on page 107 (actually marked the page). Now that diagram flashes in my mind every time I step up to the ball and it has been key to more consistent impact with each club.I believe Ben Hogan's secret was mostly in his hip-turn. When I feel that I've executed it correctly, the hips seem to naturally release first, get out of the way and I feel the lag in my wrists at impact. I get more yardage with seemingly less effort from the upper portion of my body. Mr. Hogan must have practiced it so much that it became instinctive and when I've watched videos of his swing, his transition from the top to the downswing is so fluid. Great book!

This book, while it maybe old, provides the fundamentals of a golf swing: (i) the grip; (ii) stance and posture; (iii) the back-swing; and (iv) the downswing in an easy to understand way. I started reading this book in 2003 when started back into golf after a 7 year break (college and law school) and wish I had known about the book when I first started playing. I took about 5-7 strokes off my game immediately and now (2019) after another 10 year break (wife, kids, work) I picked up the book again and started to notice a similar result. My shots are producing a better strike and follow through. If you do nothing else, the grip section of this book is worth every $ you spend and more as I do not believe you will get a better lesson on your grip which I believe was one of the major reasons my game improved. I highly recommend this book and for the money, it is probably one of if not the most efficient ways to improve your game.

This book is all any starting novice golfer will need for proper instructions on full swing. For short game, I will recommend Getting Up And Down by Tom Watson. I found numerous videos for tips in Youtube largely useless or misleading especially for the novice. To learn powerful and repeatable full swing, this book is best because it explains all the steps from the grip to downswing as one coherent system that is what Mr. Hogan refers to as chain actions. Having said that, this book elicits some questions, as well. For example, though Mr. Hogan devoted Chapter 2 to stance and posture, unexplicably he does not talk about how to address the ball in detail. In two other equally great books, Getting Up And Down by Tom Watson and Golf My Way by Jack Nicklaus, the authors emphasize address should reflect so called hitting geometry in which the hands are ahead of the ball location. The reader of this book can only guess what Mr. Hogan's thought might be on proper address from one of the illustrations in the book, where remarkably to me at least, the club is held almost perfectlly vertical (pg. 24)! I can confirm the same vertical address in numerous videos of him. Another example is the position of the grip at the top of backswing that he aptly refers to as the crossroad. He emphasizes in this book the left arm and grip should stay in the backswing plane which is a plane extending through the shoulders and the ball at address. This is a point I found very useful and follow. However, it is widely known that, as a player, his grip at the crossroad was far below this plane (shown in iconic Aug. 8, 1955 Life Magazine cover) and, as a matter of fact, one of the flattest of all PGA pros according to Jack Nicklaus. I wonder therefore whether his emphasis on supination (counter-clockwise rotation of the hands/wrists in the hitting area) is a way to compensate for his low top position. The starting golfers however should not mind this discrepancy. Instead they should focus on his teaching in the book to stay on the backswing plane and that will work nicely. All in all, I have no doubt this is the first book any starting golfers should read and refer to whenever questions arise as they practice full swing. They will benefit immeasurably.iP.S.Since I wrote my review two years ago, I have gained an additional insight on supination. I was baffled by the fact that some golfers did not underscore its impotance as much as Hogan did in this book and this is why. His grip, the famous Hogan grip, is essentially a fade grip and without conscious turn and control of his left hand, the face of the club will open at impact. If it is done properly however it will become a power source as the speed of the club head will increase by this turning. When it is combined with the right hand release, the result? Long and deadly straight ball to the target with slight fade at the end (Hogan's power fade) even for amateur golfers.

Hogan's book is a short, but comprehensive analysis of the golf swing. His stated purpose of giving the average weekend golfer the tools to develop a repeatable golf swing has, in my opinion, been met. The fundamentals he espouses are few, and simple enough to implement without causing one to overthink. I found his views about grip and stance, and their importance in setting up the rest of the swing, particularly helpful. If you're a student of the game, this book is a prerequisite before reading the multitude of expert analyses of Hogan's swing that are available elsewhere. The advanced golfer interested in developing his/her knowledge of shaping shots and ball flight won't find information here. But if you're like me and want to develop better consistency of contact with all your clubs and eliminate anxiety as you stand over the ball, then this book is for you.