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The Fundamentals of Hogan
by David Leadbetter, Lorne Rubenstein
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Doubleday (2000-11-07)
ISBN: 0385502109
EAN: 9780385502108
Dewey Decimal #: 796.3523
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 144 pages
Edition: First Edition
Release Date: 2000-11-07
SKU: 6004-Hogan
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Spine tight and straight with mostly clean pages. Some do have highlighting in them yet the book can be read easily enough.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
More than a half century after he began his professional career, Ben Hogan is still considered the purest striker of a golf ball in the history of the game. His was a swing honed to perfection, and teaching professionals agree that Hogan's technique is the perfect platform on which golfers of all skill levels can build a fundamental understanding of golf. Unfortunately, photographs of Hogan's full swing and detailed close-ups of his grip and positioning have never been available for analysis. Instructors from around the world have always begun with a serious handicap when explaining to their students how a man of average stature could generate exceptional power and control from tee to green.
Now, thanks to the newly discovered critical photography featured in this book, the mysteries of Ben Hogan's form are revealed.
One vital characteristic of David Leadbetter's teaching philosophy, which has made him the world's #1 teacher, is his ability to translate very difficult swing concepts into easy-to-understand language. When the lost photographs from Hogan's seminal instructional manual, Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, were discovered by the Hogan estate, David Leadbetter was the immediate and perfect choice to craft the quintessential instruction book for today's golfer, based on the Hogan form. By combining his exceptional skills as a communicator and his encyclopedic knowledge of the mechanics of golf, Leadbetter uses these remarkable images of the master at work to demonstrate the basic techniques of golf.
The result is The Fundamentals of Hogan, the one book that all golfers who dream of breaking 80 need to have in their libraries. Golf's #1 professional instructor translates Ben Hogan's fundamentals for players of all skill levels
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Amazon.com Review
In the late 1950s, the great Ben Hogan consolidated his considerable knowledge of the golf swing into a small volume called Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. Nearly half a century later, it remains the cornerstone of every intrepid hacker's instructional library, and one of the bestselling sports books of all time. But there was always something missing from its pages: photos. As marvelous as artist Anthony Ravielli's accompanying drawings of Hogan were, they weren't the same as seeing the Wee Icemon himself in action. Surprise! Ravielli modeled those drawings on several rolls of film he took of Hogan, and those photos, recently discovered, are the heart of The Fundamentals of Hogan. For golfers, they are like finding a piece of the true cross; there has never been a more perfect swing than Bantam Ben's. If some of the pictures in Fundamentals are just explanatory poses--Hogan gripping the club, Hogan standing at address--and the majority of the swing sequences are actually not true sequences at all but, given the technology of the time, individually posed photos at appropriate intervals of the swing, no matter. They convey what they need to, providing a closer glimpse of the master's mastery. Swing guru David Leadbetter tees up the accompanying text, analyzing Hogan's swing, parsing Hogan's swing theories, and adapting what Hogan knew to fit the rest of us. Leadbetter knows most of us can't possibly re-create the effortless power of Hogan's fluidity, but that doesn't mean we can't incorporate bits of Hogan's technique into our own herky-jerky hacks. Like Hogan, Leadbetter is obsessed with golf's mechanics, and while Hogan managed to breeze through Five Lessons with the help of the splendid writer Herbert Warren Wind, Leadbetter often gets mired in the kinds of technicalities that lead to the "paralysis by analysis" that plagues over-thinkers when they step up to the ball. Still, the team of Hogan and Leadbetter makes a twosome you can't help but learn from if you're willing to pay attention. --Jeff Silverman
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Customer Reviews
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real pix from a classic
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-09-07
They have found the actual pictures used for the drawings in Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf - that alone is worth the price of admission. But there are also some good insights into the original book.
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Excellent read and improved scores
Rating (5)
Date: 2009-08-31
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I've only been playing seriously for about a year, and I found this book to be a big help to my game. I was easily able to incorporate several changes into my swing, but I did them without cluttering my head at the same time. I think that is a testament to the quality in how Mr. Leadbetter explains things. I really like how he explains why Hogan did some of the things that he did, and how other golfers do them differently. I read much of this book in the backyard with a club in hand so I could try out different techniques as I read them. That helped me quickly recognize what worked and didn't work for me and retain more information.
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Leadbetter is ridiculous
Rating  (1)
Date: 2009-03-21
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Here is a review that I thought summed up my opinion of this book perfectly:
Reading David Leadbetter's book "The Fundamentals of Hogan" was a very frustrating experience for me. On the one hand, there are some excellent pictures, but on the other hand, Leadbetter doesn't teach Ben Hogan's fundamentals, and it shows.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Leadbetter mentioned things about Ben Hogan's swing of which very few instructors are aware, including those who claim to teach Hogan Fundamentals, but then Leadbetter would blow it by always adding that Hogan was unique and that golfers should ignore what Hogan did and instead do it his (David Leadbetter's) way. It was as if Leadbetter were saying Hogan was wrong and that his way is better.
This is where Leadbetter's weakness shows with regard to Ben Hogan's fundamentals--he clearly doesn't understand the importance of the movements and how they fit together so tightly. The Hogan swing was essentially one motion from beginning to end, an accomplishment which no other golfer has been able to match! This is the true beauty of Ben Hogan's fundamentals--pure synergy with absolutely no wasted movement! David Leadbetter is throwing a monkey wrench into Ben Hogan's Fundamentals by adding pieces of his own swing theory that do not fit.
Let's face it, Hogan was the best ball striker and had the best swing of all time. He may have been a little more flexible than most and he certainly worked harder than anyone else, but as I see it, he had two legs, a torso, two arms, and a head. The fundamentals he applied to his swing were proven in major championships and they apply to all golfers possessing anything related to a typical human physique.
For a publisher wanting to sell the largest possible number of books, David Leadbetter was the obvious choice for a new book on Hogan. Combine the biggest name in golf instruction and the newly found photos used to create the illustrations in Ben Hogan's book Five Lessons, The Modern Fundamentals Of Golf and you're guaranteed to have a big seller. Unfortunately, focusing on dollars instead of being true to the subject doesn't do justice to Ben Hogan's fundamentals.
So, should you buy the book? If you have an interest in Hogan's fundamentals, definitely yes. The physical quality of the book is excellent and the pictures alone are worth the cost. Unfortunately, if you rely on David Leadbetter's words it won't do much to further your understanding of Ben Hogan's fundamentals.
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Are you Hogan????
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-01-07
This is a great book. Leadbetter explains Hogan's 5 fundamentals expertly and why Hogan did it this way. Hogan had unique problems to him, mainly a horrible duck hook, a problem that 99 percent of the golfing population does not have. Most people are better off NOT following Hogan word for word, especially if you are a banana ball slicer. Leadbetter realized this from spending most of his life on a range and giving thousands of lessons. He realizes that most golfers need the opposite of what Hogan teaches!
It's like Harvey Penick told a student that wanted to learn how to swing like Hogan: Penick said he couldn't teach genius. Out of the millions that have tried to do it like the master, none that I know have made it.
I read 5 fundamentals when I first started playing 15 years ago and I struggled. Once I read the Golf Swing by Leadbetter and watched some of his DVD's and applied them to my game, I evenually got down to scratch. After reading F of Hogan, I realized why it was a struggle for me to follow it's teachings.
This book is written with great care by a true student and lover of the game. It is beautifully illustrated and well worth the time to read it. We can all learn form Lead.
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Surprised by the Clarity
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-01-22
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
I've never been a big fan of either Hogan or Leadbetter. For me, Hogan's ideas always seemed too narrow and dogmatic, tailored to his own unique swing and talent. This is the best thing I have ever seen by Leadbetter, and this is the clearest take on Hogan's ideas I have run across. It's a very entertaining read, and it offers lots of good ideas for the recreational golfer who also is a student of the game.
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