By Luther Blacklock
On Page 78 of Ben Hogan's book
The Modern Fundamentals of Golf appears one of the most famous and influential images in the history of golf instruction. It shows Hogan addressing a driver with a huge pane of glass resting on his shoulders, his head poking through a hole in the glass.
This illustration was cutting-edge in its day and is still worthy of examination in this current era. It is a simple representation of the Swing Plane (as Hogan considered it), yet it contained far more information than may have at first appeared.
In Hogan's famous image, the illustration has the pane of glass resting on the shoulders. Some 30 years earlier, Seymour Dunn had used a similar image in his Golf School in New York; he too showed the Swing Plane by way of a huge board resting on the ball-to-target line but with a hole sufficiently large to allow him to swing his hickory shafted club. Seymour Dunn's representation of the Swing Plane clearly showed an inclined plane resting in parallel with the ball-to-target line, bold pencil marks on the board itself indicating the elliptical nature of the clubhead's arc.
Dunn's book was entitled
The Golf Fundamentals and was first printed in 1920; hence Hogan's book had to carry the word 'Modern' in its title to distinguish it as different.
In this article I want to demonstrate that Ben Hogan's description of the swing plane was a tiny fraction out, a technical splitting of hairs I suspect can be attributed to the artistic license Hogan afforded the actual artist. More importantly, I wish to show that Hogan's pane-of-glass image is still far better than the majority of confused doctrines that are published and taught today! We can kill and bury, once and for all, the misleading nonsense of 'Shaft Plane'.
By examining Hogan's teachings thoroughly we discover hidden truth in his words that will lead us to the most vital 'Lost Fundamental' of them all! And the name of this long lost fundamental? I call it the 'Optimum Biomechanical Swing Plane'. This Fundamental is, I believe, the pivotal reference point of the entire golf swing. The 'Optimum Biomechanical Swing Plane' is rather like the North Pole – i.e. it's a vital point of reference, but very few will ever go there! However, we who teach the game must know where it is; or else, like an explorer with no compass, we might get lost. Worse still, we might lead others in the wrong direction!
The reality is that the Swing Plane runs from the ball up through the shoulder joints (to the sternum, the 'hub' of the human wheel). A golfer could swing the club in an extremely 'flat' plane or, conversely, in a very 'upright' plane. I hope we can all agree on that. And surely it stands to reason that in between these two extremes lies the ideal, neutral swing plane. This is the 'Optimum Biomechanical Swing Plane'; Ben Hogan knew where it was and, what's more, he used it! For the sake of simplicity, Hogan allowed the artist to superimpose the pane of glass resting on his shoulders; it served the purpose. Hogan, a short man with long arms, could swing a driver very close to that imaginary sheet of glass.
But it is my contention that, were he ever to have tried this for real, his left shoulder would have broken through the glass as he neared the top of his backswing (in a dynamic motion the shoulders twist, roll and lift during the backswing). His image on page 78 of his book was out by some 4 to 6 inches; the pane of glass or 'swing plane' should run through the top of the sternum or breastbone. 'Then why didn't he say that?', you might ask. Well, he did. For if you look across to page 79 you will see Hogan, at the set-up, holding a board between his forearms that points directly at the ball. And the accompanying caption shouts out a vital truth: the 'Backswing Plane' runs through the shoulders! The pane of glass image was just that – an image. It was meant to convey a 'principle' and not a detailed 'law'. Hogan gave the artist license on page 78 but specified the exact angle of the swing plane on page 79.
