How many players in the whole history of golf could consistently hit the ball where they aimed?.By all accounts, the number is two.Can you guess the names of both players?
Most hard core golfers would quickly identify Ben Hogan. Moe Norman is the name of the other golfer. Moe is a legend among three generations of tour players. He was a Canadian pro who rarely left his home country but was well known to all the top touring pros from Lee Trevino and Nick Price all the way to present day superstar, Tiger Woods.
Like many of you, I have only seen Ben Hogan on video and in the slo-mo footage I have acquired over the years. Moe, on the other hand, I saw live on a number of occasions both during tournament play and at clinics he gave later in his career.
Because I caddied from time to time on what is now the Canadian Tour (The Peter Jackson Tour in those days)I actually spent two days in Moe’s group during one particular tournament.
What made these two players so unique? Why is it that they were so different?
Just think what an anomaly they are. Of the legions of folks who have played the game,only these two gentlemen could point and hit it to that spot.
Moe was certainly a challenge to understand because of his personality and he was awkward in most social situations.
Moe’s cause was not aided by the fact that he frequently butted heads with the ruling board of governors and that such disagreements became quite public.
Because of his eccenticities, Moe struggled to explain the intracacies of his swing. Described as anything from an idiot savant to an autistic, Moe spoke in fragments and sing/songy repetitions. Virtally no one was interested in what Moe had to say about the golf swing notwithstanding his undeniable skill.The best you could get were bits and pieces of insight but nothing comprehensive bordering on a methodology.
Recently, a whole new generation of golf teachers have rediscovered Moe and are now attempting to reconstruct the man’s great swing.
This has spawned the emergence of a number of competing “swing theories”, each purporting to have uncovered the Da Vinci Code that is Moe’s swing . Some of these methods can be more surely described as good marketing hype than sound and useful theory.
Unlike what is taught today, the actual Moe Norman swing was powerful and had a distinct sound coming off the clubface. No one seems to be able to consistently duplicate the action which allowed Moe to compress the ball time after time .
I, like others, have experimented with the new theories and abandoned them after experiencing a marked lack of distance.
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When I was younger and more robust, I caddied on one of the satellite pro tours. You will recall that Moe and my pro were two thirds of the day’s pairing in a pro event.
Moe preferred movement to the hit and hold pattern so commonly associated with tournament golf. I could empathize with Moe roving and vocalizing to himself to pass the time. To cope with the tedium, Moe was constantly dropping balls down wherever and chipping them . Because he was a bundle of energy, he needed outlets for his nervous tension.
The overlay of myth has now come to shroud the actual behaviour of Moe during his tournament playing days. The fables are certainly more suspect when they come from former caddies! Though it might be difficult to sort fact and fiction,no one disputes Moe’s ball striking. And he continued to amaze and mesmerise galleries and onlookers alike with his unerring prowess well into his senior years.
I can personally attest to the man’s prowess and uncanny accuracy . I volunteered to shag balls (in the era before motorized ball pickers) for Moe during a local exhibition.It was disappointing that so few people came out that day to see truly one of the greatest ball strikers of this or any era. With monotonous regularity, each ball he hit about one bounce away from us.Moe would reposition us when he changed clubs and the balls would again fall like arrows. There is no way you could exaggerate the enormity of this man’s skill.
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What a divide separates these two golfing legends. Where one struggled to communicate, the other failed to communicate. Moe imperfectly tried to share what he had discovered whereas Hogan maintained a shroud of secrecy.His method is shrouded in mystery and has spawned a whole host of research articles bent on uncovering the Hogan secret move. The mystery of the Hogan swing has been an elusive quest which has consumed hundreds of golfers for over a half century.
Despite the efforts of the golfing community to reverse engineer the Hogan swing, the mystery prevails. Many proclaim to be teaching Hogan, but few take them seriously. It is likely that Hogan would not be dissatisfied with the current state of affairs . When asked to reveal his secrets, Hogan often gruffly responded by telling his audience to go find it themselves. You could never mistake Ben Hogan as a kindly father determined to patiently share his accumulated knowledge with his offspring.
Hogan was not filled with bon homie and a gentle nature. To be fair, Hogan did not search out these qualities in others.Few people, including his peers ever got close to Ben Hogan.The roots of friendship were never nurtured and tended with golfing fans
