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In the weeks following the heartbreaking loss to Jack Fleck in the
1955 U.S. Open at Olympic, Ben "retired" from competition. Over
the previous decade Ben vowed steadfastly that the reason for his
success was a mysterious device incorporated into his swing.
But he refused to tell anyone exactly what it was. Since he
believed that he would not be playing in active competition any
longer, he decided to reveal his "Secret" in an article in LIFE
Magazine.
For much of the early part of Ben's career he fought a terrible
hook - a low, hard right-to-left movement of the ball that would come into the green running and hot. As such, it was very difficult
to control and worse to judge from day to day.
By 1946 Ben had considered this a desperate crisis. If he was
going to make it, he had to figure a way out of hooking. As he
described it, "I was having trouble getting the ball in the air. I had
a low, ducking, agonizing hook, the kind you can hang your coat
on. When it caught rough, it was the terror of field mice."
He tried all of the standard nostrums - opening his stance,
using more left arm, cutting the ball and altering his grip. They all
worked to relieve his hook, but he subsequently lost distance,
especially with the driver. And to Hogan, this was clearly not
acceptable. He felt there just had to be a better solution.
Ben left the Tour, went home to Fort Worth and just sat and
thought for three or four days. One night, lying in bed, he thought
about the way the old Scottish pros taught their pupils to hit the
ball. Their concept, called pronation, involves the rotation of the
hands to the right until the left hand is almost pointing straight up
at the top of the backswing and the back of the right hand is
facing almost straight down. From this position the hands are
returned back to the ball by reversing the process so that the club
head is square at the point of contact.
Although this was not a cure for his hook (in fact the process may
even promote one), Ben felt it was the basis for an experiment to
which he added two slight adjustments that he hoped would make
his swing hook-proof yet not lose any distance.
The first adjustment was a slight change in the way he held the club
in his left hand. He simply moved his left thumb approximately
1/4 inch to the left of its usual spot on the inside of the grip handle
so that it was now in a "weaker" position on top of the club.
The second adjustment, involving a twisting or cocking of the left
wrist, was the more important one. On the backswing Ben would
bend his left wrist backward and inward forming a slight V, thus
opening the clubface to its fullest at the top of the backswing and
not allowing the club to close quickly enough on the downswing
to cause the dreaded hook.
The next day he applied his theory. Unbelievably, the result was
a nice high straight ball flight with a slight fade to the right at the
end and, most surprisingly, there was no loss of distance! And
the harder he tried to hit it, the better it worked. When he brought
it out on the tournament trail, it worked equally well under pressure.
Ben felt that these two adjustments made his swing hook-proof.
He was convinced that the "Secret" "...took more than one stroke
a round off his score."
Not that Hogan hit the fade all the time, he could still hit a hook,
or better yet a single draw, when the need arose. But he no
longer suffered from a case of he the severe hooks.
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