Why You Need This: Today, you'll discover "Ben Hogan's Magic Elbow | The Secret to Amazing Ball Striking"

Today, you’ll discover the “Hogan right elbow” technique with me and Top Speed Golf certified instructor, Ronnie Snowden.

This method ensures a controlled and powerful swing.

Ronnie emphasizes getting the clubface squared at impact, which is obviously crucial for hitting straight shots.

This lesson is crucial if you want to avoid slices!

 

 

 

 

Golf Pros Featured:

Instructors Featured: Clay Ballard    Ronnie Snowden    

Video Duration: 14:19

Video Transcription:

Clay: Hey, it's absolutely great to have you here. I'm joined with Top Speed Golf certified instructor, Ronnie Snowden. He's been in the studio here the last couple of days. We're making a lot of videos together, talking about tons of golf instruction. And we've got on the topic of the Hogan right elbow, and there's a specific way that he likes to teach it.

And I think it's great. And we'll just jump right into it here. So in the downswing, you know you have to tuck that elbow in, but where does it actually hit in the hip? Is it back here? Is it over there? How do I know if I'm doing it correctly? So Ronnie, why don't you take out your, your arm, your right arm, and the tip of the elbow is what we're going to be focusing on here.

And if you look at his right hip, there's a belt loop, usually to, to the right of your belt buckle on your right hip. Somewhere in that general vicinity, just above that, you can feel kind of the edge of your pelvis, like the bony part there that's sticking out in the front. Now, what you want to do is, as you're coming into impact, you're going to feel like the tip of your elbow goes right into that bony piece of your, your hip, just above your right, uh, belt loop, and your right belt, and your, uh, side there.

Ronnie: Before I stop, or before you keep going, Clay, I want to point out one thing here. It's, it's important that Your elbow is not just tucked in that position in that spot, but you need to make sure that the pit, your armpit is actually pointing up in the sky here. 

Clay: Yeah. I like that. Cause you know, what we were talking about earlier too, if you don't have that pit up, then you start to come over the top and get steep.

So show them one, like you were talking to me earlier to where you let that right elbow go out away. And now that's going to kick this shaft out this way. So basically if he tucks it, it gets it in. And then as he goes more out with that elbow, it starts to kick the shaft out. If you go a little higher up in the swing, now all of a sudden that's a steep swing.

Tuck in the elbow now, you see that's going to shallow that swing out a little bit. So that's where you want to put the elbow and we'll get to this in a minute, but it's okay to have that come off in the backswing. So you can raise your hands up in the backswing. We're talking specifically here about impact and getting it right in there.

The next piece of it, so if you take your hand like we were doing earlier, And we put the palm up and that elbow in the, in the right hip. This is where a lot of people go wrong here, is this hand is open. And if I kind of put that on the club face, kind of matched up the leading edge of the club face to my hand, you would see this club face would be wide open here.

So if he had this position, and you kind of went down in a kind of a mock downswing, as he gets closer and closer to impact, yes, he's tucked with his elbow. And I think a lot of people can do this. This is easy for most players. But this clubface is wide open. His clubface is pointing over here somewhere and this would be the biggest block slice you've probably 

Ronnie: ever hit in your life.

I think a good thing to do, Clay, is to think of your palm as your clubface. So whatever your palm is doing, your clubface is doing. So you know that when you're coming into impact here, 

Clay: if 

Ronnie: you want to square the clubface up, you know you want to basically go up like this. It's like you're shaking someone's hand.

Your thumb would be straight up in the air like you're going to go out and shake someone's hand. 

Clay: Yeah, I like that. And then that way, you know, if your palms open, the clubface is open. If your palm is closed, then your clubface is going to be too closed. You're going to be hooking it. So you're just trying to square up your palm with the clubface.

Now, if you have a little bit stronger grip, so maybe my hand is turned a little bit more under, that's okay, you know, it's going to be a little more on the open side. If you have a weaker grip, it might be a little more on the closed side. I don't think that matters that much because I think whatever you feel as being square and you watch the ball flight, your brain will kind of associate that with it.

So just think about coming down, squaring up the palm. That should be perfect feeling to have. Yeah, I like that. Another piece we talked about just a minute ago was the shaft lane. And I like this a lot. So you talked about having this right wrist. So if we go into extension, which would be knuckles back toward my elbow, that'd be this way.

Or if I go into flexion, That would be my palm toward my body like that. And that's really important for getting lag and then shuffling and impact. 

Ronnie: Right. And if you think of your extension and your flexion as your shuffling, okay. If you want to have 10, 20 degrees of shuffling, you need to be about 10 or 20 degrees of extension.

And that's like knuckles back toward your, toward your forearm back there. So you added all three of those pieces together and you can get into the perfect impact position. 

Clay: Yeah, so let's go through all three together now. We got the elbow tip tucked into the right hip pocket, and it's just above the belt.

This is at impact. We don't want that palm up now, so we're gonna get down in our posture like Ronnie's already doing there. We don't want this palm up, that'll be a wide open club face. We're gonna square up the club face with our hand. And then if we want a little bit of shaft lean, this hand is gonna go back into a little bit of extension.

If you want five degrees, make it five degrees. You want 10, make it 10. And then all you're going to do from there is just make sure that the forearm is going a little bit forward. That way that you actually have your hands in front of the golf ball at impact. And I'll tell you a little side note here. I did some research on tour players.

And if you draw a line, go back into that impact position again. If you draw a line from the inside of this right elbow and you draw it straight down to the ground, that's going to be at the golf ball or even slightly in front of the golf ball at impact. So basically saying that that right arm is kicking in front.

The hands are leaning the way and I think that's really, it's really important to, if you can imagine this, this ball is the one we're hitting. You almost want your low point to be up here, you know, three, four inches in front of the golf ball. So if I put my right arm in that same position as I'm coming down now, it makes it so easy to get the weight on the left side because in order to get this inside of the elbow in front of the golf ball, Hey, good luck.

If your weight's on your back foot, it's going to be possible. Yeah. Yeah. It's way back there. You get your weight on your front side and automatically it's going to shift it up there. And it feels like when you just look at him standing here, it feels like he's going to get that divot in front, which is, which is great.

All right. So it's kind of presetting you in a position to, you know, be good impact. Um, if we take it back from there, this is great to know where we're headed. And the reason I started with impact and we talked a lot about impact earlier, that's all that matters. If you're hitting this ball, perfectly solid.

Then that's who cares about the rest of it. But there's some things you can do earlier in the swing that make impact a lot easier. And we talked about a few things with address. What are a couple of things you'd like to see with a dress when you set up to make almost like preset it into that impact position?

Well, 

Ronnie: I mean it's good if you go ahead and have your elbow in this good position at a dress. It kind of goes ahead and gives you that feel for where you want to get to and the at impact. Okay. So. I like to go ahead and kind of preset my elbow kind of tucked into the spot at address. Now it's, of course, it's going to come away.

It's not going to be tucked in during your entire swing, but if you go ahead and get that feel, you know where you're trying to get back to. 

Clay: Yeah. And I like how, when you're tucking it in there, go ahead and do that again. At address, it's going to be off the hip a little bit. And that's just because his hips aren't open at address.

Your hips are basically square in a normal posture. So go ahead and just set up like you're going to address the ball. So you'll see how this pit is still up, but it's going to be a little bit away from his hip. It's not actually touching his hip at all there. Now, if I kept all this the same and you went ahead and opened your hips up a good 20 or 30 degrees, look how that right hip moved into the elbow.

And now it's really connected. So we're doing all the same principles. Go ahead and back to dress again, elbow pit forward, right wrist angle back palm of the face is kind of matching the club. Even got a little bit of shaft lane is nice to do that just to kind of preset the feeling. And then from there, I think a big misconception.

is that we, and I've heard this a lot, is that we want to keep that elbow like kind of tied to the ribs. Yeah. So when you make your backswing, you're 

Ronnie: just kind of folding it up. Yeah. But, I mean, I know that's probably something that you might have heard before, but it's almost outdated in a way. Because, you know, if you really try to keep it in here the entire time, your backstring is, your backswing is really restricted.

Okay? You want to be able to come up here, So, you know, you're going to have to release that elbow from your side in your backswing, but one, it's an address. It's good to have it in here. So you kind of know that feel for where you're trying to get back to. And then in the downswing, it's, you know, it's very crucial to get back to that spot and get that elbow tucked in, have that pit pointing up because that's just, you have to do it that way.

If you want to have, 

Clay: there's no way to get lag, no way to get shaft lean, no way to get it from the inside, no way to get a divot in front if you're not doing that. So like, if you look at Rory, go back here to address again, a good dress position. So now as he takes his backswing nice and wide, imagine your arms kind of coming back here and almost hitting into my hand.

Look how this elbow comes off the body. There's some space there. That's okay. In his mind, he's still feeling where he needs to get to at impact. So things are going to move around and this is going to be a lot more powerful. And then from there, you know, the elbow pit is still up. You just go ahead and lift to the top of your swing.

Yes, there will be some separation between the elbow and the ribcage at the top of the swing. And the thing, I think, um, you know, Hogan made this kind of popular to keep that really tucked in there. One thing that he did that lots of people can't do is he, he was so flexible. You look at the positions he gets into, teaching thousands of different players, I can tell you a small fraction of maybe 1 percent can get into those positions.

If you take somebody that's not as flexible, flexible as Hogan was. You try to get them to tuck that elbow and still make a good turn, where they get way back there. All of a sudden, you end up with a really short swing that doesn't have a lot of power. Yeah, you lose a lot of power that way. Let me try to hit a couple, um, swings here and I'll show you kind of that tuck position.

So I'll get to a good address spot, maybe stand like right here, that way I don't hit you and we still see from both camera angles. So let's go get a dress position, elbow up. From here, I'm going to try that idea of just keeping my elbow tucked into my side the whole time. You notice when I do that, I'm using a lot of arms and I'm having to go hard from the top to get the speed because I'm not super flexible and I'll hit a good shot here.

Most likely it'll be solid, but we're going to see a lot of a decrease in distance when I'm doing it this way. Let's try it out. That was a nice solid shot. It even looks good on camera for a nine iron, 136 yards. That's okay, but I'm going to lose a lot of strokes if I don't do my normal swing and I hit my 936 versus what my normal capability is.

I'm still moving through those same positions. I'm just lifting my arms, then moving through them in the downswing where it gets tucked and tucked all the way through impact. You know, that's the part that really matters. Let's try another one out here.

There we go. Another good straight shot, nice draw. And it was 166. So. Um, I think a lot of people confuse this. They say, well, you know, I don't mind it. My nine iron one 36, but maybe if you're not as strong as I am, maybe you're only hitting, you know, you're already hitting it shorter than I am with your full swing.

Maybe that one 36 is more like a one Oh five or one 10 with a nine iron. And it's just hard to, you know, make a lot of birdies. If we're hitting with that kind of swing speed, get the arms raised on up, come all the way through it. And, you know, just make sure you move through impact in that Hogan. 

Ronnie: Now, but if you're looking for a good progression drill, I think taking those little half swings can be a good thing.

At least it gets you used to where your arm is supposed to be at impact. And even if it's not what you're really going to do in the full swing to get all your, you know, your full potential of power, it's still good to just get used to hitting it and getting into that good impact position with the elbow tucked.

So taking those little half swings, keeping it connected the whole time is a good way to, you know, start this off. You I can take these little half swings, get used to that feeling, and then kind of gradually, once you get used to that feeling, you get used to that impact position where that elbow is nice and tucked in your side.

Now you can start coming away, and you'll know, you'll be able to better feel how to get back to that same position. 

Clay: Yeah, I like that cause, cause that little tucked into the ribs position we're talking about there, that's the right position, it's just happening in my downswing. So once I already finish the backswing and start down.

So yeah, maybe do 15 or 20 reps. half backswing coming through it correctly because it is the correct motion. Then once you're comfortable with it, like Ronnie said, do another 15 or 20 reps, arms all the way back and then arms all the way through. 

Ronnie: And if 15 or 20 reps isn't enough to give you that feel.

So, you know, do however many you need to do. Yeah. If it takes 30, 40, 50 reps, that's fine. Just know that when you take your full swings, you're going to be coming up, you're going to be disconnecting at some point and then coming back and connecting again. 

Clay: Now, I bet you enjoyed a lot of things we talked about here, and I guarantee if you follow these, you're going to be getting some good, consistent contact.

The question I get all the time is, if someone hasn't seen my individual swing, how do they know what I'm supposed to be working on? And I have a great opportunity for you. And that's exactly what Ronnie does. He has a swing review pro program that he runs through top speed golf to where you can sign up for him as your coach.

You send him your individual videos, and it's actually an unlimited program to where you can go back and forth. You can get weekly checkups a couple of times a week if you want to. And basically you send him your swing, you tell him the goals that you want to reach. And then he comes up with a custom plan on how to get you there.

And you guys work together to get to accomplish your goals. And it's pretty easy because if you don't improve, then we guarantee the product. So if you sign up, you get paired up with Ronnie, you tell him your goals. If you're getting better, then everything's going great. You're happy. Everybody's having a blast.

If you're not improving for any reason, we offer you a full refund, a hundred percent satisfaction guarantee. So you really can't pass up on that deal. There's not a lot of instructors that are confident enough to give that kind of a deal. The catch is there's not always spots available. So down below this video, you should see a button to learn more about these swing reviews.

Make sure you click on that. He should have a couple of spots open that he's just released today. If those are already full, make sure that you get on his wait list. That way, when he's ready to open up new spots, he'll call, he'll contact you first, and you can get those spots before they sell out next time.

So thanks again, Ronnie. 

Ronnie: You're welcome. Best of 

Clay: luck. Uh, great to see you guys. I can't wait to hear about the great success you have working with Ronnie.