The Secrets of Golf’s Best Ever Ball Striker | Film Study | Golf Digest

Tiger Woods says only two players have ever “truly owned their swings”, Ben Hogan and Moe Norman. The legend of Moe Norman and his homemade golf swing have fascinated players, coaches and fans since he began breaking records in the 1950s. But what was the secret to his incredible ball striking?

In this Film Study, Luke Kerr-Dineen dives into one of the most unique and successful swings in golf history and explains what amateur golfers can learn it.

Senior Editor: Luke Kerr-Dineen
Director of Content: Jamie Kennedy
Editor: Adam Baranowski
Executive Producer: Christian Iooss
Footage credit: Todd Graves

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Think of the best ball Strikers in golf history chances are you’re thinking of the likes of Tiger Woods and Sam Sneed but did you know your favorite ball Striker’s favorite ball Striker is probably Mo Norman it’s frightening the how straight he hits it never offline this swing can’t hit BR it’s like iron

Byron the ball doesn’t move Mo Norman’s golf swing is a strange series of unconventional quirks it’s a move unlike most golfers have ever seen but look close ly and you’ll find genius in this move the kind of Genius that may even help you play better Golf and to

Understand that genius you need to start exactly where Mo Norman’s golf swing begins right here so let’s dive In few players in golf history have received such high praise from the greats of the game Legends like Sam sne Tiger Woods and VJ sing and even the great L Trina when you talk about mon Norman you’re talking about a legend do you ask any golf professional whether you’re in

Australia or whether you’re in your us or whether you’re in Great Britain and you say that’s the Canadian guy that hits it a damn good isn’t it and I says that’s him he’s a legend with the profession as well as being lorded for his ball striking Norman had an amazing

Career as a player he won 54 events on his native Canadian tour and is credited with 33 course records he made an incredible 17 holes in one and shot 59 in competition three different times in 1966 alone Norman finished either first or second in 10 of the 12 events he

Played and the myth of Mo Norman features some incredible individual stories like the time he hit more than 1,500 drives at a 7-hour exhibition all of them finishing within a 30 yard wide area over 230 yards away or the story about Mo Norman being the only player

Titlist has ever tested to hit backto back shots with exactly 0° of Sid spin a mind-bendingly impossible task to achieve Norman attributed his legendary ball striking to one specific moment the moment of impact everything Mo Norman did in his golf swing was to match his setup and

Impact positions to organize his body in a way where he could return to a perfect impact position as simply and as easily as possible removing every variable he could along the way stripping away every piece of excess movement wherever he could find it anything mo didn’t need he just wouldn’t

Use this isn’t really something you hear as much from teachers these days modern coaches will often talk about matching up different motions and creating a different sequence of movements to gain little bits of speed but mon Norman he wasn’t really interested in any of this he wanted to turn his swing into a

Consistent pure hitting accuracy machine and it worked look closely and you’ll see it showed in his golf swing in all sorts of interesting ways the easiest place to start is with his stance mon Norman’s stance was wide like really really wide he stood so wide that it effectively locked his lower

Body in place on the back swing Ultra stable he just couldn’t move around a lot then if you look at monor’s upper body it was tilted pretty severely away from the target which is very different to what most Pros do nowadays most Pros set up with almost no Tilt at set up in

Other words their spine is straight up and down but then as we discussed in our last film study video about will zelot Taurus his players shift their hips forward and push off their left side it bends their upper body back which gives them the Tilt they need to hit up on the

Ball but again moving your lower body forward while moving your upper body back is exactly the kind of moving Parts thing that mon Norman wanted to avoid what if your lower body moved too far for or your upper body didn’t move back enough so instead mon Norman preet this

Kind of reverse C shape he locked his lower body in place on the back swing with his wide stance and then tried to maintain this shape as he swung when Mo shifted into his left side on the down swing which golfers need to do to generate power instead of Shifting

One part forward and another part back he moved both his upper and lower bodies together towards the Target Todd Graves was a golf diger best in state teacher in Oklahoma and studied directly under Mo Norman he was the model in this Golf Digest cover story about Mo right here Todd has spent years using 3D to decode the secrets of Mo Norman’s golf swing even Enlisted the

Help of golf biomechanist Dr Rob Neil to compare a mon Norman style swing to a modern day version and they found that Mo set up with about 10° of spine angle Tilt at setup and then he hit the ball with about 13° of spine angle tilt so virtually identical

But modern tall players someone like JT they go from close to 0° to spine angle tilt to about 15° at impact powerful yes but also a lot more potential margin for error and it’s why lots of teachers nowadays tell amateur golfers to learn from this to set up with more tilt

Especially with their driver to give their body a little bit of a head start Mo Norman’s unique arm structure was an integral part of all of this the way he saw it Pros didn’t set up with enough room between themselves and the golf ball so they needed to create this

Space somewhere else during this swing so some parts of their body moved forward While others moved back some went around While others went up and down and that created problems because as golfers lifted their arms for example it would do things like open the club face which would mean they needed to

Time it with their hands again moving Parts Mo Norman really did not like moving parts so Mo set up with his arm straight he wanted both arms straight at impact so why wouldn’t he set them up that way Mo’s left arm was crucially important in all of this he used big

Grips and gripped the club with a traditionally weak left- hand grip with his left thumb running straight down the middle of the club similar to what Bryson does today Mo kept his left arm directly in line with the club itself which formed a kind of relationship between the club face

The back of his left hand and his left shoulder he used this relationship for clubface awareness and consistent spacing between himself and the golf ball as he swung his right arm bent on the back swing because it had to which is why he placed his right hand very far under the

Grip that placed his Trail shoulder in a position where his right arm would fold and Tuck into his body on the back way and then return to straight without much twisting it all made for a very simple route to return everything from setup to impact which Mo Norman made all the more

Simple by starting his back swing about 2 ft behind the ball this preset part of his shoulder turn again just one less thing to worry about it all made for a fascinatingly simple move and one that gave Mo the feeling that his Impact Zone was 3 ft long that the club stayed

Square for an eternity either side of the ball this he said was his money Zone there I’m really going to R alive there it was these moves and an obsession with the golf swing that created the legend that is mon Norman would he have experience the same

Success if he stuck it out on the PJ tour it’s one of the great wha ifs in golf history but there’s no denying that Mo Norman figured things out his own way no one has ever perfected the golf swing but it seems Mo Norman came pretty close

To perfecting his own version he went to bed every night thinking of the golf swing and then he woke up every day knew he was going to hit it well he just knew it was going to hit it well Mo Norman your favorite ball Striker’s favorite ball Striker