Golf tip: Waggles from Ben Hogan to Michelle Wie (Video)

Tom Watson’s waggle is huge. You can almost feel him storing energy in this video clip. It’s also more variable than others. On some swings he wags only twice, but I count as many as five preliminary wags during some of his set-ups.

It’s hard to argue with outcomes and Tom Watson certainly has compiled a resume that’s packed with proof positive that his golf swing is way better than average. This Hall of Famer has 71 world-wide professional wins on his resume including the US Open, the PGA Championship, the Masters (twice), and The Open (five times).

In Watson’s waggle you can see much of Ben Hogan with perhaps only a bit less wrist action. But the process of preparing his feet, legs, hips, arms, hands, and club to act as a unified ball-striking tool is unmistakable. The resulting consistency has allowed Watson to outplay golfers who are taller, heavier, and much more powerful.

It’s not the waggle alone that has made Tom Watson great. Golf is too complicated to distill success into a single feature of the swing. But the six-time PGA Player of the Year clearly incorporated the advantages Hogan claimed of the waggle into a golf swing that continues to be the envy of lesser players.