Ben Hogan
William Ben Hogan (August 13, 1912 – July 25, 1997) was an American professional golfer who is generally considered to be one of the greatest players in the history of the game.[1] He is notable for his profound influence on golf swing theory, inventing the idea of practicing golf[2] and his ball-striking ability.[3][4][5]
Ben Hogan
William Ben Hogan
The Hawk, Bantam Ben, The Wee Iceman
August 13, 1912
Stephenville, Texas, U.S.
July 25, 1997 (aged 84)
Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.
5 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1.74 m)
145 lb (66 kg; 10.4 st)
Valerie Fox (1911–1999)
(m. 1935)
1930
71
64 (4th all time)
7
Won: 1953
1974 (member page)
1974 (member page)
1940, 1941, 1942, 1946, 1948
1948, 1950, 1951, 1953
1940, 1941, 1948
1953
1943–1945
Hogan's nine career professional major championships tie him with Gary Player for fourth all-time, trailing only Jack Nicklaus (18), Tiger Woods (15) and Walter Hagen (11). He is one of only five players to have won all four majors: the Masters Tournament, The Open Championship (despite only playing once), the U.S. Open, and the PGA Championship. The other four are Nicklaus, Woods, Player, and Gene Sarazen. Hogan's first major win came at age 34.
Early life and character[edit]
Hogan was born in Stephenville, Texas, the third and youngest child of Chester and Clara (Williams) Hogan. His father was a blacksmith and the family lived ten miles (16 km) southwest in Dublin until 1921, when they moved seventy miles (110 km) northeast to Fort Worth. When Hogan was nine years old in 1922, Chester committed suicide by gunshot at the family home. By some accounts, Chester committed suicide in front of him, which some (including Hogan biographer James Dodson) have cited as the cause of his introverted personality in later years.[6]
The family incurred financial difficulties after his father's suicide, and the children took jobs to help their seamstress mother make ends meet. Older brother Royal quit school at age 14 to deliver office supplies by bicycle, and nine-year-old Ben sold newspapers after school at the nearby train station. A tip from a friend led him to caddying at age eleven at Glen Garden Country Club, a nine-hole course located three miles out of town.[7] One of his fellow caddies at Glen Garden was Byron Nelson, later a tour rival. The two would tie for the lead at the annual Christmas caddie tournament in December 1927, when both were fifteen. Nelson sank a 30-foot (9 m) putt to tie on the ninth and final hole. Instead of sudden death, they played another nine holes; Nelson sank another substantial putt on the final green to win by a stroke.
The following spring, Nelson was granted the only junior membership offered by the members of Glen Garden. Club rules did not allow caddies age 16 and older, so after August 1928, Hogan took his game to three scrubby daily-fee courses: Katy Lake, Worth Hills, and Z-Boaz.
Turns professional[edit]
Hogan dropped out of Central High School during the final semester of his senior year. He turned pro six months shy of his 18th birthday at the Texas Open in San Antonio, in late January 1930. Hogan met Valerie Fox in Sunday school in Fort Worth in the mid-1920s, and they reacquainted in 1932 when he landed a low-paying club-pro job in Cleburne, where her family had moved. They married in April 1935 at her parents' home.
Hogan's early years as a pro were very difficult; he went broke more than once. He did not win his first tournament (as an individual) until March 1940,[8][9] when he won three consecutive events in North Carolina at age 27.[10][11] Although it took a decade for Hogan to secure his first victory, his wife Valerie believed in him, and this helped see him through the tough years when he battled a hook that he later cured.
Despite finishing 13th on the money list in 1938, Hogan took an assistant pro job at Century Country Club in Purchase, New York. He worked at Century as an assistant and then as the head pro until 1941, when he took the head pro job at Hershey Country Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Career-threatening accident[edit]
During Hogan's prime years of 1938 through 1959, he won 63 professional golf tournaments despite the interruption of his career by World War II and a near-fatal car accident. Hogan served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from March 1943 to June 1945; he was stationed locally at Fort Worth and became a utility pilot with the rank of lieutenant.
Driving home to Fort Worth after a Monday playoff loss at the 1949 Phoenix Open,[12] Hogan and his wife Valerie survived a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus east of Van Horn, Texas. On the morning of Wednesday, February 2, Hogan had reduced his speed in the limited visibility ground fog; the bus was attempting to pass another vehicle on a narrow bridge, which left no place to avoid the crash. Hogan threw himself across Valerie to protect her. He would have been killed had he not done so, because the steering column punctured the driver's seat of their new Cadillac sedan.[13][14]
This accident left Hogan, age 36, with a double-fracture of the pelvis, a fractured collar bone, a left ankle fracture, a chipped rib, and near-fatal blood clots: he would suffer lifelong circulation problems and other physical limitations. His doctors said he might never walk again, let alone play golf competitively. While Hogan was in the hospital in El Paso, his life was endangered by a blood clot problem that led doctors to tie off the vena cava. He left the hospital on the first of April, 59 days after the accident, and returned to Fort Worth by train.[15][16]
Hogan regained his strength by extensive walking and resumed his golf activities in November 1949. He returned to the PGA Tour to start the 1950 season at the Los Angeles Open, where he tied with Sam Snead over 72 holes, but lost the 18-hole playoff, held over a week later (due to course conditions).[17][18]
The "Triple Crown" season[edit]
The win at Carnoustie was only a part of Hogan's watershed 1953 season, a year in which he won five of the six tournaments he entered, including three major championships (a feat known as the Triple Crown of Golf).[19]
It still stands among the greatest single seasons in the history of professional golf. Hogan, 40, was unable to enter—and possibly win—the 1953 PGA Championship (to complete the Grand Slam) because its play (July 1–7) overlapped the play of The Open at Carnoustie (July 6–10), which he won. It was the only time that a golfer had won three major professional championships in a year until Tiger Woods won the final three majors in 2000 (and the first in 2001).
Hogan often declined to play in the PGA Championship; he skipped it more and more often as his career wore on. There were two reasons for this. First, the PGA Championship was, until 1958, a match play event, and Hogan's particular skill was "shooting a number"—meticulously planning and executing a strategy to achieve a score for a round on a particular course (even to the point of leaving out the 7-iron in the U.S. Open at Merion, saying "there are no 7-iron shots at Merion"). Second, the PGA required several days of 36 holes per day competition, and after his 1949 auto accident, Hogan struggled to manage more than 18 holes a day.
After the win at Carnoustie, Hogan and his wife Valerie were passengers on the SS United States westbound to New York City, where he received a ticker tape parade down Broadway on July 21.[20][21]
Playing style[edit]
Hogan is widely acknowledged to have been one of the finest ball strikers that ever played the game.
Hogan's ball striking has also been described as being of near miraculous caliber by other very knowledgeable observers such as Jack Nicklaus, who only saw him play some years after his prime. Nicklaus once responded to the question, "Is Tiger Woods the best ball striker you have ever seen?" with, "No, no - Ben Hogan, easily".[33]
Further testimony to Hogan's (and Moe Norman's) status among top golfers is provided by Tiger Woods, who said that he wished to "own his (golf) swing" in the same way as Moe Norman and Hogan had.[25] Woods claimed that this pair were the only players ever to have "owned their swings", in that they had total control of it and, as a result, of the ball's flight.[25]
By most accounts, Ben Hogan was the best golfer of his era and still stands as one of the greatest of all time. "The Hawk" possessed fierce determination and an iron will, which combined with his unquestionable golf skills, formed an aura that could intimidate opponents into competitive submission. In Scotland, Hogan was known as "The Wee Ice Man", or, in some versions, "Wee Ice Mon," a moniker earned during his famous British Open victory at Carnoustie in 1953.[34] It is a reference to his steely and seemingly nerveless demeanor, itself a product of a golf swing he had built that was designed to perform better the more pressure he put it under. Hogan rarely spoke during competition, and mostly kept to himself. Hogan was also highly respected by fellow competitors for his superb course management skills. During his peak years, he rarely if ever attempted a shot in competition which he had not thoroughly honed in practice.
Although his ball striking was perhaps the greatest ever, Hogan's putting skills are thought to have been below average, though he was capable of putting very well. Solid and sometimes spectacular in his early and peak years, Hogan by his later years deteriorated to the point of being an often poor putter by professional standards, particularly on slow greens. The majority of his putting problems developed after his 1949 car accident, which nearly blinded his left eye and impaired his depth perception. Toward the end of his career, he often stood over the ball inordinately long before drawing his putter back.
While he suffered from the "yips" in his later years,[35] Hogan was known as an effective putter from mid to short range on quick, U.S. Open style surfaces at times during his career.
Hale America Open – a tenth major title for Hogan?[edit]
Many supporters of Hogan and some golf historians feel that his victory at the Hale America Open in 1942 should be counted as his fifth U.S. Open and 10th major championship, since the tournament was to be a substitute for the Open after its cancellation by the USGA. The Hale America National Open was held in the same time slot and was run like the U.S. Open with more than 1,500 entries, local qualifying at 69 sites and sectional qualifying at most major cities. The top players, who were not away fighting in World War II, participated and the largest purse of the year was awarded. Included in the field were the very top players of the day including Byron Nelson, Gene Sarazen, Jimmy Demaret, Lloyd Mangrum, and defending Open champion Craig Wood. The only player of that level who did not play was Sam Snead, but the field did also include Bobby Jones who had competed in his own Masters event in April of that year.[41][42][43] The championship winner's badge was donated to the event by the USGA, and was the badge that they had intended to award for the then-canceled US Open.
Professional