Hogan hero
NORDLINGER, JAY
Hogan Hero The Life of a Lonely, Determined Golfer By Jay Nordlinger When Ben Hogan died on July 25, the golf world seemed slightly stunned. He was 84 and had been sick for several years, but he...
...Dunlop," answered Player...
...I can't move another inch...
...Hogan a bitter perfectionist...
...Two weeks later, he entered the Los Angeles Open...
...The fog around El Paso was thick...
...Once, when he was sitting alone at his table for eight at Shady Oaks, someone cracked, "There's Hogan, with all his friends...
...the cover blared...
...He was a man utterly controlled by golf, and eventually he learned to control it...
...The photograph taken of Hogan's follow-through on that shot—with Hogan ideally posed, wearing his trademark "Hogan cap"— is a totem of the game, displayed on nearly every golf-shop wall...
...He was unstoppable...
...But everyone revered him, and the staff of the club, during his long, final absence, kept a sign on his table that said "Reserved for Mr...
...On the 72nd hole— the final hole of the tournament— Hogan laced a 1-iron to the green to cinch the championship...
...Open at Merion near Philadelphia, an event Dan Jenkins called "the most incredible comeback in the history of sports...
...On April 1, he was taken from his bed on a stretcher and placed on a train back home...
...asked Hogan...
...At 17, he dropped out of school and turned pro...
...Ben was 9 when his father took a gun and killed himself, with Ben in the room...
...But he made his way to the course, wrapped himself in a mental cocoon, and shot 67, earning him a $285 check, the largest he had ever seen...
...For two months, the nation's attention was riveted on the hospital...
...Hogan played creditable golf into the late '60s, but his putting—the bane of any golfer's advancing years—gave out on him, rendering his always-superb ball-striking moot...
...He pounded on a brick wall and sobbed to another golfer, "This is the end...
...Soon, Ben found a job as a caddy at a local club called Glen Garden...
...He was adequate, and burned with a desire, never quenched, to get better...
...Valerie was relatively unharmed, but Hogan was close to death...
...Hogan determined to make golf systematic and knowable...
...He once said— explaining his refusal to make public appearances, even to inaugurate the minor-league circuit christened the Hogan Tour—"Not everyone wants publicity, you know...
...Open...
...And after him came Jack Nicklaus, the finest player ever, as even Hogan partisans will admit...
...Hour after hour he stood on the shag range, experimenting with his swing, "digging it out of the dirt," as he said...
...Hogan answered, with impeccable logic, "Shoot the lowest score...
...Hogan had never succumbed to anything, and he would not, in fact, succumb to the Crash...
...But it was Hogan who did most to develop the modern game...
...Open, and the British Open (all but the PGA)—an achievement still unequaled...
...Gary Player supposedly called him up from South America one day, suffering from a slump and seeking help...
...In January 1949, Time magazine put him on its cover, with the legend, "If you can't outplay them, outwork them...
...In one well-known instance, he was robbed of the tires on his car in Oakland, California...
...He announced to his mother that he would make himself a champion golfer or die...
...And then there was the time, when President Eisenhower phoned, that Hogan barked to his secretary, "I'm not going to play with that g—d— hack...
...They're never going to have the opportunity I had...
...He could place his shots wherever he wanted, producing a "fade," a gentle left-to-right motion conducive to accuracy...
...He lost in the playoff, but, as Grantland Rice famously wrote, he really "didn't lose—his legs simply weren't strong enough to carry his heart around...
...He had always been plagued with a "hook"—a right-to-left running shot that leaves a golfer feeling helpless— but now he figured out how to hit a soft, manageable fade...
...A Greyhound bus, not seeing the Hogans' car, tried to pass a truck and barreled straight toward them...
...He could go on...
...In December, he played 18 holes, with the help of a motor scooter...
...Hogan acknowledged no power above the ability to hit a golf ball soundly and to prevail in important tournaments...
...There, slowly, in extraordinary pain, Hogan began to sit up and later to walk...
...rettes, staring out the window of the men's grill...
...In 1953, he sailed to Carnoustie in Scotland to participate in the British Open, the only time he did so...
...He was born in 1912 in Stephenville, Texas, the son of a blacksmith...
...What clubs are you playing...
...When night came, Ben slept in the course's sand bunkers...
...The Scots, astonished at the precision and concentration of the peculiar Texan who captured their tournament with ease, dubbed him "The Wee Ice Man...
...His boyhood was almost completely devoid of comfort or joy, but he later said, "I feel sorry for rich kids, I really do...
...No, it manifestly does not live within all of us—even dormant—but it lived unappeasably within Hogan, and because of it he was a great player, and a great man...
...In one version of the story, it came in a dream...
...The Hawk" (this was another of Hogan's nicknames) was not the kind of hero that we have come to expect: the hero of the Donahue age, telling interviewers of his joys and sorrows, his triumphs and defeats, wearing his emotions on his sleeve...
...Cards, letters, and telegrams poured in to him from every state...
...Yet he was far from a brilliant golfer...
...The next year, Hogan founded a club-manufacturing company, which bore his name and which he was to oversee until 1993...
...He loved its solitude, the way it absorbed him...
...Snead a crude, extravagantly gifted country bumpkin...
...In 1957, he contributed a series of instruc- Ben tional articles to Sports Illustrated, which became the best-selling Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf—a book that, though effective, confused many with its barely comprehensible talk of "pronation" and "supination...
...Before him, golf had been a "feel" sport, all art and no science, dominated by grizzled Brits and talented good-time Charlies like Walter Hagen...
...Word was that, even if he survived, he would be an invalid...
...He once teased a golfer who yearned to know how to play a particular shot by saying, ludicrously, "I try to hit it on the second groove...
...Sometime in 1946, according to lore, Hogan had a revelation...
...Every student of golf is familiar with the details of Hogan's life...
...Upon hearing of Hogan's death, Ben Crenshaw said, "He defined the inner will that lives within us...
...But he still hit balls, never stopped practicing, never allowed his hands to grow uncallused...
...No longer was he viewed as a cold, distant golfing machine, but as a valiant, lion-hearted battler...
...The first American star was Bobby Jones—scion of Atlanta society, Harvard educated, the epitome of the gentleman golfer...
...Everyone—for a change—was rooting for him...
...1 at Shady Oaks was "Don't bother Mr...
...Nick Faldo once asked him what it took to win the U.S...
...Then call Mr...
...Dunlop," Hogan replied, hanging up...
...He gave only one significant interview in the last decades of his life, in 1987 to a golf magazine: "The Hawk Talks...
...Hogan and his wife Valerie were returning home to Fort Worth from a tournament in Phoenix...
...It seemed that one of them would win every tournament on tour...
...He also enjoyed S the utter fairness of the g game, the way it compelled ° him to accept all the credit or all the blame...
...In 1951, Hollywood made a movie about Hogan: Follow the Sun, starring Glenn Ford...
...Rule No...
...He first swung a club again in the autumn...
...He failed, repeatedly, for some 15 years...
...He had been the greatest golfer in the world, the sport's most mysterious hero...
...He played in order to conquer the game, to solve its riddles, to bring it, at long last, to its knees...
...All in all, Hogan defined a new standard and invited his opponents and imitators to meet it...
...In his banner year of 1953, he won three of the four majors—the Masters, the U.S...
...He kept to himself at Shady Oaks Country Club in Fort Worth, smoking his cigaJay Nordlinger is associate editor of The Weekly Standard...
...Not that he ever talked to anyone...
...Next there was Arnold Palmer, golf's first television idol, who melted the screen with his charisma and approachability...
...There emerged a mighty triumvirate of Snead, Hogan, and Hogan's boyhood acquaintance Byron Nelson...
...This was Hogan's "secret," a much-debated insight about which Hogan himself was endlessly coy...
...At the time, he was the most famous athlete in the country, along with Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams...
...in another, it came during one of his incessant practice sessions...
...He was 84 and had been sick for several years, but he was always a hovering presence around the game, a necessary part of its self-image...
...There, he threw himself into the game with a desperate abandon...
...In June the next year, 16 months after the car crash, Hogan won the U.S...
...Hogan was unwilling to play the Senior Tour—on which Snead, Palmer, and others love to entertain and soak up the applause—because he could not stand for the public to see him at less than his best...
...Similarly, when someone complained, "I'm having trouble with my long putts," Hogan came back with, "Why don't you hit them closer to the hole...
...While an admirable man, Hogan was not a pleasant one...
...His action probably spared his own life, as the car's steering column was propelled through the driver's seat...
...The rest of the field would look at him and, demoralized, simply know that he would not falter...
...He won 63 tournaments, including nine "majors," the tournaments that really count...
...When his ship docked in New York, the city gave him a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, the first since General MacArthur's...
...Whatever he glimpsed, Hogan began to win, and win consistently...
...One month later came "the Crash," as it is known in golf history...
...He was so poor that he stole fruit from orchards and vegetables from gardens...
...Sam Snead once remarked, disgustedly, "Anybody can say he's got a secret when he won't tell what it is...
...He had no friends to speak of, only an imaginary companion named "Hen-nie Bogan," who sat on his shoulder and admonished him to do better...
...His biographer, Curt Sampson, writes, "Insular types such as Bennie Hogan have always been drawn to golf, a sport requiring an ability to concentrate for long periods of time but with no mandate for cooperation or closeness with a teammate...
...Then came Hogan, who could not have been more different: hardscrabble, maniacal, obsessive about everything he touched...
...The three men were markedly dissimilar: Nelson a near-saint...
...In fact, many would say—even in a time of eulo-gy—that he was intolerable...
...A second before impact, Hogan hurled himself across his wife in an effort to protect her...
...He was the first pro to make a religion out of practice...
...Amazingly, despite his aching and fatigued body, he played Snead to a tie...
...He "practiced until his hands bled" (as innumerable fathers have told their sons...
...But in time, by some unfathomable force of will, Hogan pulled ahead...
...At 5 feet, 8 inches, 140 pounds, "Bantam Ben" was the most feared competitor in golf...
...Shrewd man that he was, he probably recognized the dangers of overexposure and the benefits of silence...
...Hogan—almost unique among professionals—did not play for glory (though he achieved it) or for money (though he earned it...
Vol. 2 • August 1997 • No. 47
