Against the odds, he battled to the top
Then he had to do it all over again!
Achiever
By Steve Douglas

BEN HOGAN became one of the greatest golfers of all time because he had some talent and worked compulsively to exploit it. He forced his way against all odds to the top.

When a Greyhound bus had a head-on collision with his Cadillac in 1949 and nearly killed him, he worked even harder to win back his position as the number one golfer of the day.

Hogan typifies the American dream — that a boy from the poorest background can, if he has talent and guts, make it to the very top.

William Benjamin Hogan was born on August 12, 1912, in Dublin, Texas. His father, the town blacksmith, died when he was nine. The Hogan kids had to work; they couldn’t afford to play.

So Ben used to work late at the Fort Worth Glen Garden Country Club, polishing the members’ golf clubs. He also sold newspapers and caddied for 65 cents a round. But there was fierce competition for the job of caddie among the boys of Dublin.

"The other boys didn’t like me coming in, ‘recalled Hogan. ‘They stuck me in a barrel and rolled me down a hill. Then they made me fight the biggest boy there. I beat him up and was accepted."

Dime-store clubs

Hogan was a left-hander. "But I couldn’t afford a set of expensive left-handed clubs. So I bought some mongrel clubs out of a dime-store barrel for a dollar apiece.

"They say now that if you force yourself to do something right-handed when you are a natural left-hander, it’s terribly bad for you. But I did’t know that then. All I knew was that I had to master those clubs. And I did."

The caddies were banned from playing on the Fort Worth course, so they dug their own two-hole course on a piece of waste ground. They used to have competitions to see who could hole out first. They also had contests to see who could drive the ball furthest. Hogan, smallest of the bunch, usually came last. And the penalty for coming last was that you had to pick up the other boys’ balls.

"You learn fast in a hard league," says Hogan. "I copied the good players, watched how they did it, and began hitting a loger ball.

"For practice, I used to hit a golf ball down to the stores when I went shopping for my mother."

Eight dollars left

Hogan wanted one job in life: to be a pro-golfer. He started playing in the small tournaments and won a few dollars. While the other players went into the clubhouse for lunch, Ben, short of money, would sit outside in the shade eating oranges.

He bought an old jalopy to get him around to tournaments. One day he found it jacked up, minus its wheels. The theft was a disaster. He had eight dollars to his name. But he was determined not to go under and somehow he kept going.

Before every tournament, he spent hours out on the course, working out his shots. He left nothing to chance. Gradually, the prizes he won got bigger. He was becoming accepted as one of America’s most promising golfers.

In 1948, he became the first man to win the US Open, the US PGA championship and the Western Open in the same year. They called him ‘Little Water-Ice’ because he was always so cool under pressure.

His car crash a year later seemed the end of everything. He was pulled out of the wreckage with multiple injuries to his legs, hips, chest, pelvis, shoulder and arms. Doctors said he was lucky to be alive. And as for being able to play golf: impossible! The bus company admitted liability and agreed to pay him $ 30,000 a year for the next 10 years. What good was that to the man who was out to prove himself the best golfer in history?

Months on crutches

Hogan refused to accept the opinion of his doctors. For weeks he lay fretting in hospital.

Then they put him in a wheelchair. After six months, he started crawling around on crutches. Learning to walk again was an agony.

His wife Valerie used to drive him secretly out to the golf course where he would stand alone, trying to swing a golf club. It hurt him... but he could still do it.

In October, 1949, he was appointed non-playing captain of the U.S. Ryder Cup team. Even if he couldn’t play, he was determined to be there to inspire his buddies. The Americans lost the foursomes by two points. But after a pep talk from Hogan, they went out and won the match.

The next few weeks Ben spent practising, trying to force his muscles to regain the strength an suppleness they had before the crash. It was a slow and painful business, but early in 1950 Hogan was ready to make his comeback.

The event was the Los Angeles Open. He started with a moderate round of 73, and then had three 69s in a row to tie with Sam Snead.

He lost on the play-off, but he had proved he could play tournament golf again, even if he was no longer 100 per cent physically fit.

Champion again

The following May, Hogan won a tournament with a total of 259 strokes for 72 holes, equalling the then world record.

A month later, he was the U.S. Open Champion again, beating Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio in a triple play-off.

Hogan retained his Open title in 1951, but lost it to Julius Boros in 1952 and in 1953. He came back to win for the fourth time in six years. And for one of those years he had been out of the game!

In 1953, Hogan played in his first British Open, in Carnoustie on the east coast of Scotland. In the field were competitors of outstanding merit — like Frank Stranahan, Bobby Locke, Flory Van Donck, Max Faulkner, Antonio Cerda, Dai Rees and Peter Thomson.

But the favourite was Hogan, the golfer who had never hit a ball at Carnoustie before; the man who had become a golfing legend. Rees and Thomson had played the Carnoustie course many times. They knew its traps and pitfalls. Hogan didn’t. But he made up for lost time by practising dozens of shots with all kinds of clubs at every hole.

Ticker-tape welcome

By the time the tournament began, he knew the best approaches to every hole and how to avoid getting into trouble. He studied the wind velocity and the weather forecasts. He missed nothing.

He duly won the British title with rounds of 73,71,70 and 68 and became the undisputed champion golfer of the world.

Back in Manhattan, he was given a ticker-tape welcome and a civic reception at the City Hall. An estimated 1,50,000 people turned out to greet the little man who had come back, against the odds, to the very top.

Hogan carried on winning tournamments. But by now his name was so big he was able to make far more money from giving his name to golf equipment and other products than he was able to win on the course.

Nothing — not even a brush with death — could keep him away from his beloved golf. (AF)