The Man Who Casts The Longest Shadow

In a long-ago tournament Claude Harmon, a man who much admires Hogan, was paired with Dr. Cary Middlecoff, then one of Hogan's two or three closest competitors. When he saw Hogan in the locker room after the round Harmon said, "Ben, I'm going to have to do something about the Doc. The poor guy just can't get the ball out of the bunkers. I'm going to have to give him a lesson in how to hit a sand shot."

There was silence for a moment, and then a dead-serious Hogan said, "Leave him alone."

In 1950, the year after his nearly fatal automobile accident, Hogan's first tournament was the Los Angeles Open. He was sitting in the clubhouse with an apparent victory, but Sam Snead birdied four of the last nine holes to catch him, and Snead then took some of the drama out of Ben's almost superhuman recovery by beating him decisively in the playoff. A few months later Hogan decided to play in the Greenbrier tournament at Snead's home course in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., an event that Sam has rarely permitted anyone else to win. Hogan shot the four lowest scores of his tournament career, 64-64-65-66, to set a Greenbrier record and tie the PGA four-round record of 259. Snead, in second place, was a humbling 10 strokes back.

When, three weeks later, Snead won the Colonial National, a reporter found Ben slumped disconsolately in the locker room, staring at his shoes. "Well, Ben," he said, "I guess Sam did to you on your home course what you did to him on his."

Hogan gave him a hard, 64-64-65-66 look. "Not quite," he said.

One reason for Hogan's abbreviated speech, especially with the press, is that he has long maintained (and believed) that it was not what he said that mattered, but what he did on a golf course. He has always hated stupid questions, especially from reporters who have not followed his round, but he will go on at length about a certain shot if you happen to have seen it. He will also talk at some of the very times when his reputation would lead you to think he would be most quiet.

While out on the course shooting the 67 at Oakland Hills that won him the 1951 U.S. Open—often called the greatest round ever played—Hogan began wondering aloud why people ever watch golf tournaments. They have to walk so far and it's so hard to see, he said. He could not understand what they found so interesting. "They enjoy watching golf shots hit this well," a USGA official who was walking with him told him. "Yes," said Ben, as they moved up the fairway, "I guess it does take some skill."

And there was the time at the 1955 U.S. Open when he is said to have done a most uncharacteristic thing. He walked off the 72nd green with what seemed to be a certain victory, an unprecedented fifth Open win for him, and as he was being congratulated he handed his golf ball to a USGA official. "This is for Golf House," he said, referring to the USGA museum. That was the day unknown Jack Fleck came through the dark to tie Hogan and then won the next day's playoff in a shattering upset.

Much of the Hogan mystique—the portrait of the silent, dour loner—developed after his accident in 1949. The accident is still so fresh in the minds of the middle-aged that it is difficult to realize a whole generation of golfers and sports fans has grown up that is unaware of it. Hogan had completed the first weeks of the winter tour, losing a playoff to Demaret in Phoenix, and he was driving home to Fort Worth with his wife, Valerie. They had just passed through the crossroads town of Van Horn and had almost reached the crest of one of those gradual Texas inclines when a Greyhound bus came over the hill on the wrong side of the road and smashed head on into their Cadillac sedan. Ben threw himself in front of Valerie. He was so badly injured that it was not so much a question of whether he would play golf again as whether he would live. Eleven months later, limping and with his healing legs still in bandages, he was playing in the Los Angeles Open that Snead took away from him.

Before the accident Hogan had never been a particularly austere character to the pros with whom he competed from week to week. Certainly he was more serious-minded and dedicated than most of them and he practiced a thousand times harder in an era when the art of practicing was just beginning to catch on, but he was also one of them. He enjoyed the pleasantries of the locker room, a good drink or two at the end of the day, and he liked to eat well—when he had the money.