The Man Who Casts The Longest Shadow

Perfection and quality are the words that receive the strongest emphasis in Hogan's conversation. Separately and together, they are the holy grail of his long pilgrimage from obscurity. When he speaks of the golf clubs he is making, the word he most often uses is quality. He says that they are the best line of clubs available, and it is obvious that he believes this.

Yet he is constantly tinkering and experimenting with them, searching for new ways to improve and simplify both the clubs themselves and the manufacturing techniques. For example, he so far refuses to go along with the trend to eliminate the screws from the faces of wood clubs, because he cannot find an adhesive he feels is strong enough to replace them. But he is looking hard for one, and recently, when he met the president of Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing at the Crosby tournament in Pebble Beach, they were soon having an animated conversation on the subject of adhesives.

If Hogan is searching for perfect clubs, he is also looking for a faultless place to use them. "I think it would now be possible to build the perfect golf course," he said one noon at Shady Oaks. "First of all," he explained, taking out a pencil and drawing on the paper napkin in front of him, "there are only three kinds of greens. One is shaped like a figure eight. One is shaped like an L. One is just a simple I. [Hogan drew each of them on the napkin as he talked.] Now, you can put bunkers in here and here and here. Then it is just a question of which direction you approach the green from." Hogan drew arrows delineating the possibilities with each type of green and went on to show how these greens could be adapted to various types of golf holes.

It happens that Hogan has his perfect golf course in mind for the not-too-distant future. On a plot of several hundred acres a few miles southwest of Houston he is planning to set up an exclusive new golf club in partnership with friends of his who live in that city. Dick Wilson, the eminent golf architect whom Hogan considers to be the best, will do the actual designing, but Hogan will work with him. Presumably, the ultimate in 8s and L's and l's are going to be seen there before many years have passed.

As for the perfect golf swing, Hogan has reached that philosophic age when he can accept the fact that there are certain things he will never see in his lifetime, and this is one of them. He will even concede that there may possibly be no such thing. But, as he wrote in his definitive book on technique, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, "Every year we learn a little more. Each new chunk of valid knowledge paves the way to greater knowledge." It is Hogan's theory now that every new generation of golfers is an improvement on its predecessor, for the uncomplicated reason that all of the lessons of the past make it possible to learn more at an earlier age.

"Someday," Hogan claims, "it may even be possible to construct some kind of machine that will swing a golf club as well as it can possibly be done. They could take movies of this machine in action from various angles, and young kids could watch it and learn to imitate it. Children have a great knack for imitating, so if they watched the movies when they were young enough they could follow the swing pretty closely as they practiced. That is probably as close to the perfect swing as it would be possible for human beings to get."

In the late winter of each year Ben and Valerie Hogan go to Palm Beach, where Ben begins preparing for his first tournament appearance of the season—the Masters. This had been an unvarying custom for 15 years, and it began because of his admiration and affection for The Seminole Golf Club, which he considers the equal of any in the world, both in design and condition.

Supersocial Palm Beach may not seem the place for a man like Ben Hogan to find friends, but he has found them there. Claude Harmon was the pro at Seminole when Hogan first started going to Palm Beach. He was succeeded by Henry Picard, the current pro, who was a staunch friend of Ben's in his very early days of tournament golf. The maitre de golf at the club and the man who is largely responsible for the excellence of the course, is Chris Dunphy, an old companion of Ben's. One year Ben and Valerie spent their holiday at Dunphy's house, where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are frequent guests. Another of the wealthy Palm Beach gentry whom Ben and Valerie have visited is George Coleman, a man who has long been a patron of athletes. Finally, there was the late Paul Shields, a prominent New York investment banker who was, for many years before his death, both business adviser and loyal friend to Hogan.

Among these people Hogan feels comfortable and free of pressure, for they want nothing of him. They all like to play golf for amiable sums, and their banter both on and off the course is the kind of relaxed verbal sparring that puts Ben at his ease. "The grass is so long on those greens I might as well practice on a public course," Hogan told Dunphy a couple of weeks ago. "If you didn't take so much time to putt, the grass wouldn't get that long," answered Dunphy. Several years ago Shields and Hogan were practicing on the putting green one afternoon when some members on the clubhouse porch called down, "Hi, Ben." Hogan turned and waved with a friendly smile. Shields watched this sourly and said, "Look at him—all personality. He'd have never done that before he was selling golf clubs."

Except for Harmon or Picard or one of the young assistant pros, the only person at Seminole who was ever able to give Hogan a real match on the course was Bobby Sweeney, the former British Amateur champion, who is now living abroad. But Hogan, one of the most demanding of first-tee lawyers, always manages to work out some good bets with Dunphy and Coleman and the others. Until quite recently he would play every shot during these games with the same care and consideration he gave to a tournament, often walking ahead to the green to observe a pin placement or study the terrain before hitting an approach. Dunphy kidded him about this once, and Hogan replied, "If I didn't do it here, I might get out of the habit and forget to do it in the Masters."