![]() Golfers were keen to do well but not at the expense of their social life after the game cards and partying being the norm. ![]() The professionals usually travelled together and in those days, pooled monies to assist each other. The tour was more like a travelling carnival as it followed the sun from tour spot to tour spot. Whilst Ben Hogan was in the process of building his game, America was recovering from the depression years and as such, golf purses were small. Hogan was honest enough to admit he couldn’t play golf this way and didn’t pretend otherwise! For one short period he participated in this charade and realising the falseness and folly, dropped it for all time sake. Hogan had schooled himself on the art of not so much ignoring the crowd, but simply not seeing them!īen Hogan Ben Hogan on many occasions, as if by means of justifying this behaviour, said how he would have loved to have been ‘one of the boys’ and join the others in the grill, swapping tall stories and ‘beefing’ it up with galleries. Discussions with fellow professionals, if any, were along the lines of, "Who’s away?" "What did you score?" He simply hated to lose and worse, hated to hit a golf shot that was even just a little off perfect. With head down, eyes focussed upon his shoe laces and invariably puffing on a long cigarette, Hogan housed a low regard for idle chit-chat on the course as Lee Trevino quickly discovered during their first pairing. Hogan on the golf course exemplified grim determination and a fiercely Irish - American competitive nature. For years he felt plagued by the hook and eventual disgust augmented the now famous change to the fade that made him in his best years - virtually invincible! Ben Hogan had so much more to overcome than most in his quest for golfing perfection the early suicide of his father must have left a profound mark on a young boy, an unsuitably small frame for golf, near poverty for too many years to remember, a temperament completely unable to interact with the fawning galleries - lest it interfere with the shot at hand, (Hogan was no Trevino or Palmer in this regard) the head-on collision with a Greyhound bus and subsequent appalling injuries, embarrassing putting yips and a confounding hook that would rear its ugly head at crucial times in tournaments. A total of sixty two USPGA titles and amongst major championships: four US Opens, two US Masters, two USPGA Championships and one British Open, is only half the story. The start statistics of Hogan’s career reveal very little of the legend. ![]() As a true measure of the awe he was held in, ‘Mr Hogan’ usually sufficed - particularly in the second half of his life. ![]() ![]() Throughout his golfing career, Ben Hogan was referred to by several names ‘Bantam Ben’, ‘The Hawk’, ‘The little Texan’ and while in Scotland, ‘The Wee-Ice Mon’ for his seemingly nerveless demeanour was christened. In Hogan’s case though, he was the genuine article and worthy of being called a great champion. Sportswriters tend to throw them around like confetti and thus, corrode their very meaning. Two words - great and champion are very much abused when assigned to sports people. The world of golf is a sadder place, with the news of the passing of Ben Hogan at age 84. Other / Famous Golfers / Ben Hogan Ben Hogan A TRIBUTE TO BEN HOGAN ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |