Ben Hogan
The Man Behind the Mystique
By Martin Davis
The American Golfer, Inc., 2002
$60 ISBN: 1-888531-12-6
Any book with an oversized glossy of Ben Hogan successfully negotiating a stymie (in the 1948
PGA Championship finals, no less) is obviously not just another Hogan book. A feast for
devotees on all counts, those who really get Hogan will find this an acceptable burden on the
coffee table. A definitive commemorative and reference, it's replete with rare photos. An awkward fit standing alongside Hogan's own books and the expanding category devoted to his legend and legacy, it again serves testament to the inexhaustible fixation with the wee ice man.
For Hogan fans, there is always more to learn or admire; his swing is eternal, his focus and determination incomparable, his life an amazing quest, the stuff, so rarely the case to deserve a Hollywood treatment. Like many things, but few people, the closer one looks at Hogan the more there is to ponder.
This tribute greatly benefits from the cooperation of the guarded and reticent Valerie Hogan, who died shortly after her husband's memorabilia was safely in place at Far Hills. Her contributions may have been a private salvo against an entertaining and even-handed (but unauthorized) account of Hogan. The unofficial biography by Curt Sampson, we're told though not by name, righteously angered the couple. In that context, this book may serve as a final effort to assuage Mrs. Hogan's disgust, preserving the Hogan legacy, "setting the record straight" as it were - as if Hogan's legacy were ever in question. In Texas it sometimes seems as if he never left.
From his widow's final and most public pronouncement of life with Ben, then, we learn that
children gave him candy; that he never formally proposed marriage; that lunch consisted of navy bean soup with a hamburger or a junior club or bacon and eggs; that he was an excellent dancer and that little things, like an ashtray moved by an unthinking guest, annoyed him. These trivial details will delight the Hogan buffs but it's far too late in the game to soften the image, polishing up the rough edges. We can accept that in some ways he was human, but Hogan's resolve and determination with respect to golf were otherworldly, and they remain at the heart of the fascination.
By contrast, when was the last time you heard a Byron Nelson story or a Demaret story? There's just something about Hogan. As Jack Nicklaus notes in the frontmatter, "Nobody was like Hogan." Which calls to mind, when was the last time you heard a Nicklaus story? Any Nicklaus story? No single figure in big time golf invites so much study, who personifies so much in one package - complexity and contradiction. His persistence and strength were miraculous but there's something else, something less becoming and undoubtedly less personally appealing that continues to transfix anyone who struggles for answers in playing the game at all proficiently. No one overcame as much and came so close to figuring IT out. His legendary stature in golf is secure.
For those who come to Hogan from afar, and for whom he remains unapproachable, impregnable, the best we can hope from these books, from the personal accounts, photos, stories and vignettes, is to look in from outside, marvel and stare. What he was really like is almost beside the point.
We're left to carefully consider the matter, turning page after page of remarkable photos, blown up large enough to show something clearly stuck between Dwight Eisenhower's teeth. There's the earliest known golf photo (Hogan in plus fours!). There's medals and scorecards. There's the accordionned Cadillac, the steering wheel jammed through the driver's seat (It was towed to Ft. Worth and later displayed.), and the deathly hospital photos.
Dan Jenkins offers his two bits for those interested in "wallowing" in Hogan stats, a nice digestive to counter an overdose of TV announcer exuberance. His 14 straight top 10s in the Masters is worth a moment, and he also never finished out of the top 10 in 16 straight U.S. Opens. Jenkins figures Hogan "could've or should've" won six Opens; he won four - or five, depending where you stand on the 1942 Hale America Open. His swing at age 70 is profiled, still supple and majestic. Next to the dozens of posed shots accepting this or that trophy, Hogan never looked happier or more at ease than signing autographs or walking amongst the Scottish crowds at Carnoustie in 1953. He was clearly surprised at the warmth of the response he received. The staff at the guesthouse pooled their ration coupons to give him a silver dollar-sized steak and filled his bag with good luck charms. Try and come up with a modern day equivalent to an outpouring like that. Folly! There's the first trophy he ever won and even the Sucrets and Heet in the shelf of his locker at Shady Oaks.
Red Smith's Herald Tribune column of Hogan's win at Merion in 1950 was a terrific addition, one of any number of exciting finds. "To say there never has been another achievement in competitive sports comparable to Ben Hogan's victory in the National Open golf championship is not mere understatement;" he began, "it is practically an insult to language. We shall not live to see anything like it again."
Smith, who didn't play golf, and was not prone to overstatement, couldn't help but relish Hogan's achievement, his "studied, intellectual game." That about nails it. Anyone who brings a similar approach to appreciating Hogan by curling up with this book will not be disappointed. Clear some space.
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