Word: game
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...circuit, trying to do as well as such crack golfers as Ralph Guldahl (who became U.S. Open champion in 1937 and 1938) and Nelson (U.S. Open champion in 1939). Hogan's rule, then as now: "If you can't outplay them, outwork them." At 19, when his game was good but still as unpredictable as a slippery green, Ben Hogan turned pro. Then he decided to get out of Fort Worth...
Then for four years, through Fort Worth's "blue northers" and hot summers, he worked away at his game. He picked up a fair dollar any way he could, working at dozens of odd jobs. The next time he hit the golf circuit (in 1937) he had two mouths to feed: he had married attractive Valerie Fox, a home-town girl he had known since they went to kid parties together. They skimped on food and entertainment. Ben haunted the practice tee, even brought his putter back to the hotel to practice...
...Learned How." In a quarter-century of the game, Ben Hogan had probably hit more golf balls than any man alive. Then one day in 1947 while he was walking out to a practice tee in Fort Worth, a brand new idea occurred to him. He hit a few shots in what was for Ben a slight change of style. He had lost the hook (which golfers say always rolls till it reaches trouble) and found a fade (a slight drift to the right) which he could control with great accuracy...
...working methodically at bringing himself up to tournament pitch. He stared out ecstatically at Hogan's Alley, soggy with the heavy rains of the past two weeks, at the pitted greens. "I love the competition," he said. "I hope I'm not at the top of my game; I hope I'm getting better...
Strike in the Dark. Niebuhr, says Barth, reminds him of a player in "a curious game called 'Brother, where art thou?' . . . who with eyes blindfolded [strikes] out wildly into the dark in a direction in which the other . . . is in all probability not to be found . . . Niebuhr's contribution is in my view a shattering example of a blow in the dark, such as I have described. The only fundamental answer I can give him is that I do not find myself where . . . I appear to him to be, and where he had delivered such lusty blows...