Word: golfed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After a year or so of caddying, he decided to try the game himself. He scared up some old clubs and started swinging. Since left-handed clubs were hard to come by, he became a righthander. But he seemed to have little natural talent. Says Denny Lavender, West Point golf coach who grew up with Ben: "He didn't do one thing right. He couldn't putt. As a kid he practically ran at the ball...
...burning up the courses and breaking 70. Ben was not that good, but one Christmas Day he tied Nelson in the annual Glen Garden caddy tournament. He practiced like a beaver. Bobby Jones once said: "Hogan is the hardest worker I've ever seen, not only in golf but in any other sport." He played the Texas amateur 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...
...Open (where he won no prize money) and the Phoenix Open (where he picked up $50). He had turned in some good scores for 18 holes, but he had no consistency. It taught him one lesson: "There's no such thing as one good shot in big-time golf. They all have to be good-and for 72 holes...
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...