Ben Hogan, Perfection Personified

Slowly the little man emerged from the valley, head bowed under his trademark white hat, battered 54-year-old legs carrying him up the hill toward the 18th green at Augusta National.

As Ben Hogan, who died Friday at the age of 84, shuffled along, the thousands of fans crowded around the last green at the third round of the 1967 Masters picked up his tentative steps about 100 yards from the flag and carried him along with a thunderous ovation.

They knew what they were seeing: The last great round by arguably the greatest golfer ever.

More than his nine major championship victories, more than the 30 tournaments he won from 1946 to 1948, more than sweeping the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open in 1953, more than coming back from the car crash that nearly killed him, that particular Masters showed what made Hogan special.

Long past his prime, 14 years past his last major championship and eight years since he last won a tournament, there was Hogan--just months short of his 55th birthday--shooting a 66 in the third round of the Masters, finishing the back nine with a brilliant 30, making birdies on all of the treacherous holes at Amen Corner.

“I think I played the best nine holes of my life on those holes,” Hogan said years later. “I don’t think I came close to missing a shot.”

No matter that he faded the next day. No matter that he never again challenged in a tournament. There was Hogan once again flirting with perfection.

Sam Snead won more tournaments. Jack Nicklaus won more major championships. But no one was feared more than Hogan. No one worked harder at the game than Hogan. No one came closer to mastering the game than Hogan.

Think how many majors he would have won if he hadn’t missed nearly three full seasons to World War II. Think how many majors he would have won if not for the car crash that limited him to playing no more than seven tournaments a year after 1948.

And think what Hogan would have accomplished if it had not taken him 15 years as a professional to figure out the game, cure a chronic hook and take command of the sport.

Hogan turned pro in 1929, but didn’t win his first major championship until he was 34 years old, in 1946. He won two majors in ‘48, missed ’49 because of the crash, won one in ‘50, two in ’51 and three in ’53.

In some ways it may have been the accident that secured Hogan’s place in golf history. It added to the myth, the Hogan mystique, as the lone, often surly perfectionist. After the crash, when his shattered legs could no longer stand the rigors of weekly play, Hogan retreated to what he loved most--practice.

He virtually invented practice. He was the first player to spend hour after hour working on his game. He was the first player to take the game apart--take a course apart--and figure out the best shot to hit in every situation.

Hogan believed that every pin placement required a specific approach. Back pins should be attacked with a low shot and front pins with a high shot. A right-side flag back needed a fade, a left pin a draw.

And he worked on hitting all of those shots.

Once, in 1951, writer Dan Jenkins came upon Hogan alone on a practice fairway hitting 155-yard knockdown 5-irons.

“What are you doing?” Jenkins asked.

“It’s a shot I’ll need at Oakland Hills,” Hogan replied, referring to the site of the upcoming U.S. Open he would win.

Hogan would warm up on the practice tee before a round by hitting every shot in the order he assumed he would hit them on the course.

If the first hole was going to be a drive and an 8-iron, Hogan would hit a driver and then an 8-iron on the practice tee. And if that 8-iron was going to be a high fade into the green, he’d hit a high fade on the practice fairway.

Hogan also liked to practice alone on a fairway where he could hit shots into the wind, then turn and hit balls downwind and finally work the ball both ways with the cross winds.

He was relentless, unyielding.

Hogan played his last tournament in 1971, a round he never finished, dropping out on the 11th hole after wrenching his knee. But he continued to practice.

In the 1970s, it was not uncommon to come across Hogan at Shady Oaks Country Club in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, a month before a major championship, working on the shots that would be needed at Augusta, or Winged Foot, or Oakland Hills, or Oakmont.

Even as his mind faded with Alzheimer’s disease in his later years, Hogan still thought of practice.

“He talks about hitting balls,” Valerie, his wife of 62 years, said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press, “then he forgets.”

It was Valerie’s life Hogan saved in that 1949 crash when he threw himself across her lap as their car slammed head-on into a bus. It also saved Hogan’s life, since he would have been impaled by the steering wheel.

Valerie Hogan may be the only person who ever really knew Hogan, the hardened man who was 9 when his father committed suicide, the combative kid who learned the game as a caddie.

“You know, I always thought he was a handsome man,” she said. “And a warm person. He wasn’t the machine everyone thought. He just worked harder.”