American Triumvirate

by James Dodson

  It was perhaps their only hope, however. Royal Hogan arranged to have Ochsner flown to El Paso. Hours later, as the risky surgery was under way, the Associated Press alerted its seventeen hundred subscribers, sending out a sixteen-paragraph obituary, “intended for use in the event of his death.”

  Two hours later, a weary but smiling Ochsner told Valerie the surgery had been successful. With surprisingly little bleeding, the artery was now secured. Furthermore, he predicted her husband would begin to recover in about a week’s time and possibly be “up and around with limited mobility in several months.” On the downside, he advised her that Ben’s long-term mobility would also be greatly diminished—perhaps even his ability to walk a golf course. When Royal bluntly asked Ochsner when or if his brother might ever be able to play competitively again, the famous surgeon shook his head and reportedly replied, “I just don’t know. Only time will tell.”

  Sam Snead loved the Greensboro fans because they treated him like a native son. He had fishing buddies in the galleries of the Gate City and enjoyed a productive relationship with a gifted Pinehurst caddie named Jimmy Stead who appeared to understand his complicated game even better than he himself. According to Sam, they met when Sam won the North and South Open at Pinehurst in 1941 and Stead regularly drove two hours up the road from the Sandhills whenever he played in the Greater Greensboro Open, an event that alternated between two fine old clubs.

  It was there, inside the Starmount Country Club’s locker room, that he solved the mystery of the brass-headed putter he’d found in Tucson, which belonged to a popular Chicago club pro named Stan Kertes. How it wound up in his locker was never determined, though both men agreed a locker room attendant probably mistakenly put it there. When Sam confessed that he liked the putter’s heft and had in fact been practicing with it for several weeks, Kertes invited him to keep it. “See if it brings you any luck,” he said, and Sam decided to give it a shot.

  He drained putts from every direction and length to tie Lloyd Mangrum for first place and then beat him in a playoff, 69 to 71. Sam’s “hometown” galleries were ecstatic.

  A few days later, on the eve of the Masters, he took a lesson from Vic Ghezzi that helped him visualize shorter putts and smooth out his yips on shorter distances. He also began to “blot out the world” in his mind over critical putts, something he’d long heard Hogan talking about. With Jimmy Stead on his bag and a hot flatstick in his hands, he put together a pair of brilliant closing 67s in a biting spring wind to capture the season’s first major, including eight birdies in the final eighteen, winning the first of his three Masters titles. Not at all surprising to seasoned patrons, one of his victims was Byron Nelson, who returned as promised and gamely gave chase but finished ten strokes back.

  For Sam, this breakthrough marked the beginning of the greatest run of his career, during which he won twenty of forty-two events.

  Three weeks after his stunning display in Augusta, where he donned the first green jacket, armed with his magical new putter and comforting Jimmy Stead on the bag, Sam sauntered past Jackie Burke Jr. and Jimmy Demaret to reach the semifinal of the PGA Championship in his own backyard, Richmond’s lush Hermitage Country Club. In the final match, he trailed fellow Southerner Johnny Palmer until the twenty-second hole, where a monstrous birdie putt tumbled into the cup and vaulted him into the lead. He closed Palmer out on the thirty-fourth hole and then put on a new houndstooth sports jacket and beautifully knotted silk tie for the presentation of his second Wanamaker Trophy. He was the first man in history to win both the Masters and the PGA in the same year. “The only difference in Snead is that he’s getting hump-backed from picking balls out of the can,” Demaret quipped.

  A fortnight later at the U.S. Open at Medinah, where, even without Jimmy Stead along to help, Sam played solid golf through seventy holes and reached the penultimate green tied with pleasant Cary Middlecoff, a recent graduate of the University of Tennessee Dental College. Facing a lengthy chip shot from the fringe just off the green, however, Sam opted to lag putt and rolled his ball eight feet past the cup. Then, after taking an unusually long time over the ball, clearly attempting to clear his mind of past Open disasters, he grazed the hole and finished a thin stroke out of a playoff, tied with Clayton Heafner for second place, a runner-up for the maddening third time.

  Undeterred by the jinx, and eager to make hay while Hogan remained on the sidelines, Sam responded by winning three of his next six tournaments including the Western Open, finishing no worse than third place, to claim the money title, his second Vardon Trophy, and Player of the Year honors for 1949.

  “Given that I’d been largely written off as dead by many of the scribes,” he was moved to remember some years later, “that was the most satisfying year I’d ever had up till then. It takes a lot out of a fella to reach the top of the heap the way Ben and Byron and I all did. Nobody gets to stay there long. But as Ben and I both proved, it’s a helluva lot harder to climb back up there once you’ve tumbled off because you know what it takes out of you to get back.”

  His friends spent years trying to decide if his mysterious putter or Ben Hogan’s absence was the key that revitalized Sam Snead’s ailing game, though most agreed it was undoubtedly a combination of both and the steadying presence of Jimmy Stead. Sam himself was quick to point out that he was destined to earn more than $100,000 with Kertes’s putter, establishing a postwar record for tournament wins that would endure for several decades.

  By his own estimation, he didn’t yip another putt until late 1952, when an assistant at the Greenbrier leaned on his beloved putter and snapped it off at the hosel, sending Sam into conniptions. As he later said, he recovered well enough to “nearly convince myself my putting problems were cured for the time being”—only to see the dreaded yips return with a vengeance in 1960.

  When word leaked out that Ben Hogan had quietly registered for the Los Angeles Open of 1950, the tournament instantly became one of the most anticipated events in modern sports. Ticket sales soared above the ten thousand mark within days, and Riviera’s staff was besieged by requests for press credentials from as far away as Spain and Germany, with newspapers from Pinehurst to Pasadena hailing the second coming of an American hero, a brave little man who’d returned from death’s doorstep.

  This breathless anticipation was understandable. With a predictable and impenetrable curtain of silence cinched around the pretty colonial house on Valley Ridge Road in Fort Worth, the public and press knew little or nothing about Hogan’s convalescence. By late spring of 1949, however, Ben began taking short morning walks around his house with the help of a cane, trying to strengthen the atrophied muscles in his severely damaged legs, which now relied on smaller veins to carry blood to his lower extremities, every step producing sharp pains. On April 5, he put a topcoat over his pajamas, a fedora on his head, and hobbled slowly around his yard. The next afternoon he ventured a little farther to inspect the plant beds Valerie’s yardman installed over the winter. Ben chatted with him, and Valerie detected a noticeable improvement in his mood over the days and weeks that followed. Ben’s interest in gardening was marginal, but even so, he sometimes surprised and impressed Colonial golfing partners by his knowledge of certain plants, using their proper Latin names.

  At the end of April, he returned from a comprehensive checkup with Dr. Ochsner in New Orleans buoyed by his optimistic suggestion that by midsummer he might even be able to walk a golf course, albeit with heavily bandaged legs. Hoping for the best, weeks later he filed for a spot in the field of the U.S. Open at Medinah though by early June his uncooperative legs couldn’t carry him farther than a few blocks around leafy Westover Hills. He was reportedly so depressed about not being able to defend his national open title that he skipped the radio broadcast and subsequent TV highlights of Sam Snead’s most recent gallant failure to win the Open.

  By August, however, Ben was hitting wedge shots and putting at the Colonial course on a daily basis, using a golf cart to get around, a
new development largely popularized by the far-thinking George S. May. Still, during these brief outings, his legs continued to swell and, at month’s end, a sharp recurring pain in his right knee was diagnosed as a torn cartilage by Ochsner, who recommended surgery. Ben slept on it before rejecting any further surgery, fearing that would only slow his recuperation, opting instead for stronger bandaging and a single aspirin for the pain.

  In September, the public had its first view in nine months of a somewhat gaunt Ben Hogan, who was strong enough to serve as nonplaying captain and travel with his American Ryder Cup team to the Ganton Golf Club (Harry Vardon’s old club) on board the Queen Elizabeth. During a rough crossing, Henry Longhurst of the Times and Leonard Crawley of the Daily Telegraph had lengthy conversations with him, and both thought he seemed noticeably more approachable and pleasant. Among other things, Hogan assured them that he would eventually claim another championship. “Longhurst and I looked at one another,” Crawley later wrote, “and when Hogan left us, we said in the same breath, ‘How pathetic.’ ”

  Any suspicion that Ben had gone soft was quickly dispelled by the assault he orchestrated on British golf. At Ganton, he ran his team as he had as a second lieutenant drilling raw recruits for war, imposed strict meetings and curfews, and practice sessions before every match. He also insisted that his players eat every meal together. With rationing still in effect across England, the fact that he brought along a cache of fresh eggs and butter, half a dozen Virginia hams, thirty pounds of smoked bacon, and six hundred pounds of iced-down prime Texas sirloin beef to feed his squad produced howls of indignation on Fleet Street.

  The insult grew when Ben ordered his charges to go easy on the time-honored traditions of drinking in the pub and fraternizing at night. “Hey, Hawk,” Demaret asked at one point, “we training for golf or for the army?” A prominent London editorialist wondered if Captain Hogan planned to “post a sentry guard by the door” to guard his “splendid rations.” Feathers were only slightly smoothed when Ben, sensing his team’s growing discomfort, eased his iron rules a bit and, on the eve of the first matches, shared his larder with the home team. “How gracious,” sniffed one Fleet Streeter. “Hogan has offered us what Americans like to call their ‘leftovers.’ ”

  Motivated by the perceived snubs or sheer pride or the memory of the shellacking administered by the Yanks just two years before—all three factors, most likely—Arthur Lees and Dick Burton upset the “unbeatable” team of Mangrum and Snead in their opening Foursomes match, striking a positive note for the hosts, who by the final days of Singles needed just three and one half points to return Sam Ryder’s venerable cup. With a giddy British press all but declaring victory, however, Ben delivered a tongue-lashing that sent the Americans out like a winter gale off the North Sea. “It was tough words from a tough little man who’d been through hell,” Sam remembered. “We listened pretty good, I reckon. Nobody wanted to be the one who lost that damn cup.” Playing with quiet fierceness and resolve, they dominated the day’s matches and retained the cup, 7–5, carrying it home aboard the Queen Mary to a robust New York reception.

  The Ben Hogan who showed up at Riviera between Christmas and New Year’s to practice for the 1950 Los Angeles Open was, in many respects, very different from the “Little Ice Water” depicted in Time magazine.

  Though he’d managed to put on some weight, he still looked haggard and was ten to fifteen pounds shy of his normal playing weight of 140. As a favor to Valerie and his doctor, he’d agreed to address his cigarette habit of three and a half packs a day, and by the time he appeared for his first official practice round in eleven months, with a portable shooting stick seat like those used at steeplechase races, he’d more or less ditched cigarettes, at least for the moment. But like the Hogan of old, he had yet to officially confirm that he would play in the tournament.

  His choice of practice partners that morning was also no accident. One was George Fazio, the smooth-swinging Pennsylvania pro whose easy style and graceful manner Ben found greatly appealing, whereas the other was Sidney Lanfield, a portly high-handicapper with an ungainly, abbreviated punch-swing. Ben loathed playing with hackers of any sort, but Lanfield had a special dispensation. On the morning the Hogans checked into their usual suite at the Beverly Wilshire, a reporter asked him if there was any truth to an item in Louella Parsons’s popular gossip column that a movie script was being written about his remarkable life and heroic comeback.

  As usual, Ben refused to comment, but in fact a script had already been written for Twentieth Century Fox, and a director selected, to whom he’d been introduced years earlier by Bing Crosby: Sidney Lanfield. Moreover, a dozen leading actors had already been screen-tested for the lead role. Ben’s first choice was rangy, stoic Gary Cooper. Lanfield, however, had settled upon young Glenn Ford.

  In this initial outing, having played his first complete round since the accident only a month before, supported by adhesive bandages swaddling both legs, Ben walked slowly through an impressive 33 on the front nine, coming home in 36—sending a seismic charge through the press room. Afterward, he appeared far more relaxed and generous with his time, answering questions from a large contingent of reporters, even pausing for photographs with tam-wearing Billy Seanor, twelve, the tournament’s cute Mascot Trophy winner.

  “Say, Ben, that 69 is quite a score,” one of them said. “You really tore up the place out there.”

  He gave a wintry half smile. “I did a lot better than I expected. But my legs bothered me.”

  “Still, you’ll play …”

  “Tough to say.”

  As he’d complained to Fazio halfway through the round, his legs were killing him. But he indeed finished better than he’d expected to, faced his brief press inquisition with surprising ease, then went straight back to the Wilshire for a warm bath with Epsom salts, and an aspirin and ginger ale, followed by a soothing Ben-Gay rubdown and rest—in theory still undecided about playing. Valerie strenuously argued against it. But by now he’d more or less made up his mind to play. This was, after all, Hogan’s Alley.

  On New Year’s Day, following one of rest and seclusion, he declined an invitation to watch undefeated Cal and Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, and played an afternoon round at Riviera with only his caddie for company, shooting 70. The next day, he played a third round with Demaret, former PGA champion Bob Hamilton, and reigning Open champion Cary Middlecoff. They had a ten-dollar Nassau going, and several times between holes on the second nine Ben had to stop and rest on his portable stool for several minutes, admitting that his legs were feeling the strain. Middlecoff suggested knocking off, but he refused and hobbled home with a 75, telling reporters he was “satisfied” with his game. Following another day of rest, he put together a fourth round of 67 that hardly went unnoticed; his aggregate score of 281 was three strokes better than Lloyd Mangrum had won with the year before. Finally, following a fifth round of 68, Ben ended the suspense and announced he would compete.

  Meanwhile, the hottest player in the game had arrived, playing only a single practice round with Mangrum and Herm Keiser. Sam shot 67 and gave a lazy catfish smile when told about Hogan’s decision to play. “If he keeps them legs under him,” Sam drawled to the reporters, “Ben’ll be damn hard to beat out there. As you know, Ben loves this place.”

  And with that, he climbed into a rental car to take Audrey and actor Randolph Scott to dinner at the Brown Derby.

  The city announced it was adding a dozen buses out to the Pacific Palisades course to accommodate spectators, a record-breaking crowd of nine thousand passing through the gates for the first round, most of them following Ben and Sam. Despite handheld signs prohibiting cameras, the click of shutters was constant, and on the first fairway a visibly annoyed Ben exchanged sharp words with a small group of foreign press photographers. Perhaps because of this problem, Ben’s opening round of 73 was no thing of beauty. “Ben is a walking miracle,” Middlecoff gushed to one of Lanfield’s roving writers, hired to gather
extra bits for the script. “He couldn’t possibly be on his game after that long layoff. If he wins this thing, believe me, it won’t be with his game,” Cary added. “It will be with his heart.” This gem was dutifully jotted down.

  In Saturday’s second round, Ben finally settled down and shot a 69 that could have been at least two strokes better had a pair of putts not lipped out, while Sam opened with 71–72. A biblical downpour washed away Sunday’s scheduled third round, however, flooding barrancas and forcing the tournament rules committee to scrap every round after only fifty-seven players managed to reach the safety of the clubhouse and seventeen others, including Ben, were forced to pick up their balls. Out in the tumult on the course, Snead and Demaret picked up their balls and headed for the clubhouse even before play was officially suspended, risking disqualification, and Ben eventually found himself stranded by a raging creek on the eleventh fairway, hands on hips, glaring at the swollen waters like an Old Testament prophet. After briefly waiting for a tournament official to assess the situation, he, too, set off with a slow hobble to the clubhouse beneath his umbrella, grim-faced and puffing a Chesterfield, a blessing, as it turned out. His total after just nine holes was an untidy three-over 39 and his fingers felt a creeping numbness. The greatest misfortune of the day belonged to former Pasadena glove salesman Jerry Barber, whose ten-stroke lead was wiped away by officials.

  After a soak in Epsom salts, an early dinner with friends from back home in Texas and a good night’s sleep, however, Ben seemed refreshed and proved it by bagging three birdies in the first seven holes of the replayed third round, recording a 69 that put him within two strokes of Barber’s lead, as the citizens of Hogan’s Alley roared their approval. Five strokes back and all but forgotten was the oddsmakers’ favorite, Sam Snead.