American Triumvirate

by James Dodson

  He effectively ended his career at the Masters in 1967, posting a 290 that was good enough for ninth place, and attended the Champions Dinner for a final time. Byron agreed to take over his duties as emcee.

  That June, though, with little notice, Ben entered the U.S. Open at Baltusrol, where Nicklaus beat Palmer to the finish. In his final Open, Ben shot 292 and tied for thirty-fourth place. He wasn’t seen in public again until the autumn, when he appeared as nonplaying captain of the Ryder Cup at the Champions Golf Club, his old pal Jimmy Demaret’s club in Houston, an event he ran with his usual iron discipline, sparring with a jaunty Arnold Palmer, who flew in on his new airplane and was only a few thousand dollars from being the first player to win a million dollars in a single year. When Palmer playfully pointed out that he hadn’t brought along any smaller British golf balls for the occasion, Ben snapped, “Who says you’re playing?” and kept Palmer on the sidelines for the second-day morning tour balls. He insisted on long compulsory practice sessions and demanded his players be in bed by 10:30. During matches he was overheard grumbling, “I’ve never seen so many God-awful shots in my life.” The Americans won in a rout 23½ to 8½.

  Several months later, Ben underwent a series of operations to remove painful calcium deposits and joint spurs in his left shoulder. In June of 1969, he made another surprise appearance at the U.S. Open, also held at Champions—but as a spectator. “Fans saw Ben Hogan walking in the gallery and couldn’t believe their eyes,” said Tommy Bolt. “To tell the truth, neither could the rest of us.” Over cocktails in the locker room with hosts Jimmy Demaret and Jackie Burke, Demaret casually mentioned to Ben that “some of the fellas are pulling their sticks out of mothballs and planning to do some exhibitions.” He invited Ben to join them. “C’mon, Hawk,” he prodded, “it’ll be like old times. I’ll talk and you’ll say nothing.”

  His old friend shook his head. “There’s no way on earth I’m going to let people see my game,” he said. “Nobody but me should have to suffer through that.”

  And yet, there were traces of magic.

  Two weeks prior to the start of the Champions tournament in Houston in April of 1970, following a return from Seminole, Ben suddenly showed up for several days of intensive practice with a caddie, taking a secluded cottage on the grounds. “Word of Hogan’s entry,” noted Walter Bingham in Sports Illustrated, “caused the normally blasé golfers to react like sightseers on Hollywood and Vine.” Jackie Burke thanked Ben for coming, noting that there were players on tour who’d never seen him play, and Tom Weiskopf was lucky enough to be picked to play a practice round with him. “I was so terrified at the start, quite frankly, I was afraid I might miss the ball. But he told me to call him Ben straight off the bat, and we had a wonderful time playing together. Privately, I think this worshipful stuff the guys were doing embarrassed him, really got under his skin.” Afterward, Weiskopf told his friends Frank Beard and Bert Yancey that he’d never seen anyone hit a ball the way Hogan did, still in absolute command. During the tournament itself, tour player Bob Goalby counted thirty-one players who came out to watch during his first round, a highly respectable 71. Using his own Hogan ball—at that moment the most popular ball on tour—Ben was paired with a talkative Lee Trevino in the last round. During the first seven holes, Ben nailed four birdies, prompting Palmer-like war whoops from the gallery, and placing himself in contention to win. Afterward, the Merry Mex told a reporter that with nine holes left to play he was certain the tournament belonged to Ben, but his putting nemesis returned with a vengeance and he wound up five strokes back of first place, tied for ninth.

  During this effort, unknown to anyone but Valerie, he severely stressed his left knee and his pronounced limp intensified. Yet days later, he teed off in Marvin Leonard’s Colonial event, prompting Red Smith to hail his surprising resurrection as the “top sports story of the year in America.” But the gods were not kind at Colonial. After opening with a smart 69, briefly challenging for the lead, the blind stares and balky putter returned on a breezy Friday to produce a woeful 77, from which he never recovered. He finished in a tie for fifty-sixth place.

  But still he couldn’t let go.

  In August, he showed up as a last-minute entry at the Westchester Classic, shot 78, and withdrew. Because the organizers sent him out so early on the first day, he was gone before most of the fans realized he’d even been there.

  Days later, Marvin Leonard passed away in his sleep. One of his honorary pallbearers at the memorial service at Fort Worth’s First Methodist Church, Ben later told his cronies around the circular grill room table at Shady Oaks that it was one of the toughest things he’d ever had to do.

  A short time later, Golf Digest senior editor Nick Seitz was granted a rare opportunity to spend a day with him at his office and his home on Canterbury Drive. When asked about his remarkable return to the tournament circuit in Houston, Ben told him, “Time’s runnin’ pretty short if I don’t play now.” He paused and added, “Besides, I haven’t really done what I wanted to do yet.”

  “What is that?” the editor wondered.

  “I haven’t won enough tournaments.” Among other surprises, Ben told Seitz that he planned to start a ranch. The ranch never materialized.

  The next summer, Ben showed up on his ailing knee at Champions for the Houston Open and hobbled painfully through twelve holes before his left knee buckled and he was forced to withdraw. A week later at Colonial, while playing a practice round with Mike Souchak and being trailed by a group of young pros and adoring fans, his knee buckled again and he nearly shanked his tee shot into the pond at the par-three eighth hole. “That’s enough, Mike,” Hogan declared, and picked up his ball. The two men walked into the clubhouse together making small talk. “It was a very sad end,” Souchak remembered. “I had tears in my eyes, to tell you the truth.”

  Ben Hogan never hit another shot in public again.

  That next winter, Bob Jones died in Atlanta, and Ben took it hard. He and Valerie considered attending his funeral but decided the crowds would be too large and they sent flowers instead. Around this same time, Ben’s sister, Princess, a heavy smoker, died of lung disease and Ben told his daily lunch pal Gene Smyers that the world seemed to be disappearing before his eyes.

  In 1973, he was invited by the renowned architect Joe Lee to lend his advice and expertise to the creation of a new course called the Trophy Club, out near Byron’s Fairway Ranch in Roanoke. He threw himself into the project, but it failed to come out the way he envisioned. Though it was eventually completed, and today is called the Hogan Course, Ben rarely spoke of his lone foray into course design.

  In 1974 Jack Fleck called Ben to invite him to appear at a charity event honoring the late Vince Lombardi. “I don’t play in front of people anymore,” Ben told him flatly, but sent him several autographed photos—black-and-whites, naturally.

  That same year, the World Golf Hall of Fame in Pinehurst asked him to be one of thirteen honorees at its grand-opening event, and he agreed to go, in part because John Derr was serving as emcee, but also because of his abiding affection for Pinehurst—the place where he won his first professional tournament. The other invitees included Byron, Sam, and Arnold Palmer. “He seemed to have a good time and people were surprised and happy to see him there,” Derr remembers. Arnold recalled, “The press always tried to trump up the tension between Ben and me, but the truth was, despite our differences, we really did like each other. He was one of a kind and it was great to see him again.” When a reporter innocently asked Ben how it felt to be with so many “living legends,” however, he bristled and ignored the question entirely. During the flight home, Ben confided to Valerie that he detested being thought of as an elder statesman of the game, a golden has-been. “In another five or six years,” he later told Gene Smyers at Shady Oaks, “no one will even remember or even give a damn who I was.” He never returned to Pinehurst.

  In the spring of 1977, not long before Bing Crosby collapsed and died on a golf cours
e in Spain, Ben and Valerie made a final trip to Seminole to see George and Dawn Coleman, and while there Ben agreed to let the family’s longtime butler film him hitting golf balls from the Coleman yard into the Atlantic. A short while later, his beloved dog, Duffer, died, and for Christmas the Colemans sent Ben and Valerie a new female poodle puppy. They kept the dog a few days and then sent it back, noting that they were “too old to handle a puppy.” The Colemans kept the dog and named her Bunker. “She lived many years and was much loved by our family,” says Dawn Coleman.

  Nearly a decade later, Ben sat for that rare TV interview with Ken Venturi, then a color commentator for CBS in the tradition of his hero, Byron. When asked about the modern tour, Ben replied with the faintest trace of contempt, “Everything is better nowadays, I don’t care what it is. Whether you’re talking about golf or baseball or hockey or automobiles, everything’s better today. It will be better tomorrow than it is today!”

  A short time later, he made a sentimental return to Riviera to film a series of TV commercials for his new Edge irons, the world’s first forged cavity-back club. These spots began running before the start of the 1988 season, and over 100,000 sets were sold, generating an estimated $60 million in revenue for Ben Hogan Golf. The next year, the company was sold to Minoru Isutani, a Japanese billionaire, for $58 million. About the same time, Isutani also purchased the Pebble Beach Golf Links, for $835 million. When the two met for lunch at Shady Oaks, one likely apochryphal story goes, Ben looked at him and said, “You’ve just bought the family jewels, Mr. Isutani. Don’t screw it up.”

  The next spring, Jack Nicklaus tried to persuade him to fly to Columbus for his annual Memorial Tournament. Former honorees included Old Tom Morris, Bob Jones, Walter Hagen, and Byron Nelson. Ben thanked Nicklaus but declined, asking him to put off the honor until he was dead.

  Mike Wright arrived at Shady Oaks a short time later, a bright, recently married young assistant from San Antonio who enjoyed splendid rapport with the members and particularly Ben, who coached him on how to impress the club’s board and helped him become the head professional. One of the first steps Wright took at Shady Oaks was stepping over a mixed-breed mutt named Buster, his second over a black-and-white border collie named Max. These were Ben’s pampered friends, and both routinely accompanied Ben to his favorite practice spot between the thirteenth and fourteenth holes. Max—who made at least one appearance in a Hogan Company spot—always rode in the cart beside him, Buster following behind on foot. When Max was eventually killed by a UPS truck, “Mr. Hogan was completely devastated,” according to Wright. “Buster meant even more to him after that.”

  Not long after his farewell trip to Riviera, Ben felt a sharp pain in his lower abdomen and had emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix, nearly dying. He spent almost seven weeks in the hospital, much of the time heavily sedated. When he returned home, Valerie began noticing serious memory lapses and grew concerned about his ability to drive to work and then to Shady Oaks for the afternoon.

  These lapses, which she first attributed simply to aging, didn’t prevent the Hogans from attending Golf Magazine’s big celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of golf in America at the Waldorf-Astoria the day after Curtis Strange defeated Nick Faldo in their playoff at Brookline in June of 1988. The black-tie affair drew forty-eight of the “Top 100 Players” designated by the magazine, including Sam, Byron, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer. Earlier in the day, Ben spent over two hours chatting with people and signing autographs. At the dinner, Sam was prevailed on to tell a few funny and clean stories, and Ben got up and mesmerized the audience by talking for half an hour about the beauty of a good Vardon grip. “It was amazing,” recalls George Peper, the editor who dreamed up the gala. “With all of the great stars in the room, Hogan was the one most people were watching. It was like seeing a legend come back to life.” Though many assumed the “Golfer of the Century” award, a tightly held secret, would go to Ben Hogan, it instead was given to Jack Nicklaus.

  Back in Texas, fans of all sorts began trying to catch a glimpse of their varnished hero, showing up at Colonial and down Roaring Springs Road at Shady Oaks. Some found Ben surprisingly receptive to their impromptu visits, though he never permitted them to intrude upon his daily practice rituals. Others got a chilly reception, often depending upon how they approached him. In 1992, a former Shady Oaks caddie named Jody Vasquez arranged for Nick Faldo, the British Open champion, to visit Ben at his company office and share lunch at Shady Oaks. At one point in their friendly conversation, Faldo asked his advice on how to win the U.S. Open, a prize that had recently eluded him. Ben stared at him and said, “Shoot the lowest score.”

  A year later, Hogan Golf got sold again, and its parent company decided to move the factory to Richmond, Virginia, putting more than three hundred employees on the street. “It was the saddest day in Mr. Hogan’s life, like a death in the family,” his personal secretary, Sharon Rae, remembered. “I’d never seen him more downcast.” Ben spent the week prior to the sale, she and others said, just walking around the company floor talking with the staff.

  A short time later, he failed to arrive home at his customary hour from Shady Oaks. Valerie anxiously phoned the club and discovered he had been gone for hours. Ben turned up around the cocktail hour appearing confused, but explaining he’d been scouting for a new place to build a factory and start a new equipment company and rehire his laid-off employees.

  About this time, Buster the dog passed away. One winter evening when the Hogans came to the club for a rare dinner out, Mike Wright had something special to show them—a small stone marking Buster’s grave just outside the pro shop. Ben stood looking at it for a moment, then did something quite extraordinary. “He removed his hat and gently knelt, kissed his hand and placed it on the stone,” Wright said. “The tears came to my eye, let me tell you.”

  The next summer, he did something else even more amazing. Hogan hadn’t been seen around Shady Oaks in many months, when Wright looked up and found him standing in the shop. Surprised and delighted, he offered to put his bag on a cart, but Ben waved away the idea. “That won’t be necessary, Mike,” he said, and then went into the club storage room and came out with his driver and walked to the tenth tee, after pausing to take three golf balls from a range bucket. He took a few warm-up swings before teeing up all three balls, striking them one, two, three down the heart of the fairway. “Each one was better than the one before it,” Wright recalls of this extraordinary moment. “You could have thrown a blanket over all three shots.” And with that, Ben put his driver back in his golf bag, and bid the pro goodbye.

  He never hit another shot.

  In advance of the 1995 Centennial celebration of the USGA, Museum Committee member and Foundation director Rayburn Tucker agreed to approach Hogan about the possibility of sitting for a taped interview. Initially Ben agreed to do the interview, but his declining health and other factors prevented him not only from making the film but also from attending. True to form, the most iconic player of his generation instead sent a simple letter of congratulations to the USGA on its birthday.

  Ben Hogan died on a warm July afternoon in 1997, the eve of his wife’s eighty-fifth birthday. He was eighty-four years old.

  The cream of the PGA Tour turned out for his simple and tasteful memorial service at the University Christian Church near the TCU campus. Pallbearers included Mike Wright, Gene Smyers, and several of his Shady Oaks friends, along with Sam, Tim Finchem, Shelley Mayfield, Tommy Bolt, Judy Bell, Ken Venturi, and Rayburn Tucker, a Dallas real estate man and Ben’s longtime friend on the USGA Foundation board and museum committee that helped organize a special Hogan Room tribute at the USGA’s Far Hills headquarters.

  The day Ben died, Byron had commented to a reporter, “After he left the tour, Ben basically just stayed to himself. I think that almost makes it a bigger news story. They’re still trying to find out something about him, what made him tick.”

  Byron and his second wife, Peg
gy, were also present, seated about halfway back in the packed church with Ben Crenshaw, Bel-Air pro Eddie Merrins, and John Mahaffey. There was no formal eulogy, just hymns and an appropriate reading from Romans 5: “We glory in tribulation, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” The minister, Charles Sanders, talked briefly about Ben Hogan’s remarkable life, concentrating more on his private generosity than the public glory, more about the man than the champion. Beneath the distinctive blue tiles and exposed beams of the mission-style sanctuary, the pecan-wood coffin was blanketed by hundreds of white roses. “It was dignified and simple,” according to Rayburn Tucker, “just what you would expect from Ben.”

  During the ride to the cemetery, Sam rode with Valerie in her limousine, talking about Ben most of the way.

  “I sure loved Ben,” he told her at one point. She leaned forward and patted his hand.

  “He loved you best, too,” she told him.

  Several years later, following a fire, over the strenuous protests by several older members, Shady Oaks built an entirely new clubhouse. In late 2004, a handsome new structure opened on the footprint of the old one providing, among other things, more displays of Ben Hogan’s personal artifacts. Once again, Ben’s circular table is back in place by the window overlooking the tenth and eighteenth greens, providing an even better view of the golf course he loved.

  Ben’s will left a million dollars to University Christian Church and another million to Fort Worth’s Children’s Hospital. He also gave a large undisclosed amount to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.