Ben Hogan was arguably the best ball striker of all time. So far, anyway. I mean, who knows what’ll happen tomorrow or next week? Based on my NFL betting record, nobody can predict the future. And screw you, Cleveland.
Hogan was the original over-hitter, range rat, and ball pounder. He would wake at 2 AM and start hitting balls long before dawn. “Being able to see the ball is for chumps,” Hogan famously said. Of course, that’s idiotic. Hitting balls before the range is open won’t help your game and it will get you arrested. Still, Hogan was a great striker of balls.
Ben Hogan developed 137 “secrets” to various parts of the golf swing, expert techniques purportedly known only to him. These secrets became a huge revenue stream for the Hawk. Simple: whenever he needed money, Hogan would sell off another top-secret secret to the public. He bought his fishing trawler by selling “The Right Right Wrist Position at the Top of the Backswing.”
Hogan bought his lake house by licensing “The Secret Thumb Position in the Follow Through”. He paid for his Buick Super after selling the lyric rights to his lesson: “Roll Out the Clubface” to Polka King Romy Gosz. That radio hit was voted “Least Nauseating Polka of 1942”.
Hogan the Grump
Hogan’s teachings alternated between refreshing candor and grumpy grumpiness. His aphorisms are either philosophical genius or signs of mental illness. Some examples:
“You need a good grip in golf and pole vaulting.”
“Show me a good golfer and I’ll show you a student of life. A “C student”, sure. But still.”
“I learn something new every time I step on the course. Like yesterday, I learned that an ellipse is a plane curve surrounding two focal points.”
Hogan claimed he was a “lifelong learner”, a personality trait which was hard to argue. He also claimed that the earth was both round AND flat, a thesis he promoted at the Solvay Conferences in the 1940s.
Top Secret Secrets
Cruelly, Hogan would sometimes offer “half-secrets” to fans, giving them the start to a riddle so the students would have to figure out the rest. In some instances, Hogan would charge the student a “Starting Fee” and withhold the second part of the secret until the “Closing Fee” was paid. Hogan learned this grift from Anthony “The Shark” Funicelli.
Here are some popular Hogan half-secrets:
1. “A good putt starts…”
2. “Your stance is the foundation of…”
3. “You put your left foot in. You take your left foot…”
The answers are:
1. “…with a pint of bourbon.”
2. “…your marriage.”
3. “…out.”
Again, while fans followed Hogan’s teachings to the letter, sometimes those letters got lost in the mail. Hogan reveled in his Sphinx-like guru status, dropping pearls of impenetrable wisdom while building a public persona that was both intriguing and just plain weird.
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