Little Ice Water

(See Cover)

Most of the nation's 3,000,000 golfers were in hibernation. Last week, except for a burst of New Year's Eve celebrating, country clubs from Maine to Medicine Hat were silent and windswept, their fairways and greens deserted. One that was not lay in a small coastal canyon about a mile from the Pacific Ocean. Golf balls by the dozens whizzed down Riviera's lush fairways; crowds of gawkers hustled along among the eucalyptus trees; caddies were busy as bird dogs. The $15,000 Los Angeles Open, which puts golf's winter circuit in high gear, opens there this week.

Golf's big names were there, straining to put a final touch of polish on their games. Ed Furgol, who manages to break par despite a withered left arm, had been drilling over the course for a month. Jimmy ("Smiles") Demaret, the best wind-shot in the business, and slim Lloyd ("Mustache") Mangrum haunted the practice rounds along with some 120 others. Besides high-compression temperament and a steely command of the emotions, it had taken hard work to get to the top of the tournament business and it was taking hard work to keep them there. With most of them golf was a matter of win-to-eat.

As the pros (and a sprinkling of amateurs) readied themselves for the big push, the man who held the top spot by virtue of his temperament, tireless diligence and many more qualities, was slim, wiry William Ben Hogan, 36, of Fort Worth, the U.S. Open champion and one of the greatest tournament players in U.S. golf's 54-year major-tournament history.

Some of Hogan's fans call him "Blazin' Ben," but another nickname--"Little Ice Water"--fits even better. He stands 5 ft. 8 1/2 in. and weighs only 140 lbs., but he manages consistently to hit one of the longest and straightest balls in golf. Apart from such purely technical skills, little Ben Hogan is the fiercest competitor in the game. With his relentless training schedule and assembly-line precision, Ben is all business, considers a social round of golf the most boring thing in the world. Any man who outscores the champ more than once this year will have to have most of the same qualities, because machine-like Golfer Hogan rarely has a bad day, rarely plays two bad holes in a row.

"Till Hell Won't Have It." Hogan knows every foot of Riviera's 7,000-yd. course. Two years running he has won the Los Angeles Open there. And there last June, leaving a hare & hounds trail of half-smoked cigarettes in his wake, he won his greatest triumph thus far--the U.S. Open championship. He played Riviera as if he owned it; the caddies called it Hogan's Alley.

Hogan had no intention of relaxing on that account; 1948's laurels are no good in 1949. He hadn't played tournament golf for eleven weeks and he had some catching up to do. For an hour after he got to Riviera, he sprayed balls from the practice tee--first with the No. 9 iron, then the No. 8 and on up the ladder to the woods. He considered the wind and terrain even in practice, controlled every shot as if the tournament had begun. He has a horror of what he calls the Sunday golfer's gravest sin: "Just hitting the ball without thinking." Like cigar-chomping Walter J. Travis, golf's hero of half a century ago, Hogan likes to say that he never hits a careless shot.

Says beefy, 36-year-old Riviera Caddy Clyde Starr, who has often "packed" Hogan: "It takes him three hours to go nine holes in practice. He'll say, 'Here, drop 15 balls in this sand trap here.' Then he'll blast every one of them out. If he's not satisfied, he'll blast another 15. He'll even memorize the grain of the grass. He'll putt till hell won't have it."

Last week he laced his shots toward selected spots--to the right of the caddy, then to the left, then beyond. It was the same grim ritual on the putting green, the part of golf that the swinger in Hogan still dislikes. Says he: "Putting is foreign to the rest of the game. One of them should be called golf and the other something else." He put in long practice "tapping" the ball (for short putts) and "rolling" it (for long ones). Then he took a practice spin around Riviera's 18-hole championship course.

He kept no score, exchanged few words with his caddy. He was trying to tune himself to a competitive pitch. "Relax?" he says, incredulously. "How can anybody relax and play golf? You have to grip the club, don't you?"

Hogan & Hagen. The 128 men who would be on the firing line against him this week (including his close rivals, Texans Lloyd Mangrum and Jimmy Demaret) knew what he meant. Hogan is one of the reasons why they can't relax. None of them clamors to be in his threesome. Says one frank Chicago pro: "It's no fun to play with Hogan. He's so good and so mechanically perfect that he seems inhuman. You get kind of uneasy and start to flub your shots." Others had other reasons, among them the big, distracting gallery that always follows Ben.

The legend of the Hogan spell cropped up at the Montebello (Calif.) Open last month. "Look at that Mangrum," said another pro. "Steady as a rock out there. He even grins once in a while. But if Hogan were in this tournament, you'd see Lloyd shake when he lit a cigarette. I'm telling you, the guy's got ulcers, and Ben Hogan gave them to him."

In its own way, Hogan's spell is as remarkable as the one the great Walter ("The Haig") Hagen used to cast over the opposition in the relatively relaxed 1920s, when many a champion took his golf with three fingers of whiskey.

Dapper Walter Hagen used to stride out to the first tee, often late for his match, run a comb through his Brilliantined hair and drawl: "Well, who's going to be second?" "The Haig's" psychological warfare continued through the match. He made the hard shots look easy, the easy ones look stupendous. Early in a match he would concede putts to his opponent, later rattle him by insisting that even the short ones be played out. No matter how poorly Walter seemed to be shooting, nobody relaxed until he was in. But where Hagen deliberately played his opponent, Hogan coolly and distractingly plays the course as though there were nobody around. Those who have studied both in action suspect that Scientist Hogan would have been a match for Showman Hagen.

How would Hogan have fared against golf's greatest amateur, Bobby Jones? Says Ben Hogan himself: "If Jones were around today, he'd be a champion. He'd rise to the competition." One thing they have in common is that both made golfing history. Jones did it in 1930 with his "Grand Slam" (British Amateur, British Open, U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur). In 1948, Hogan became the first golfer ever to win the U.S. Open, the P.G.A. championship and the Western Open in the same year. He was also golf's top official money winner (with $32,112 in prizes), and he was winner of the Vardon Trophy with an average of 69.3 strokes for every 18 holes in tournament competition.

Mind & Muscle. The characteristics of skill and temperament that Ben Hogan uses to dominate golf are the characteristics of any champion, developed with infinite care. As a golfer, of course, one great part of his game rests on his swing. In Hogan, a natural left-hander who switched to a right-handed game, it is strictly a manufactured asset, put together piece by piece and grooved by endless hours of dogged practice. Bobby Jones used to swing with drowsy, easy grace. Hogan stands with knees flexed, fanny protruding, toes pointed slightly outward --and swings with all the business-like authority of a machine stamping out bottle caps. He flatly insists: "There's no such thing as a natural golf swing."

The second part of Hogan's equipment is nervous tension, under fine control. He believes it is something a golfer must be born with, then have tempered under pressure. Hogan's outward manifestation of it: a frozen half-grin, something like an infant's "gas smile," denoting pain inside. When the going gets tough as it did in the 1947 Jacksonville Open--he took eleven strokes on a par-three hole--the Hogan nerves hold. On the next hole at Jacksonville he got a birdie.

He is still bothered by two items of tournament atmosphere: the click of cameras and the spectators who jingle pocket change. "The change-jinglers," he complains, "always wait until you reach the top of your backswing, then there's a silence like a kitchen clock stopping. It wouldn't bother me if they kept right on jingling."

The third feature of Hogan's game is the consistent use of his wits. His fellow pros say that he doesn't play greens--"he thinks them." Before every tee shot, he selects the exact spot where he wants his ball to stop rolling; he expects to come very close. From each of his clubs he exacts similar standard ranges (see chart). Between shots, as he walks briskly along the fairway, Hogan's mind is working ahead. Heading for a second shot on one hole, he will crane to see where the pin has been spotted on a nearby green still to be played (pins are moved every day in tournament golf).

The Blacksmith's Son. Except for the usual pride in being a Texan, Ben Hogan had little to start out with. He was the son of Chester Hogan, the town blacksmith in Dublin, Tex. It was cattle country and most of Blacksmith Hogan's business was shoeing cow ponies. A silent, left-handed runt of a kid, Ben learned how to ride and to fight with his fists.

There were no golf courses in Dublin. Until his father died and the Hogans moved up to Fort Worth, Ben didn't even know there was such a game. In Fort Worth, at twelve, he made the startling discovery that caddies at Glen Garden Country Club made 65-c- a round, better than he could do selling papers at Union Station. He strolled over, hands in pockets and hat brim upturned, to find out what it took to be a caddy.

He found out the hard way. Glen Garden's caddy corps blindfolded him, stuck him in a barrel and rolled him down a boulder-strewn hill behind the caddy house. At the bottom, he was paddled soundly. Then, in a kangaroo court finale, the boss caddy picked out a kid Hogan's size and said: "All right, fight him." Ben whipped the other kid and got a job.

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."

At 15, another product of Glen Garden's caddy pen, Byron Nelson, was 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 as now: "If you can't outplay them, outwork them." At 19, when his game was good but still as unpredictable as a slippery green, Ben Hogan turned pro. Then he decided to get out of Fort Worth.

Putts on the Rug. In 1932 he struck out for Los Angeles with $75 and big ideas about making the winter tour. A month later he was back in Fort Worth, broke. The following winter, he went west again, got as far as the Agua Caliente 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 on the rug. By 1940, he was beginning to look like a golfer. He came in second in six consecutive tournaments, finally won Pinehurst's North & South Open. That year he finished as golf's top money-winner (with $10,656), repeated in 1941 (with $18,358) and again in 1942 (with $13,143).

In 1946 (after 2% years in the Army, all of it Stateside), he shot his way right back to the top of the heap, with earnings of $42,556. But try as he might, Ben couldn't seem to win the big one--the U.S. Open. His swing still didn't suit him; his drives still had a tendency to hook.

"I've 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.

Then, Ben Hogan began to ease up on his solitary practice lessons. Said he: "I've learned how to play golf." His recent book, Power Golf (A. S. Barnes; $3), tells most of the golf tactics he knows--but not the one he discovered that day at Fort Worth. Of that one he says: "I won't even tell my wife."

Whether Ben had found a new trick or whether he had merely shifted his grip a little, nobody really knew. But he got off on the 1948 winter circuit at Riviera with a sparkling 275 (nine strokes under par) to win the Los Angeles Open and set a new course record. At St. Louis in May, he gave Mike Turnesa one of the worst drubbings (7 and 6) of Mike's career in the final of the P.G.A. championship. Last June at Riviera, where he got the big one --the U.S. Open--he chipped five off the old tournament record of 281 strokes.

It didn't improve his disposition much. He was still brusque with waiters and photographers. He was fussy about food. When he ordered scrambled eggs, he said: "Got any cream out there? Well, mix the eggs with cream before you cook them. Not milk--cream!"

"Thanks for the Check." At Buffalo in August, he all but ran Porky Oliver off the course in the Western Open playoff; Hogan had seven birdies and an eagle for a course-record 64. Later when the committee asked him to say a few words, the story goes that Ben seemed reluctant. So a friend got up and said: "I travel with Ben Hogan quite a lot and he has a set speech for these occasions. It goes something like this, 'Thanks for the check.' "

Like any good businessman or golf pro, Ben Hogan loves to hear a dollar clink. Last year, his gross income ran to almost $90,000. Besides his tournament prize money, he drew down bonuses and royalties from MacGregor Golf, Inc., which uses his name on its topnotch golf clubs. He masterminds a ghost-written golf column for the McNaught Syndicate, and Power Golf has already sold 54,000 copies. He is pressed to give exhibitions, for which he charges $500 on weekdays, $700 on Saturdays and Sundays. Most of his money goes into the bank.

When Ben Hogan quits tournament golf, he wants to own a stable of race horses. Meanwhile, after twelve years of living in hotel rooms, he wanted a home. He prefers California. Says he: "Anybody who doesn't live in California is a victim of circumstances." But because Valerie Hogan still prefers Fort Worth, that's where he bought his new Colonial-style house three months ago.

He is also planning to spend some time in it. He will not make the full 1949 winter tour. After playing in tournaments at Los Angeles, Del Monte, Phoenix and maybe Long Beach, he will hurry home and try to find out how non-tournament golfers live. "It isn't the golf, it's the traveling," he says. "I want to die an old man, not a young man."

Meanwhile in Riviera this week, Ben Hogan was working methodically at bringing himself up to tournament pitch. He stared out ecstatically at Hogan's Alley, soggy with the heavy rains of the past two weeks, at the pitted greens. "I love the competition," he said. "I hope I'm not at the top of my game; I hope I'm getting better."

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