The Strong, Silent Type

REVISITING THE HOGAN MYSTIQUE AND WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN.

- John Barton

ONE NIGHT, in 1922, Chester Hogan, a rural Texas blacksmith, was arguing with his wife. Then he went into another room, pulled a .38 revolver from his bag, and shot himself. According to some accounts, his 9-year-old son, Ben, was in the room with him.

What did Ben Hogan witness— did he see the suicide? What was the impact of the trauma? Of growing up without a father? Of knowing that the man who made him, whom he idolised, came to the irrevocable decision that life was not worth living?

Child victims of a parent’s suicide often are susceptible to depression, social maladjustment and post-traumatic stress disorder. More pressing for the Hogans was the fact that they were plunged into poverty. Young Ben went to work. To help the family make ends meet, he sold newspapers. Then one day, at age 11, he hiked seven miles to Glen Garden Country Club after he’d heard you could make money carrying golfers’ bags.

Golf adopted Hogan. His clubs became his hammer, the practice tee his anvil. He forged something beautiful. Ben Hogan became Hogan.

Hogan’s story has a mythic quality. Not as naturally gifted as Sam Snead or Byron Nelson, Hogan rose to the top of the game through grit and sheer bloody-mindedness. For years, he fought a round-wrecking hook that he described as being like “a rattlesnake in your pocket.” He didn’t win a tournament until he was 27. With his career interrupted by World War II—Hogan served in the Army Air Forces—he didn’t win his first major championship until he was 34. Three years later, a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus nearly killed him. With his legs shattered, doctors wondered if he’d ever walk again; the next year, Hogan won the U.S. Open.