Read an Excerpt
Ben Hogan's Secret Fundamental
What He Never Told the World
By Larry Miller Triumph Books LLC
Copyright © 2017 Larry Miller
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63319-761-9
CHAPTER 1
My History
I started playing golf when I was eight years old. Like many others, my dad got me interested by bringing me along when he played with his friends at the old No. 2 course at City Park in New Orleans. It was known as "the little course."
At the time (the mid-to-late 1950s), the New Orleans Open was played on the No. 1 course at City Park. In those days, the No. 1 course was top-notch, and Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, and all of the golfing elite of that era walked those fairways.
At first, my golf game was limited to chipping balls around the tee boxes when my dad's group had to wait on the group ahead. I quickly became hooked when I realized that if I did things properly, I could control the ball's direction as well as its distance.
As I began playing and developing, I gradually started playing on the big No. 1 course, and by the time I was 15 I was shooting par most of the time.
When I was 17, I won the City Junior Championship at Timberlane Country Club in New Orleans by 15 strokes. When I graduated from Holy Cross High School in New Orleans, I was offered a full golf scholarship to Loyola University. That next spring, I was the low amateur in the New Orleans Open, which had moved to Lakewood Country Club. I turned pro in 1967 and became the assistant pro under Jim Hart at Lakewood Country Club in New Orleans, and set my sights on eventually playing on the PGA Tour. Jim Hart helped accelerate my development by sharing his knowledge of the golf swing, teaching me how to teach, and encouraging me to develop good practice habits. He was always supportive of my playing and never just stuck me in the golf shop like so many bosses do. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude.
So at Lakewood I learned how to teach the game, and teaching has been a huge part of my golfing life ever since.
The next year I left Lakewood for a teaching job at Racine Country Club in Racine, Wisconsin, and that is where this story begins.
CHAPTER 2
Meeting Tommy Bolt
The Head Professional at Racine Country Club who hired me was Bob Ford from Georgetown, South Carolina. Bob had a close friend who happened to be a close friend of none other than Tommy Bolt, the 1958 U.S. Open champion. Tommy had retired from the Tour and lived in Sarasota, Florida, where he owned a par-3 course called the Golden Tee.
Bolt still played almost every day with his buddies at Longboat Key, a great, tough course in Sarasota. Tommy and his buddies would meet for lunch, have a couple of pops, and then play nine holes on good weather days.
My boss, Bob Ford, was a really good player himself, and he knew my aspirations. He and I played a lot of golf together, and we were pretty evenly matched most of the time.
One day, after I had shot 28–35, 63, which was nine under par and a course record, Bob asked me if I would like to go down to Sarasota and have Tommy Bolt have a look at my game.
I was planning to begin my professional playing career that winter down in Florida anyway, and naturally I jumped at the chance to have one of the best players in the history of the game help me.
So Bob set it up for me to go down and meet Bolt as soon as our season in Wisconsin ended.
For the initial meeting, my dad and I drove down to Sarasota, and as instructed I checked in at the golf shop at Longboat Key at the appointed time.
The assistant behind the counter told me to go on down to the practice tee and warm up. "Mr. Bolt will be down shortly to meet you."
"Shortly" became about 45 minutes and I just kept hitting shots, glancing back toward the clubhouse after every shot or two.
Suddenly, a golf cart pulled up and Bolt was sitting there. He said, "Are you Larry?" I said, "Yes, sir," and started to walk over to shake hands. I got about halfway before he said, "Just go ahead and hit a few shots." So I hit a few drivers and he said, "Good balance, really good tempo." And he left. I turned and looked at my dad, and he just shrugged his shoulders. So I started hitting shots again, thinking he was coming right back, but he never did.
Eventually I went back to the pro shop. The head pro was there, and I told him what happened. He laughed and said that Bolt meant that he really liked my tempo and balance, and that I should continue practicing with those two things in mind. Then he said that I should show up the next day, same time, and that Bolt would come back out to see me.
In the days to come I learned that Bolt's reputation for being cantankerous and short-tempered was well-deserved, but for the record, there was a warm and caring man buried deep inside. As I got to know him and as he got to know me, he shared more and more of his knowledge, although I mostly had to glean it from watching, listening, and reading between the lines.
Bolt was not particularly articulate, and he had little patience for actually teaching in the traditional sense.
What he did do, however, which was worth its weight in gold, was let me play nine holes every day with him and his cronies. He must have seen some potential in me, but true to his personality he never said so.
Every now and then, after our nine-hole, late-afternoon outings, he would invite me into the grill room for a drink or two.
Eventually his buddies would head home and then he'd talk. And that was where the real learning took place.
Whenever he would talk about the golf swing, he would almost always start by saying, "Hogan said ..." and it was obvious that to him Hogan's word was the golfing Bible. And why not? Ben Hogan was the greatest striker of the golf ball who ever played the game, and that opinion is shared by every great player who ever witnessed his mastery firsthand.
Those rounds that I played with Tommy back then really opened my eyes as to just how good world-class players are. He was way past his prime, but you'd never know it watching him hit golf shots.
One day in the early evening, I was on the practice tee hitting drivers when he drove up in his golf cart. He was dressed for dinner, wearing a sport coat, dress slacks, and leather loafers.
He walked up and took my driver and looked at it, and then waggled it a few times to get the feel. He told me that it felt pretty good, and then teed up a ball. Without even a practice swing, he drilled one dead straight about 260 yards. With a sport coat on and street shoes. I couldn't believe it. He got back in the cart without saying anything and drove off, as if what he just did was nothing special. Have you ever tried to swing with a sport coat on? It's like wearing a straitjacket! The guy was immensely talented.
The other notable thing about playing with Bolt was witnessing the grace with which he swung. Explosive, powerful, efficient, and yet very graceful. If you watch videos of Hogan, Nelson, Snead, and others of that era, you'll see the same element of grace in their swings.
That's missing in the modern stars. The modern pros are efficient, explosive, and very powerful, but for a few exceptions you don't see the fluid, graceful rhythm that those guys had.
I believe that there are two reasons for that.
First, weight training. Those guys like Hogan, Bolt, Nelson, and Snead, and even a little later when Ken Venturi played, never touched a dumbbell. They weren't as strong as the modern players, but they were more flexible.
Plus, the game has changed. The courses have become much longer because the equipment has required it. The ball goes farther and the clubs hit them farther. And it's a vicious cycle. Every time technology produces a club and ball that travels farther, the golf holes must get longer to offer a challenge to the player.
But the geometry of an efficient, repeatable, powerful golf swing has not changed!
That brings me back to Hogan and his secret.
Some have said that Hogan himself was the secret. Others said that "he dug it out of the dirt," as Ben himself was known to say. But while true that he was unique physically and also true that he practiced more than anyone in the history of the game, his secret to ball striking goes a lot deeper than that.
Hogan had a very analytical mind, and he carefully calculated his every action and every word. So it's no surprise that he came up with profound ideas regarding the golf swing — ideas that he proved valid by his performance.
The late Freddie Haas, from New Orleans, was a PGA Tour player during Hogan's time. Freddie was best known for winning the Memphis Open and snapping Byron Nelson's amazing streak of 11 consecutive PGA Tour wins in 1945.
Freddie wound up winning five times on the PGA Tour, and notched three top 10s in majors. He represented the United States on the 1953 Ryder Cup team.
Connie and I were close to Freddie, and I consider him one of my important early mentors. We competed against each other in lots of tournaments in the PGA Gulf States Section and played lots of practice rounds and social rounds together. In his later years Connie and I would sometimes play with him at New Orleans Country Club. We would play nine holes in the afternoon, and he insisted we play a scramble. I think he liked playing from Connie's great tee shots, which had a head start from the ladies' tee!
One day during one of those outings I said to him, "Freddie, I've never asked you this, but I'm curious. All the stories about Hogan's ball striking — have they been embellished and exaggerated through the years?"
Well, first of all, let me tell you what kind of guy Freddie was. There was no gray area. Just black or white. No theatrics or histrionics. No embellishments. If he told you something, you could take it to the bank. So I knew he'd give me a straight and true answer.
He said, "No, no exaggeration whatsoever. Sure, he would hit the occasional bad shot, but nine out of 10 times he would play exceptional shots. He could place the ball within 5 yards or less of where he wanted it much of the time. He had much more control of his shots than any of us ever dreamed of. He reminded me of a master billiard player, the way that he would set himself up for the next shot."
Hearing that made me think back to what I learned from Tommy Bolt, and I knew then that Hogan really had found important keys to swinging a golf club and controlling a golf ball.
CHAPTER 3
Hogan's Code of Secrecy
Regarding Hogan's "code of secrecy," he was very, very serious about it. Bolt said, as have several others, that to ever hope to be a trusted friend of Hogan's, you better make sure that your word or your handshake was your bond. An unbreakable bond.
This is why, after their passing, all of these books have come out by people who knew Ben and Valerie, giving various accounts of their relationships. All of these books, the one you're holding included, would never have been published while Ben and Valerie Hogan were alive.
Likewise, with Tommy's passing, I now feel free to recall and share what I learned during my time with him all those years ago.
The Hogan-Bolt-Venturi Connection
It's been said that the best relationships are formed when the persons involved are either very much alike or completely different. With Ben Hogan, Ken Venturi, and Tommy Bolt, this theory is certainly true.
Venturi was very much like Hogan. He was an insatiable practicer, a super hard worker. He was serious and quiet. He overcame an extreme stuttering problem to become a renowned television commentator. His shyness, especially early in his life, probably stemmed from the self-consciousness caused by his speech impediment. Hogan also overcame early adversity of great magnitude, witnessing as a young boy his father's suicide.
Hogan surely connected with Venturi on a personal level given their similar personalities, and then when he saw the raw talent and work ethic that Venturi displayed, decided to take him under his wing.
Venturi gave Hogan, along with Byron Nelson, all the credit for helping him develop into a top world-class player.
When Venturi won the U.S. Open at Congressional, he staggered through the final eighteen holes, battling severe heat exhaustion to the extent that he nearly collapsed before finishing.
That courageous effort mirrored the same level of will and determination displayed by Hogan during his comeback from the horrific car wreck that nearly killed him in 1949. He was told that he would probably never play golf again, and yet in 1950 he came back to win the Los Angeles Open and then the U.S. Open on legs that constantly hurt.
Tommy Bolt was the antithesis of Hogan. He'd rather have a cocktail than spend more than an hour on the practice tee. He was loud, boisterous, gruff, and grumpy, and sometimes vulgar. He had little patience for anything that perturbed him. But he had incredible natural talent. He had power and he had grace. He was not at all a mechanic. He was an artist.
Once Hogan took Tommy under his wing, he blossomed into a more finished talent, and went on to become one of the best players in the world, and himself a U.S. Open Champion.
In Tommy's first book, published in 1969, the dedication is to "Ben Hogan, the only teacher I've ever had." And in his second book, published in 1999, the book begins with a two-page statement about Hogan, and how he, Bolt, would never have even made it to the PGA Tour without Hogan's teachings and guidance.
I believe that Hogan took a liking to Tommy for two reasons. First, he recognized and appreciated the raw talent and potential. Second, Hogan, unbeknownst to many, had a great sense of humor and probably got a real kick out of Tommy's "character" personality. Hogan liked characters, as long as they were sincere and not trying to con him.
And I'd like to add something about Tommy Bolt that I learned in the years I knew him — that there was one thing, after all, that he had in common with Ben Hogan: a huge heart. That fact was mostly unknown to those who were outside of the two men's inner circles.
Hogan and Bolt, the Men
When Tommy Bolt came out of the Army he was already a very good player, but not yet a world-class player. Ben Hogan took a liking to Bolt, perhaps because they were so completely different. Again, the old adage that very often opposites attract proves true. Hogan was reserved, serious, very proper, composed, and focused. Bolt was brash, never composed, rarely serious, and certainly not inclined to social grace. But his golf swing was the picture of it.
Perhaps Hogan, seeing the raw talent and intrigued by the blatant differences between them, decided to take Tommy under his wing.
I never did ask Tommy much about how the mentorship began, but he did talk about how Hogan put him on the right track by radically changing his grip right from the start of their teacher-student relationship.
There was no telling who Hogan decided to help or when. I believe that it had a lot to do with the potential student's work ethic, desire, and character. He seemed drawn to some who were very serious and reserved like himself, and yet he also seemed enamored with some of life's real characters.
When he decided to help LPGA Tour player Kris Tschetter, it was because he noticed her work ethic and dedication to getting better.
He would carefully size up a potential beneficiary of his knowledge to make sure that first, the student was worthy in terms of his or her potential and willingness to work, and second that he or she was the type of person who possessed integrity and could be trusted not to carelessly spread around what they'd learned from him. Hogan was extremely protective of his knowledge, because he was fearful that it would be misrepresented and consequently distorted over time. The result would be harmful instead of helpful, so he was very careful when it came to trusting anyone with whom he shared his knowledge.
If he felt that you'd violated his confidence, he'd have nothing to do with you.
Hogan's code of decency, respect, and etiquette was one that he steadfastly adhered to, without exception. He did not tolerate "off-color" language in front of women, and he did not suffer fools, not even for a second. Here's an example of the seriousness with which he stuck to his guns: I recently was playing in a little event at the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida. Waiting to tee off, an older gentleman who was in the threesome behind my group saw my Hogan golf bag, monogrammed The Secret, Spring 2017, and approached me.
He asked me about this book, which I was in the process of writing. Then he told me he had a Hogan story. He said that he'd had some oil dealings down in Texas years earlier.
It seems that he'd had a close friend in Fort Worth who happened to be an oilman and who had been among Hogan's "inner circle" at Shady Oaks. This guy apparently had been in some oil deals with Hogan, and must have been pretty close to Hogan because he was one of the few who'd had a permanent seat at Hogan's table in the grill at Shady Oaks.
It seems that this oilman had a grandson who was attending college in New Jersey and who apparently was a really good college player with aspirations to play professionally. This gentleman described the grandson, whom he knew because the team played and practiced at his club, as "cocky and gregarious."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ben Hogan's Secret Fundamental by Larry Miller. Copyright © 2017 Larry Miller. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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