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Ben Hogan: I like to work; that was the greatest pleasure.
Robert Stennet: His name was Ben Hogan, and he was golf’s original challenger.
Throughout, black-and-white pictures and videos show Ben Hogan playing golf at different stages of his life and participating in interviews about his involvement with the sport. And two Ben Hogan Foundation employees, sitting in different rooms at their office building, further explain Ben’s story and history.
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Charles Schwab Presents
The Challengers
A series about people who
Question. Engage. Succeed.
Ben Hogan
Ben: Very few times in my life I’ve laid off maybe two to three days. It seemed like it took me a month to three months to get back those three days where I took a rest. It’s a tough situation. I had to practice and play all the time. My swing wasn’t the best in the world, I knew it wasn’t—and I thought, “Well, the only way I can win is just to outwork these fellas.” So they might work two hours a day, and I’d work eight.
Robert: My name is Robert Stennett and I’m the Chief Executive Officer of the Ben Hogan Foundation. People say that Hogan invented practice, but practice wasn’t a burden to Ben Hogan. Practice was something that he cherished and loved. That was true throughout his life.
We talk a lot these days about a purposeful life or having purpose in life. Ben Hogan was probably one of the great examples of that. You know, everything that Hogan did, including his practice and the extra spike in his shoe, was done with purpose.
And that was what Ben Hogan did, perhaps better than any golfer of his day—and perhaps any golfer to this day. Hogan was always asking himself, “Have I done everything I can do to win? Have I done everything I can do to be my best?”
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Have I done everything I can do to be my best?
Ben: I used to play 36 holes a day when I was playing in tournaments; I’d play the first 18 on the practice tee.
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I’d play the first eighteen on the practice tee.
Ben: And remember, every shot I’d play, I’d get that shot until I could really hit it right. Then I’d get called on the tee, and I’d play my other 18. I did it every day.
Robert: Mr. Hogan didn’t just change the game of golf with his play and his practice; he was truly an innovator in club design.
Chip Graham: My name is Chip Graham. I’m the Executive Director for the Ben Hogan Foundation.
Mr. Hogan was innovating these golf clubs purely for himself to get better at his game—for instance, the hybrid. Mr. Hogan developed and built this golf club in 1960. It’s clearly a hybrid. He practiced with it; he hit it to improve on his own game. The hybrid came out in 1970.
Robert: We have a metal wood that was done when everything was a persimmon wood. Mr. Hogan was experimenting with putting weight in the grip of the putter. We have bore-through shafts that Mr. Hogan was doing in the 1960s, way before you ever heard of a bore-through shaft in a golf club.
Ben: When I started this company, I was back there making clubs myself, right along with all the workmen. They know now how to make a perfect golf club, and that’s exactly what we make. We don’t put out anything else except a perfect golf club.
Chip: Everything had to be done the right way—and there were a number of times where we would have Hogan Irons in the pro shop at Shady Oaks, and he would walk through the pro shop and pull one or two off the rack. And he would take the golf club and pull it up and take a look at it—and the eyesight would go down to the leading edge of the club. And then he would say, “You know, a lot of these golf clubs are not to my liking. We’ll have a brand-new set sent out to you tomorrow morning.” It had to be perfect.
Robert: A lot has been talked about Ben Hogan’s pursuit of perfection. He was a driven young boy from early in life, and golf became the conduit for him to pursue perfection.
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Ben Hogan had 64 wins including 9 majors.
Ben Hogan is the only player to win the Masters, US Open, and Open Championship in the same year.
He won at Colonial a record of 5 times.
Chip: Mr. Hogan played in 292 PGA TOUR events, and he finished in the top ten 241 times.
Robert: Only two golfers have ever received ticker-tape parades in New York—one of them being Bobby Jones, and the second one being Ben Hogan.
Late in Mr. Hogan’s life, the director of golf here at Shady Oaks, Mike Wright, asked Mr. Hogan how he wanted to be remembered. And Mr. Hogan thought about that for a little bit. One would think he would have said, “Perhaps the greatest golfer; perhaps the greatest ball-striker.”
When asked by Mike Wright how he wanted to be remembered, he said he wanted to be remembered as a gentleman.
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Ask questions. Be engaged.
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Own your tomorrow®
Ben: I had to be on the straight and narrow all my life, and I loved it. I couldn’t veer off because I had nothing—and I had to eat, and I didn’t want to go to jail. They don’t feed you very well in jail.
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Thanks to
The Ben Hogan Foundation
PGA TOUR
Shady Oaks Country Club
