Jones was more typical of the nation’s golfers. He was from a wealthy Atlanta family and began playing golf at a very young age. He won a children’s tournament at age 6 and played in the top amateur tournaments from his early teen years. He also graduated from Georgia Tech University with a degree in mechanical engineering and later received a degree in English from Harvard. He read for the law, was admitted to the Georgia bar and practiced law while playing in the world’s best golf tournaments.
Beginning in 1923 at age 21, Jones was the dominant figure in golf for 7 years, winning the U.S. Open 4 times, the British Open 3 times, the U.S. Amateur 5 times, and the British Amateur once. He retired from competitive golf after winning the Grand Slam of the time in 1930. After retiring as a competitive golfer, Jones practiced law, designed golf clubs, and founded both the Augusta National Golf Club and its fabled tournament, the Masters. He continued to host the Masters tournament until his death in 1971.
Hagen was the son of a blacksmith in Rochester, New York, and he learned the rudiments of golf by practicing in a field while herding cows. He caddied at an exclusive country club where the professional taught him the finer points of the game. He also worked as a taxidermist. A great natural athlete, Hagen turned down a tryout with the Philadelphia Phillies at age 21, in order to play in the 1914 U.S. Open, which he won. Hagen won the U.S. Open again in 1919, and the British Open 4 times in the 1920s, as well as 5 PGA championships.
At that time there was a stark difference between amateurs and professionals in golf. At some private clubs, especially in England, professionals were allowed on the golf course, but not in the locker room, because they were not considered “gentlemen.” This class distinction was reflective of American society at that time, but Hagen’s success and insistence on better treatment of professionals was a large factor in breaking down some of the class barriers in golf. Hagen brought the golf professional out of the shop and into the clubhouse.
Sarazen (born Eugene Saraceni, and the son of a carpenter), from Harrison, New York. Sarazen is one of five players, (along with Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods) to win each of the four majors at least once, now known as the Career Grand Slam: U.S. Open (1922, 1932), PGA Championship (1922, 1923, 1933), The Open Championship (1932), and Masters Tournament (1935). Sarazen became more Hagen’s rival in the 1930s and was too young to play much against Jones, but Sarazen was a popular player because of his outgoing nature and because he came from such a humble background. He garnered a huge following among “common people”, who had previously had no interest in golf. Sarazen played golf into his 80’s, was a golf commentator on Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf television show, and was a TV broadcaster at important events. He invented the modern sand wedge, and made golf seem like something for more than just the very rich.
At age 71, Sarazen made a hole-in-one at The Open Championship in 1973, at the “Postage Stamp” at Troon in Scotland. In 1992, he was voted the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. Sarazen had what is still the longest-running endorsement contract in professional sports—with Wilson Sporting Goods from 1923 until his death, a total of 75 years.
Ben Hogan
Most of the actual swing instructions in this book are based on the teachings in the book Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons. Why? Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods, unlike Hogan, had a teaching pro(s) instructing them on the fundamentals and nuances of the game. Hogan did not have the luxury of using high-speed cameras, 3D motion-analysis, launch monitors, putting apps, force plates, ShotLink data and a myriad of coaches. Even though he wrote his book in 1957, much of what Hogan said, when examined closely, holds true today. So it is no surprise that Five Lessons is a focal point of every serious golfer’s library. Larry Nelson, winner of 3 major championships—1981 & 1987 PGA Championships and the 1983 U.S. Open—and inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in October of 2006, had this to say, “This book, Ben Hogan’s Modern Fundamentals of Golf, taught me the swing. Although I don’t swing like Hogan, what I learned from his book helped me to progress more quickly than anyone would have guessed. The lessons could be done one at a time and the illustrations allowed me to work on the fundamentals myself. I would practice one lesson until I had it down, and then go onto the next. I still refer to the book when my swing gets off.” Hogan could be called the father of modern instruction—in which the big muscles of the body, rather than hands, as the controlling influences in the swing. Bennie Hogan would become the champion of figuring things out for himself. Bennie Hogan could stay on the practice tee like nobody else. Bennie Hogan’s diligence was amazing, because he had no model for it, and because he got no almost no immediate rewards from it.
“No teacher, the story goes, ever gave him a lesson. Everything he managed to learn about the golf swing—which apparently was twice as much as anybody ever had before him—he dug out of the dirt by practicing until his hands bled. When the skin of his palms blistered and cracked open, he soaked his hands in pickle brine to toughen them for the long haul.”
Early in his career, Hogan studied almost every movement Walter Hagen made on a golf course, quickly coming to the conclusion that the Haig possessed the finest natural rhythm and playing tempo any champion ever displayed—which he attempted to copy. In a remarkable handwritten, fourteen page letter to a friend in the late 1960s using a “stick figure” he drew to illustrate his point, Hogan explained the grip, and fundamentals of “a sound driver swing” that he claimed to have developed directly from conversations with the aging Hagen. It detailed principles of a proper grip, finger pressure, alignment of shoulders and feet, flex of knees, position of the body and head through the swing, position of the left hand during the backswing, transfer of weight, and a high finish that encouraged the hips and shoulders to full turn into the shot. Hogan advised: “Keep on file and refer to when in doubt. If used correctly, you can belt the ball a country mile,” then concluded his remarkable tutorial by offering a detailed if somewhat unorthodox way of verifying the correctness of one’s backswing: “At the top of the backswing the groin muscle on the inside of your right leg near your right nut will tighten. This subtle feeling of tightness there tells you that you have made the correct move back from the ball.“
“In the 1930’s, sitting with Valerie in her father’s empty darkened movie theater, an unknown Ben Hogan had studied Movietone footage of Jones, Hagen and Sarazen in their prime to learn proper hip turn technique and balance. During his embryonic days on tour, he’d studied MacDonald Smith’s beautiful swing and spoke with “Wild Bill” Mehlhorn about his cerebral analytical approach to the game. Later, he blended elements picked up from Kyle Laffoon, Lefty Stackhouse, and Jack Burke Sr; Paul Runyon’s short game wizardry, Picard’s unruffled ease, Denny Shute’s mastery with a two iron, and Johnny Revolta’s pre-shot waggle also played an invaluable role in Ben’s self tutorials in the field. It was his driven experimentation to create a swing that wouldn’t wilt under pressure.”
“Bill Mehlhorn, another top player of the twenties who always seemed to wind up in second place through nobody’s fault but his own, was also saying good-bye to pro golf. Like Walter Hagen, Mehlhorn was a fabulous ball-striker who came to golf from baseball, and he had no shortage of intricate theories about the golf swing and what made it either flop or work. Among other things, Mehlhorn believed a free and natural swing was the only way to hit a ball to the target. But even more important, after playing with Harry Vardon in 1921, Mehlhorn worked for thirteen months to replace his natural hook with a consistent left to right motion—a la Vardon—he came to believe was essential for reliable shot making, a controlled fade. One of the no name hopefuls of the new decade who watched Mehlhorn and attempted to copy his powerful sideways swing, before he vanished from the tour for good, was young Ben Hogan. He was a voracious learner who not only took note of Wild Bill’s careful playing action, but paid particular attention to the highly analytical manner in which Mehlhorn considered the golf swing. He then broke it down, and attempted to figure it out in minute detail. Hogan later said that Mehlhorn was the first ’theorist’ who got him thinking in depth about the physics
