MR. HOGAN IS GOLF
When I was young, I thought golf was boring.

I remember many afternoons when I would lie on the couch for a nap as my dad was watching golf, and I would listen to the whispering announcers muttering something or other about how “he’s just stroked that brilliantly, yes, right above the cup, excellent read on such a difficult muffle muffle quiet hush…” It was relaxing, at least.

I remember going to the golf course with my dad and driving the cart around as he played with his friends. I didn’t understand why everyone got so emotional. I wasn’t interested. I did, however, enjoy driving that cart.

During this time, it also became clear that I wasn’t very coordinated. I played baseball for a year when I was in second grade. Though I seem to remember being perfectly happy with my game, and though I am fairly certain that I had a good time doing it, I found out later that I spent a lot of time out in right field playing with the grass, and I was almost always last in the batting order. In fact, I had a better time on the bench kidding around with my teammates than I did playing. Often, my team would bat all the way through the order in one inning. If this happened, the last guy in the order was simply the last batter of the inning, regardless of whether we had no outs or two outs. Try imagining my confusion when I would occasionally get a base hit, then watch as everyone trotted off the field. Safe!

After that season, I announced my retirement from competitive sports at a small press conference in my family’s kitchen. Six years later in 8th grade, I joined the wrestling team. Wrestling was violent and extremely taxing, but it had a certain appeal. Exhausting practices and a continual battle with weight management required a level of discipline that nothing in my life had yet prepared me for. I can remember days leading up to a match when I had dehydrated myself so completely in order to make weight that my thirst manifested itself as an aching, tingling sensation that spread throughout my entire body. I dreamed of waterfalls and rivers and big Pure Water Mountain Springs water coolers. I calculated that during class changes, I passed water fountains six to seven times a day, and I allowed myself two three-second drinks, usually one before and one after lunch. Practice was a very exquisite brand of hell that I need not discuss here. I dealt with adversity.

When wrestling competitively, there were certain maneuvers that I always tried to perform instinctively. If I applied enough force, I could sometimes make it work. More frequently, I would just end up in a worse position than before, and I would have expended a painful amount of precious energy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until almost the end of my five-year stint as a grappler that I truly began to understand the importance of technique, especially under competitive pressure. Could moving your arm just so in conjunction with sliding your hips in this direction only really result in a successful escape? You bet. But it’s hard, it’s so hard to believe something like that until you’ve really made it work a hundred or more times. And there wasn’t always enough time to rep that move a hundred times in practice, and sometimes I just didn’t have the strength, or courage, or heart, or discipline to try to hit that move in the heat of battle. Here’s the thing: nobody cared that I was tired, or that I was scared I’d mess up, or that my inner resolve had been shaken when I was thrown on the mat, or that my brain was starved of water, or anything of the sort. Nobody cares because nobody wants to see a broken athlete. Nobody wants there to be anything unfair or unequal about the competition, really. Not in our hearts. We know that sports don’t really matter, but we also know that there’s nothing more clear cut. The winner is, in that moment and for all time when discussing that match, the bigger man. There can be no excuses, and that’s been said about a million times.

What did all this teach me? What ideals have emerged from the blurry, fuzzy, heated memories of adolescence? What have I learned about myself, and who do I look to for inspiration? Why do I like golf so much, now?

Sixteen months prior to that picture being taken at No. 18 at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, this man’s car collided head-on with a Greyhound bus at night on a foggy bridge in Texas. Instinctively, he threw himself across his wife in the passenger seat to protect her. Doing this probably saved his life, as the steering column penetrated the driver’s seat. He was left with a double-fracture of his pelvis, a fractured collar bone, a left ankle fracture, a chipped rib, and near-fatal blood clots. He spent two months in the hospital. Doctors told him that he might never walk again, and that his golf career, certainly, was over.

On June 11, 1950, Ben Hogan defeated George Fazio and Lloyd Mangrum in an 18-hole playoff to win the US Open.

He went on to win five more major championships, for a total of nine in his career.

As courageous and miraculous as this may seem, if you know anything about Mr. Hogan, it’s really not that surprising. This is the man who is said to have invented practice. In his era, the best players generally held the philosophy that their golf swings were driven by natural talent and thus could not be significantly improved by repetition. Most of his colleagues spent an hour or two on the range before a tournament, and that might be all. Mr. Hogan spent hours every day out on his home course, honing his swing, experimenting with new moves and shots, and rehearsing his strategy. He would hit balls with his sand wedge until the club “felt perfect in his hands,” then he’d move up to the next one. If he didn’t get the right feel from a club, he might spend a day, a week, or a month on just that club. A caddy once told him, “If I did that, I’d never get above my 9-iron!”
Mr. Hogan replied, “Why would you want to?”

Let’s be clear here: I think this guy was freakin’ tough. He dealt with adversity. Go ahead and crown Tiger Woods for winning the US Open on a faulty leg, but Mr. Hogan basically got killed in a car wreck and came back with a vengeance. They called him “The Hawk”, because he would literally stare at his competitors and they’d lose their nerve. He was slight of build at 5′ 7″ and 140 (much like myself) but didn’t really give a damn because all he’d do was go out and hit golf balls until he was better than everyone. He changed the game. His competitors started noticing something. Ben Hogan was beating them. This forced them to go and (gasp!) practice.

I went to Golfsmith in Raleigh last week. After being overwhelmed by the carnival of grandiose expensiveness that is a golf shop, I noticed a few decorative framed pictures for sale. One of them was an excellent action shot of Mr. Hogan with his trademark cool gaze, beautiful finish, and lit cigarette.

When I got to the register to check out, the cashier, a very friendly older gentleman with a bit of a natural smirk and a Northern accent, carefully wrapped the picture in a dozen layers of tissue paper. He folded the corners over, taping them down so they wouldn’t come loose. He laid the picture gently in a bag as two other employees hovered close by, observing the process.

Breaking the reverent silence, the gentleman said, “I don’t normally do all this, but it’s Ben Hogan.” I laughed, stopped, then smiled thoughtfully. He was serious, of course.

As I walked out the door, he called after me, “Don’t drop that. Be careful. It’s Ben Hogan.”

What nature of man was Ben Hogan, such that decades after his last competitively struck golf ball has been pulled out of the cup and likely tossed to some lucky gallery member, that a group of men in a brightly-lit golf superstore outside of a North Carolina city would gather around his printed likeness and treat it like a relic from some ancient, significant, victoriously gilded era? After all, didn’t he just play a game?

No. He lived that game. He took the game of golf and taught it a lesson. He helped it grow out of its impetuous, all-about-God-given-talent youth into a more mature, hardworking and respectful enterprise. He taught an entirely new generation of golfers that they could do it, that they could build a swing that would work and that they could go out and play with the best, the biggest, the tallest, the strongest. I’ve only been playing golf for about a year and half, but nobody has taught me more than Ben Hogan. No single person is more responsible for my growing respect of the game. Everything that I have done in life reverberates in my decision to believe in Mr. Hogan, and thus, to believe in myself.

For all time.

I LOVE A GOLF LESSON.
I’d like to take a moment to describe one of the best golf lessons I’ve ever received.

UNC was kind enough to grant us a brief reprieve from our studies last week. I went home to Forest City.

There aren’t many golf facilities in the county. Forest City Municipal Golf Course is, I gather, a top-notch muni. I haven’t played many other municipals, but the fairways and greens are well-kept with very few ragged areas. Meadowbrook isn’t as nice, but has US Open-style rough (according to my dad–that’s him on the Forest City home page, by the way) that absolutely baffled this rookie. Cleghorn is beautiful and (according to my teaching pro) an excellent test of golf. It’s Rutherford County’s closest thing to a tournament course.

The real gem? Nestled away at the end of Smith Street off Broadway. Unassuming. Quiet. Subtle. Functional. It’s called the Forest City Golf Center.

It’s a driving range run by pro Denny West. West has been involved with golf his whole life, and was the head pro for the West Point golf team during the 1960s. He retired to North Carolina, but decided to purchase a small plot of land, put a shack on it, and declared it open for business. This is what the golf bug does to people. And thank the stars for it.
—
It was my last day at home. The weather was perfect around three in the afternoon. I glanced at the mill houses and bungalows that crowd Smith Street as I drove toward Denny’s range.

I was met with a rusted horse gate, flung wide open. On the inside of the gate is a sign that reads “Let’s do it right the first time.”

A few feet past the gate, the world opened back up into a large clearing. There’s three levels. On the first level sits Denny’s shack, in front of which are a packed-dirt and gravel parking spaces. Random clubheads strewn about the premises glinted in the sun. To the right of the shack is a line of hitting mats sitting atop cracked squares of concrete.

Below this line and below the shack, the earth slopes gently into a level strip of grass. It’s coarse, but not unkempt. At the far end of this level, a pole with a yellow bucket on top serves as a target, perhaps 75 yards from the shack, facing parallel to the hitting mats. Worn spots with plenty of divots close to the shack reveal where Denny has given lessons.

The earth slopes again, more steeply this time, into a sizeable field. From the mat level, “It’s a twenty-two foot drop,” Denny says. “You’re hitting it about 15 yards shorter than you think you are.”

Blue flags dot the field, targets. One’s in a bush. 125 yards. Another, farther back and to the right, 155. 200 yards to the farthest one. 255 yards to the edge of the field, which concedes to the forest, and a “river” beyond that. “Don’t hit my balls into the woods,” Denny would bark. He doesn’t mind, of course.

It’s an uneven place, asymmetrical in every possible way. Bushes poke out in odd places. Kudzu and other more unidentifiable vines create improvised hazards along the edge of the range.

It reminded me a lot of Tin Cup.

I parked my car. The place looked deserted, but I caught a glimpse of an old, beat up Buick trundling around on the range. I’m not sure what Denny does when he drives that thing around down there, but he stops occasionally to inspect things. The grass? The distance markers? Balls? Whatever it is, he does it deliberately, determinedly.

The Buick crawled up the hill towards me. “Well, they did let him out!” he shouted as he rolled past into a parking spot.
“When you go back to school?” He shook my hand.
“Tomorrow,” I replied.
“Bah. Guess we better go hit.”

We stepped into the shack and talked for a while. Hadn’t changed. Golf balls sneaking around on the floor. Picture of “Ben Hogan’s Inimitable Swing” on the wall. Golf trinkets of every shape, size on the desk. Messy, but the definition of comfortable. A castle.

Denny lit up a Marlboro Red, tucked it into his mouth as I loosened up and stretched. Smoke rose through, around his straw hat.
“Been playing much golf up there?”
“Not enough. I go to the range twice, three times a week though.”
“Good man. Now turn, take it away low. Watch it hit.”
I made solid contact the first few swings, surprisingly. Not much distance and not much height. 7-iron. The next series was garbage, leaking out to the right or slicing wildly.
“Look here Cory. Take that club, take it straight back. Like you’re handin it to the catcher,” he motioned to his right, and behind him. “Set it at the top. Then drop it right by that leg. Close to that leg as you can get it,” he motioned to my right leg.

I tried it. Weird sensation at the top, like my club was getting sucked downwards.
The ball came off clean but heads right. “Look there,” Denny pointed after it.
“Now, that move keeps the club on plane. But you got to make your hands work, you know what I’m talkin about? Gotta rip the hands across, because you’re sendin the club out to the right. You’re not just passing through the hitting area. You’re stayin in it, all the way from the top. Your hands have to work. If you don’t let em go, the ball’s gonna go right on you. Every time.”

Denny lit up another Red.
Another swing. Clean contact again. Really, really clean. The ball jumped out, much straighter this time, just leaked a little right.
“Faster,” he said. “Don’t tense the hands. Relax. Gotta be relaxed to work them.”
Another. The ball started right, then drew back. More distance than any of my earlier swings, when I was swinging much harder. Four more shots, with the same flight pattern. Easy. Easy. Easy.

I paused, looked after the ball, then leaned on my club in amazement. This is a feeling that I’ve had many times out on the range with Denny.

Golf…must be learned. I know this, and have always known it. We’ve all always known it. But I stray, try to avoid the truth. I try to make it easy, to make it comfortable, to make it mortal. It can’t be forced. You can’t just get up over the ball and “try really hard.” You can’t just enlist more muscles to knock out a max rep. It’s…so many things. Just a bunch of tricky, little things.

I’ve hit balls several times since then, and this single instruction seems to have made a proportionately more significant improvement to my ball-striking consistency than any previous lesson.

But that’s not quite right, is it? Denny’s tip relied on the knowledge and muscle memory I’d already developed in order to work, to make sense, to stick. How could I have utilized it, if I didn’t know how to release the club? Or how to set it at the top? Or how to start the downswing with my hips? It’s not a magic bullet, but an advanced notion. I could sense this. I could sense Denny’s faith in me, his belief that I would be able to understand the concept. That Sunday, I (was) enrolled in Golf 232.

“Well?” Denny demanded, after a moment.
“I love a golf lesson,” I supplied.
He laughs, a gravelly and very knowing laugh.

Lodge PR’s final version of the campaign for UNC Charlotte’s brand new football team.

49er Football Campaign