Countdown To The 2009 Masters . . .
19/03/2009 04:36
Countdown To The 2009 Masters . . .
In an ongoing daily series leading up to the 2009 Masters, which will take place at the fabled Augusta National Golf Club from April 6-12, 2009, St. Albert’s Place brings you Countdown to the 2009 Masters . . . We'll reprise classic reporting and articles from earlier Masters, photo galleries, daily updates of current qualifiers, press releases from Augusta National and coverage of significant Masters 2009 anniversaries.
We hope you enjoy.
Countdown to the Masters – Part 1 - A Champion’s Last Hurrah
Forty-two years ago, in his final Masters, an aging Ben Hogan turned back the clock for nine historic holes that stirred echoes of glory past
As was his custom, Ben Hogan arrived early for the 1967 Masters, more than a week before he would suffuse the emerald stage with uncommon drama. It had been years since Hogan was a favorite -- Jack Nicklaus would be shooting for his third straight green jacket -- but he was still Hogan, not quite a man in full but full of intrigue. He came with his flat linen caps and his cigarettes, his shoes with their extra spike, a suitcase full of gray and a golf bag clanking with the extra-stiff-shafted clubs he still commanded like a drill sergeant barking to a hapless private.
"It's hard to remember specifics of playing with Hogan because he always hit it perfectly," says Deane Beman, who was paired with him in the first round at Augusta National GC that week. "He hit almost every fairway, put it right where he wanted to. He played to the middle of the greens and always left himself uphill putts. He seldom hit a shot that short-sided himself. There wasn't anything remarkable about the way he played, except he played remarkably."
Hogan was a bit thicker through the middle than the Hawk of peak flight, the gritty bantam who ruled the sport in the late 1940s and early '50s, his slightly relaxed waistline befitting a 54-year-old man who spent as much time behind a desk as on a golf course. Having subsisted on oranges when he was a poor young golfer hooking his way to nowhere, the graying icon liked to lunch on fruit plates to try and drop a few pounds in preparation for Augusta's sharp hills, slopes that could wear out a younger man, much less someone north of 50 with suspect wheels.
He tuned up for the Masters, as he had forever, at Seminole GC in North Palm Beach, but this spring training wasn't as vigorous owing to a bothersome left shoulder, one of the residuals from the horrific 1949 car crash that nearly killed him. "An indication of the Hogan sharpness for the 1967 Masters is given by his suntan," reporter Jim Martin observed in a pre-tournament story for The Augusta Chronicle. "It isn't as deep as last year."
In fact Hogan's shoulder, plagued with bursitis, scar tissue and calcium deposits, had nearly kept him away from the major championship he had won in 1951 and 1953. "I developed some trouble last year, and it [hurt] all year," Hogan told reporters in Augusta. "So I decided it needed some work. But I got two shots of cortisone two consecutive mornings and have had 15 shots since then that helped it."
The injections, more of them than a doctor likely would allow today, lessened the inflammation and quieted the pain. Hogan knew another surgery would be necessary, but the scalpel could wait. He had competed in every Masters but two ('49 because of the crash and '63 after a shoulder operation) since his first appearance in 1938. Bobby Jones wanted him in Augusta, and Hogan wanted to be there. The Masters was golf, and Hogan was a golfer.
Hogan was the antithesis of tournament-tough when he got to Georgia, his last competition being the 1966 U.S. Open at Olympic Club where, playing on a special exemption from the USGA, he finished 12th. But inactivity didn't equal rust for Hogan. "He hits the irons so good, he's cheating," one of his protégés, Gardner Dickinson, told the Chronicle after a Sunday practice round. "He hits it three feet from the hole at No. 6 and the pin was right on top of Old Smokey [the right knoll]."
More from Golf Digest.
SWIVEL HIPS SAYS:
The 6-under par 66 that Ben Hogan fashioned on that Saturday in 1967, and particularly the 30 (-6) he shot on the back nine of the fabled Augusta National GC, shall be forever etched in my memory.
