still had some college eligibility left, and the idea of returning to Wake Forest to finish my degree and play golf also had some new appeal. All in all, he was very decent about it. He said he would instead send me off to Yeoman Storekeeping School in Groton, Connecticut, and then bring me back to my job inCleveland. He also mentioned the idea of building a base driving range and maybe giving him a few swing pointers. I was relieved about not being headed to OCS and was pleased to do both chores for the admiral.
M y game may have been on hiatus in late 1952, but the golf world at large was hardly mourning my absence. My old Tar Heel opponent Harvie Ward would win the British Amateur that summer and the next year nearly take possession of a Masters green jacket as an amateur—proving conclusively that he was the best college golfer at that moment. Billy Maxwell and Don January were leading North Texas State to a third NCAA championship, and Gene Littler was about to leave San Diego State, but not before capturing the National Amateur and the San Diego Open the next year. Similarly, Ken Venturi, a junior at San Jose State, would soon make his presence known to the golfing world.
On the professional scene, Ben Hogan was now almost more legend than man, but he still ruled golf like an icy monarch determined not to give up the throne. Two years after his miraculous recovery from a car crash, Hogan brought mighty Oakland Hills to its knees to win his third Open championship. In 1952 he was anxious to give his weary legs a rest, and as a consequence played mostly exhibition rounds and entered only three tournaments: the Masters, where he finished seventh, the Colonial, which he won, and the Open, a third-place finish. Curiously, that Open was won by a burly, placid, thirty-two-year-old ex-accountant from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who’d been a professional only two years. Julius Boros had great tempo and a beautiful, languid swing, but Hogan, the most methodical attacker of golf courses of his era, would come back the very next year to have the greatest year of his competitive life—playing six seventy-two-holetournaments and winning five, including wins at the Colonial, the Masters, the U.S. Open, and the British Open, a feat some compared to those of Jones in his prime. If Ben Hogan’s career had a peak, that was it.
Other greats were fading, though. Byron Nelson, another of my boyhood heroes, had effectively been in retirement at his ranch since 1946, and even the ageless Sam Snead’s game was losing some of its youthful zest. Tommy Bolt and Porky Oliver were still hanging around, factors in almost every tournament they played, but a new generation of players was coming along, symbolized by the emergence of a tall, lean southerner named Cary Middlecoff, who won the 1949 U.S. Open and, like Nelson, was a long and extraordinary driver of the ball. Mike Souchak, my old Duke nemesis, would also turn pro in 1952 and eventually win sixteen Tour events, and there was a host of other promising young players waiting in the wings to challenge the game’s old guard, including Gardner Dickinson, Peter Thomson, Paul Harney, Bob Rosburg, Dow Finsterwald, and soon, Littler and Venturi.
As I say, at that moment I was still on the sidelines, so to speak, champing at the bit to get back into the game. Thanks to an understanding admiral and the friendship of Brooks and Purola, who arranged a place for me to play regularly, I was able to start playing golf and practicing a lot—almost every weekend, as it evolved, starting early Friday afternoon and ending late Sunday afternoon. They introduced me to a host of the city’s golfers, some skilled players as well as your typical weekend golf addicts, and before too long I was supplementing my modest Coast Guard salary by as much as $100 off two-dollar nassaus, having more fun playing the game than I’d had in years. I even started going out with a young woman who was modeling around
M y game may have been on hiatus in late 1952, but the golf world at large was hardly mourning my absence. My old Tar Heel opponent Harvie Ward would win the British Amateur that summer and the next year nearly take possession of a Masters green jacket as an amateur—proving conclusively that he was the best college golfer at that moment. Billy Maxwell and Don January were leading North Texas State to a third NCAA championship, and Gene Littler was about to leave San Diego State, but not before capturing the National Amateur and the San Diego Open the next year. Similarly, Ken Venturi, a junior at San Jose State, would soon make his presence known to the golfing world.
On the professional scene, Ben Hogan was now almost more legend than man, but he still ruled golf like an icy monarch determined not to give up the throne. Two years after his miraculous recovery from a car crash, Hogan brought mighty Oakland Hills to its knees to win his third Open championship. In 1952 he was anxious to give his weary legs a rest, and as a consequence played mostly exhibition rounds and entered only three tournaments: the Masters, where he finished seventh, the Colonial, which he won, and the Open, a third-place finish. Curiously, that Open was won by a burly, placid, thirty-two-year-old ex-accountant from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who’d been a professional only two years. Julius Boros had great tempo and a beautiful, languid swing, but Hogan, the most methodical attacker of golf courses of his era, would come back the very next year to have the greatest year of his competitive life—playing six seventy-two-holetournaments and winning five, including wins at the Colonial, the Masters, the U.S. Open, and the British Open, a feat some compared to those of Jones in his prime. If Ben Hogan’s career had a peak, that was it.
Other greats were fading, though. Byron Nelson, another of my boyhood heroes, had effectively been in retirement at his ranch since 1946, and even the ageless Sam Snead’s game was losing some of its youthful zest. Tommy Bolt and Porky Oliver were still hanging around, factors in almost every tournament they played, but a new generation of players was coming along, symbolized by the emergence of a tall, lean southerner named Cary Middlecoff, who won the 1949 U.S. Open and, like Nelson, was a long and extraordinary driver of the ball. Mike Souchak, my old Duke nemesis, would also turn pro in 1952 and eventually win sixteen Tour events, and there was a host of other promising young players waiting in the wings to challenge the game’s old guard, including Gardner Dickinson, Peter Thomson, Paul Harney, Bob Rosburg, Dow Finsterwald, and soon, Littler and Venturi.
As I say, at that moment I was still on the sidelines, so to speak, champing at the bit to get back into the game. Thanks to an understanding admiral and the friendship of Brooks and Purola, who arranged a place for me to play regularly, I was able to start playing golf and practicing a lot—almost every weekend, as it evolved, starting early Friday afternoon and ending late Sunday afternoon. They introduced me to a host of the city’s golfers, some skilled players as well as your typical weekend golf addicts, and before too long I was supplementing my modest Coast Guard salary by as much as $100 off two-dollar nassaus, having more fun playing the game than I’d had in years. I even started going out with a young woman who was modeling around
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