Ben Hogan

Ben Hogan was a professional golfer, born on August 13, 1912 at Stephenville in Texas, who also took a hand in golf course design. His full name was William Ben Hogan. He learned the game after starting as a caddie at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth at the age of eleven, and turned professional at seventeen. A long spell without a win followed, and from 1943 to 1945 he served in the United States Army Air Forces. His first major came at the 1946 PGA Championship, and he went on to take the U.S. Open in 1948, 1950, 1951 and 1953, the Masters in 1951 and 1953, the PGA Championship in 1946 and 1948 and the Open Championship in 1953, nine majors in all. He is one of six men to have won all four majors and completed the career grand slam. In February 1949 the car he was driving home from a tournament met a bus head-on and he was badly injured, but he came back to win the U.S. Open the following year, 1950. In 1953 he took the Masters, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship in the one year. His victories on the PGA Tour number 64.

Away from playing, in October 1953 he announced the founding of his own club company, the Ben Hogan Company, and in 1957 he brought out Five Lessons, his book on the swing. In 1974 he was chosen as one of the first men inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. He died at Fort Worth on July 25, 1997.

His work as a golf course architect is the Hogan Course at Trophy Club Country Club, at Trophy Club in Texas. The club’s official site describes it as an eighteen-hole, par-72 course that Hogan laid out together with the golf course architect Joe Lee, and gives 1975 as the year it was built. The name of the town, Trophy Club, comes from a plan to house the trophies Hogan had won at the club, and the history on the town’s official site describes the course as the only golf course Hogan designed. GoGolf does not at present list any course designed by Hogan.

See the other golf course architects here.