A Champion's Last Hurrah

Weak link: As he got older, Hogan often froze over putts, unable to start his stroke.
Photo: GD Resource Center

As detailed by Curt Sampson in Hogan, the Hawk wasn't a fan of movie cameras in his prime, likening their buzzing sounds to those of rattlesnakes that frightened him so as a boy. Hogan rebuffed CBS' attempt to capture extensive images of his swing at Augusta one year, but had allowed LPGA legend Mickey Wright to shoot eight-millimeter movies of him in 1965.

"I had watched Hogan so much [at the Masters] that I had the feeling he was aware I had been a fan of his," recalls Darracott. "They had publicized it in the Atlanta papers that it would be the last time he would play [the Masters]. I think that was one of the reasons he allowed me to film. He thought, 'This guy's a fan. He's got a home-movie camera. I'll probably never see him again. Why not?' "

Hogan invited Darracott onto the range. From the side and down the line, he filmed Hogan as he worked through his bag while his jumpsuited caddie shagged the balls in the distance. Hogan's setup is without tension; on many swings his shoulders rotate beneath a lit cigarette. The action is dynamic and fluid, differing from his younger swing only in how he moved through impact?with a bit less stress on a more relaxed left side. "In those days it was a battle with those knees of his," says Devlin, "particularly the left knee. He just couldn't drive up onto his left side the way he used to, yet he found a way to make it work."

Later, Hogan welcomed Darracott to follow his practice round: Hogan and Devlin played against Jay Hebert and Jackie Burke Jr. "I understood it to be $100 a hole," Darracott remembers, "and Hogan was taking their money right and left. He hit so many shots up close to the hole you couldn't believe it."

Darracott got a sense of Hogan's precise expectations on the 17th hole, where he watched the group's approach shots land on the green. "He walked over and asked me where his ball hit," Darracott says. "[I told him], and he grunted and said, 'It should have hit three feet back here.' "

New bunkers in the landing areas at Nos. 2 and 18 were a hot topic before the tournament. Some players were grousing about them, but not Hogan, who dismissed the added hazards with characteristic bluntness. "I don't care where they put the bunkers," he said. "You shouldn't be in the bunkers or the woods." Similarly, he refused to join the chorus of complainers about the fairways, whose rye overseed was causing some jumpy lies. Said Hogan, "I see nothing wrong with the course at all."

But the no-fuss, no-excuses, no-doubt-it-was-going-to-be-a-good-swing legend turned mortal once he walked on a green. "My putting impediment" was Hogan's description. It didn't happen on every putt, but when it did, it was ugly?as if a fine, purring engine suddenly coughed and refused to turn over. Especially in contrast to his still-graceful long game, Hogan's putting often was a jerky, messy, labored ordeal that didn't seem like it could belong to golf royalty. "Once I put the putter back of the ball," he explained, "sometimes I can move and sometimes I can't."

Once one of the game's surest putters, Hogan never knew when the paralyzing tentativeness would crop up. Dan Yates, an 88-year-old Augusta National member who has been to every Masters tournament, remembers one moment of an older Hogan. "I never will forget watching him on No. 11, standing over about a three-foot putt," Yates says. "I timed it?it was a couple of minutes before he could draw the putter back."

During the 1966 U.S. Open Hogan locked up over a putt so severely he walked away toward fellow competitor Ken Venturi. "He was looking at me without seeing me. He said, 'I can't draw it back,' " Venturi recalls. "I said, 'Who gives a damn? You've beaten people long enough.' And his eyes opened and he damn near made [the putt]."

As he teed off in his 25th Masters, Hogan knew he could connect with the dime-sized sweet spot in his Hogan irons until Augusta's azaleas lost their blossoms and bloomed anew, and he would still be battling his putter. Nothing in his first two rounds certainly changed his mind. He opened with 74-73, workmanlike scores by a hard-working man, good for T-23, seven strokes behind leader Bert Yancey.