Hogan's Heroes

By Nick Seitz
Photos By AP September 12, 2008

Funny, the tricks and treats memory plays after 40 years. The 1967 Ryder Cup Match at Champions GC in Houston made plenty of history, but it's a series of behind-the-scenes happenings that comes to mind first for a well-seasoned journalist who covered it early in his career.

Historically, it was the most lopsided victory ever, the Americans winning by 15 points (23½-8½) and nearly killing the event—and doing it without Jack Nicklaus, who wasn't eligible because he hadn't been a PGA member long enough. The beating led the Brits to switch to the larger American ball and change their fortunes for the better, much the better. It was the only time the cup was contested in Texas. It marked America's first good look at England's Tony Jacklin, who would go on to win major championships on his own ball and revive British cup fortunes as their enterprising captain.

And it added tellingly and entertainingly to the lore of Ben Hogan, the enigmatic U.S. captain … and continues to add to it through latter-day visits with living protagonists in the drama. These venerable, colorful personalities are not necessarily more talkative now that Hogan is gone (they've always been better company than their modern successors), but it doesn't hurt. Hogan was an intimidating force to the end.

For all of the '67 match's record-book material, the sharpest images I still revisit are mostly not a matter of record (I had to refresh myself on a few facts). They are more impressionistic, more personal, more unexpected at the time.

I will never forget watching Hogan, the famously austere Hogan, climb on a folding chair so he could see over the crowd as the University of Houston marching band emerged from an early-morning fog shrouding the first hole to launch the opening ceremony.

I will never forget the four surviving members of the first U.S. Ryder Cup team in 1927—Johnny Farrell, Joe Turnesa, Wild Bill Mehlhorn and Al Watrous—showing up for a ceremonial nine holes. All are gone now.

I will never forget being repeatedly refused admittance to the players' locker rooms in my callow youth, never mind proper credentialing. Two veteran golf writers, Waxo Green from Nashville and Charlie Bartlett from Chicago, had adopted the Ryder Cup rookie for the week and found his futile arguments with the rent-a-cop guarding the door unnecessarily humorous.

Charlie, who died suddenly later in '67, was a legend in journalistic circles. He was the first and long-serving secretary of the Golf Writers Association of America (he claimed he was elected after he had left the room to take a call from nature). An annual GWAA award named for him goes "to a playing professional for unselfish contributions to the betterment of society."

Charlie contributed heavily to the betterment of our fraternity if not society at large. A statistics hound, he took a cue from baseball, another of his favorite sports, to pioneer meaningful golf stats taken for granted today—and taken to an extreme. He tracked greens in regulation, fairways hit and putts, among other categories he developed. He chased down all the information himself and carried a little box containing his database.

I will never forget that the thoughtful Charlie and Waxo, who could have been wealthy had he written as amusingly as he told stories, took me one evening during the week to a football game between Rice and SMU, two big-time programs at the time. I vaguely recall that Rice won, but remember that the game was played at night because of the Texas heat (the Ryder Cup having been moved from September to October on the same account).

I will never forget Arnold Palmer buzzing the course one afternoon in his private plane, a Jet Commander, so low to the treetops—if not below them—that he was reported to the FAA and feared losing his pilot's license. Peter Alliss, a British Ryder Cup mainstay for 16 years and son of a Cup star, says now, "We couldn't believe a golfer had his own plane."

Hogan couldn't believe Palmer had pulled the stunt. Doug Sanders, a teammate talking today, says the captain benched his star in the following round over the incident. Hogan would not have been pleased either that Palmer took Jacklin and some of his British teammates up with him for the joy ride.

Asked by an intrepid reporter (not this one) why Palmer was not playing in the morning four-ball the next day, Hogan replied, "Because I am captain and I say so."

The reporter asked if he had any reason.

"Yes," Hogan said.