My Shot: Jack Fleck

My friend Bob Hamilton, who won the PGA Championship, told me some time later about an incident the night before the playoff. He was in Indiana playing poker at 1 a.m. when he got a phone call from Dan Topping, the owner of the New York Yankees, and a guy named Mike McLaney. They explained they had an opportunity to make a bet on me at huge odds and asked Bob if he knew me. Bob said he did, at which point McLaney said, "Hogan is the ice man and doesn't talk." Bob replied, "I'm not telling you how to bet, but I will say this: Hogan will talk more than Fleck." I guess that was good enough for them, because after the playoff, word got around that they won $89,000 betting on me. Word also came from Dutch Harrison, the pro at Old Warson in St. Louis, that some of his members had lost a lot of money betting on Hogan. These stories had a strong ring of truth, because when I met Dan Topping in New York, he said a lot of the money he put up had been laid off in St. Louis.

There has long been a rumor that after I blasted from a bunker on the third hole of the playoff, I apologized to Ben for slowing us up. He supposedly replied, "That's OK, Jack, we're in no hurry." The story was that his comment put me at ease and that he later regretted saying it. But the story just isn't true. I wasn't in a bunker there, I made no bogeys on the front nine and in fact never trailed at any time in the playoff. I won the playoff by shooting 69 on a brutal golf course, making only one putt of any length. But it has always been thought of as the U.S. Open that Ben Hogan lost, not the one Jack Fleck won. I never felt I was given credit for how well I played.

A man I knew, a club professional named Harry Gonda, once claimed that, given a proper chance, he could make a hole-in-one. There were doubters, and a bet was arranged. They took Harry to an ordinary par 3 and told him he could hit all the balls he wanted, so long as he stayed there and didn't quit. Harry hit balls all day long, stopping only for sandwiches and refreshments. When night fell, they strung lights so he could see. On he went, into daylight the next day. He hit thousands of balls and hit the flagstick numerous times and left several balls within inches of the hole. But he never did make the ace, and after 24 hours he gave up, totally fatigued.

In 1957 the Dunlop and Nadco sporting-goods companies staged a national hole-in-one contest. If you made an ace and registered, you were entered. At the end of the year, there were 390 entries. The name of each entrant was written on a ball, and five local pros were hired to try to make a hole-in-one themselves. The first player to make an ace won a new Cadillac for the person whose name was on the ball. The local pros hit 390 balls and got only 36 within a 20-foot circle around the hole. I was affiliated with Dunlop and Nadco, and they had me hit the 36 balls again. On my 18th try I made an ace. I always wondered who the lucky stiff was. Years later, during a taping at a seniors tournament in Los Angeles, I was interviewed by Mike Douglas, the TV talk-show host. When the cameras rolled, Mike said he always wanted to thank me for winning him a new Cadillac in a hole-in-one contest. Imagine that, Mike Douglas!

Be a good guy, not a nice guy. Nice guys are pleasant outwardly, but they're looking for how situations can benefit them. Good guys give of themselves, no questions asked.

There's only one way to get good at this game, and that's to play more than you practice.

Avoid talking about the golf swing. When you discover something that works, keep it to yourself. Discussing swing mechanics is very bad for your game. It introduces too many ideas and diminishes the power of the things that really work. The people who play golf best are the ones who discuss swing theory the least.

The Great Depression started for the Flecks not in 1929, but in 1926. We lost the farm in a land crash, and we moved onto 21&Mac218;2 acres on the outskirts of Bettendorf, Iowa. I had my first jobs when I was in kindergarten—picking apples, topping onions and catching cabbage butterflies. Every penny went to the family. The stories of kids wearing pants with patches over patches, putting cardboard in their shoes and so on, are true.

Rather than wait to be drafted during World War II, I looked into joining. I'd taken three years of ROTC training in high school, mainly because we got a uniform and that spared me having to worry about clothes to wear. I thought that would give me an advantage, and when the recruiting officer told me I would sign on as a "Petty Officer, Specialist Golf," I thought I had it made. It was a ruse, of course. Sam Snead and Paul Runyan were already assigned to the naval golf course in San Diego. I wound up like most guys, on a ship.

It's hard to believe, but somehow I got through the Navy without learning how to swim. Believe me, I tried. I could muddle through the shallow end OK, but at the end of the 16-week training period, we had to go through the deep end. I almost drowned; they barely saved me. They finally gave up. The instructor told me, "If things get rough, put on a ëMae West' [a life jacket] and you'll survive."