It was the only time that a golfer had won three major professional championships in a year until Tiger Woods won the final three majors in 2000 (and the first in 2001). Hogan, 40, was unable to enter-and possibly win-the 1953 PGA Championship (to complete the Grand Slam) because its play (July 1–7) overlapped the play of The Open at Carnoustie (July 6–10), which he won. It still stands among the greatest single seasons in the history of professional golf. Hogan's watershed 1953 season, a year in which he won five of the six tournaments he entered, including three major championships (a feat known as the Triple Crown of Golf). The win at Carnoustie was only a part of Mr.
#EARLY HOGAN IRONS PRO#
He worked at Century as an assistant and then as the head pro until 1941, when he took the head pro job at Hershey Country Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Despite finishing 13th on the money list in 1938, Hogan took an assistant pro job at Century Country Club in Purchase, New York. Although it took a decade for Hogan to secure his first victory, his wife Valerie believed in him, and this helped see him through the tough years when he battled a hook that he later cured. He did not win his first tournament (as an individual) until March 1940, when he won three consecutive events in North Carolina at age 27. Hogan's early years as a pro were very difficult he went broke more than once. They married in April 1935 at her parents' home. Hogan met Valerie Fox in Sunday school in Fort Worth in the mid-1920s, and they reacquainted in 1932 when he landed a low-paying club pro job in Cleburne, where her family had moved. He turned pro in the golf industry six months shy of his 18th birthday at the Texas Open in San Antonio, in late January 1930.
Hogan dropped out of Central High School during the final semester of his senior year of high school. His father was a blacksmith and the family lived ten miles southwest in Dublin until 1921, when they moved seventy miles northeast to Fort Worth.
Hogan was born in Stephenville, Texas, the third and youngest child of Chester and Clara (Williams) Hogan.
Ben Hogan’s ability to strike the ball was unparalleled.