Majors Won With Ben Hogan Irons

[Shade Ruff]

Wilson Staff prides itself on trumpeting the fact its irons were used to win 61 majors. Using that as a jumping-off point, I began to wonder how many majors were won with pre-Callaway Ben Hogan Company (1953 - 2003) irons.

 

While by no means all inclusive, here is a consolidated list:

 

1) 1955 U.S. Open - Olympic Club - Jack Fleck using custom-made Ben Hogan irons

2) 1983 U.S. Women's Open - Cedar Ridge Country Club - Jan Stephenson using Apex II (Cameo) irons

3) 1992 U.S. Open - Pebble Beach Golf Links - Tom Kite using Apex Red Line irons

4) 1996 PGA Championship - Valhalla Golf Club - Mark Brooks possibly using Ben Hogan GCD Tour irons.

5) 1997 Open Championship - Royal Troon Golf Club - Justin Leonard using Apex Channel Back irons

6) 2003 U.S. Open - Olympia Fields Country Club - Jim Furyk using Apex Plus irons

 

While clearly not anywhere near the Wilson Staff count - understanding that company has been in business since 1914 - Terry Koehler may want to consider tying this part of Hogan equipment history into his ongoing Hogan revival efforts. It's certainly another point of Hogan pride.

 

Shade

['53 Precision]

1996 PGA Championship, Mark Brooks, Valhalla Golf Club, Louisville, KY Using GCD Tours (I think)

[Woodridge]

Weren't John Mahaffey, Tom Kite and Lanny Wadkins Hogan staffers?

[dlygrisse]

[quote name='Woodridge' timestamp='1422457249' post='10834265']
Weren't John Mahaffey, Tom Kite and Lanny Wadkins Hogan staffers?
[/quote]Kite used them for sure when winning the US Open, not sure about the others at the time of their major victory.

[Shade Ruff]

'53 Precision and dlygrisse,

Thank you for your input. I've added it to the first post this thread.

Shade

[duffer888]

Was Hal Sutton a Hogan staffer when he won his single major? He did win one, right?

[Shallowface]

[quote name='duffer888' timestamp='1422468827' post='10835395']
Was Hal Sutton a Hogan staffer when he won his single major? He did win one, right?
[/quote]

When Sutton won his PGA, he had a Titleist bag. They showed a clip on the Golf Channel Academy series he did about a year ago.

But as to what was actually in the bag, not sure.

[Langlands]

Mike Weir used to play Apex Plus irons, not sure if he used them when he won the Masters?

[Shade Ruff]

[quote name='drpurpell' timestamp='1422475599' post='10836145']
Mike Weir used to play Apex Plus irons, not sure if he used them when he won the Masters?
[/quote]

drpurpell,

I don't believe so as the golf shirt he wore when he sank the winning putt at the '03 Masters had a Taylormade logo.

Shade

[Kirasdad]

Tom Kite used the '90 Grinds with a special...well,uh grind. Can't prove it with a link, but I think I have that right.

[Shade Ruff]

[quote name='Kirasdad' timestamp='1422478327' post='10836417']
Tom Kite used the '90 Grinds with a special...well,uh grind. Can't prove it with a link, but I think I have that right.
[/quote]

Kirasdad,

At a minimum, per a Golf Digest article, we can confirm he had a Ben Hogan Special 60 degree K Grind wedge in his bag. He used it to good effect to jug a birdie from off the green on the 107-yard par 3 seventh hole in the final round.

Shade

[farmer]

What about Bernhard Langer? I seem to recall a bag full of taped up, battered Hogans.

[Shade Ruff]

[quote name='farmer' timestamp='1422491693' post='10837789']
What about Bernhard Langer? I seem to recall a bag full of taped up, battered Hogans.
[/quote]

farmer,

Langer gamed Wilson Staff irons for his two Masters wins in '85 and '93.

Shade

[Shade Ruff]

After a bit of digging, I came across this newspaper article from 1998 which states Tom Kite won the 1992 U.S. Open using 1988 Ben Hogan Apex Red Line irons: [url="http://amarillo.com/stories/102998/spo_166-5128.shtml"]http://amarillo.com/stories/102998/spo_166-5128.shtml[/url] Great stuff!

Shade

[Kirasdad]

My bad, I was two years off. I did read somewhere that said that Kite had the Hogan grinder type craftsmen do something custom to his irons, Redlines, as we now know. What the work was, I don't remember.

[Forged4ever]

[quote name='dlygrisse' timestamp='1422459669' post='10834459']
[quote name='Woodridge' timestamp='1422457249' post='10834265']
Weren't John Mahaffey, Tom Kite and Lanny Wadkins Hogan staffers?
[/quote]Kite used them for sure when winning the US Open, not sure about the others at the time of their major victory.
[/quote]Yep, they were and Lanny was a major influence in the wedges and the grinds.

Big time

Fairways & Greens My Friends,
Richard

[scunny]

Pretty sure Langer used Hogan's in a Wilson bag in the same way Faldo had Mizuno's in his. Give away was the red shaft bands that hogan used

[toc]

I can't believe I don't know this, but did Ben himself use Hogans for any majors? I thought I read he used some prototypes before the company actually went into production.

[Blade Junkie]

So the elephant in the room would appear to be the fact that hardly anybody has won Majors using Hogan clubs. Not sure if Terry Koehler would get much marketing mileage out of "six guys in sixty years won Majors with Hogan clubs"


Would be a fun bit of research to try and piece it all together ... 4 majors a year for 60+ years ... winning brand of woods, irons, putters for 240 odd Majors ...

[jonnygrouville]

I feel that I should be using the word "winningest" somewhere around here, but, overall, aren't MacGregor and Wilson leading the way in wins?

[Blade Junkie]

[quote name='jonnygrouville' timestamp='1422782650' post='10860923']
I feel that I should be using the word "winningest" somewhere around here, but, overall, aren't MacGregor and Wilson leading the way in wins?
[/quote]

I'd have thought MacGregor by a country mile on woods ... (not so much after the mid 80s admittedly ) Wilson on irons ... probably Ping on putters ?

A few UK brands might be further up than would immediately spring to mind ... the likes of Dunlop for example would be on at least nine (Thomson, Jackin, Charles, Di Vicenzo). Did Gary Player and Trevino play John Letters for a few of their majors ?

[HoldenCornfield]

[quote name='toc' timestamp='1422782033' post='10860911']
I can't believe I don't know this, but did Ben himself use Hogans for any majors? I thought I read he used some prototypes before the company actually went into production.
[/quote]

[i]In many ways, as 1953 got under way and Ben remained stubbornly silent on his immediate plans, this long-standing rivalry grew even more intense. Ben and Sam had won six majors apiece, and while Byron had won five, he had neither the ego nor the stomach to chase down another. From this point forward, his greatest legacy wouldn’t be conducted in competition. [/i]

[i]Golf Digest, which first appeared in 1951, had begun popularizing the notion long espoused by the cognoscenti that the truest measure of a player’s greatness related directly to how many major titles he’d won. Bobby Jones, with four U.S. Opens and three British, had always been the gold standard of comparison, but he was distinctly from another time, as were Walter Hagen with eleven majors and Gene Sarazen with eight. Now, with professional golf arguably more popular than it had ever been, largely due to this American Triumvirate, millions were watching to see how the ongoing battle between Sam and Ben would wind up. [/i]

[i]Which explains why— even as he was busy in Fort Worth setting up the infrastructure of his future life, with a new company devoted to making the finest clubs and balls available— Ben Hogan simply couldn’t elude the burden of his own destiny. Entering his forty-first year, though the grind of championship golf was nearly too much to bear both physically and psychologically, his very nature guaranteed that he would do whatever was required to win at least one more major and improve his lead on his two greatest rivals. [/i]

[i]Following weeks of practice down at Seminole, and a lucrative second-place finish in the club’s popular Amateur-Professional Tournament, Ben finished in a tie for eighth at the Palmetto Pro-Am, forty miles from Augusta in Aiken, South Carolina . The man he’d tied, predictably, was Sam Snead, who was buoyant over the huge sales of Natural Golf. “ Maybe we ought to go have a playoff somewhere down in Georgia,” Sam later claimed to have told Ben. “I could give you a great book to help you with that swing of yours.”[/i]

[i]As Burke and Bolt were first to point out, young and veteran players alike often stood for hours watching Ben and Sam practice. This particular year, on the range at Augusta National, Mike Souchak, who’d turned professional in late 1952 but was here as a spectator, happened to observe a fascinating exchange between Ben and Toney Penna, the former tour star who was now a leading field rep for MacGregor Golf, the company Ben had signed on with in 1937 for $250. Violating protocol and Ben’s own sacred practice space, Penna reminded him of the company’s recent mandate that all its players use the new Tourney ball. Eight days after his fortieth birthday, however, Ben had paid a secret visit to rival Acushnet’s factory to see how the Titleist balls he preferred were made. [/i]

[i]Not surprisingly, on the practice tee at Augusta, he was hitting Titleist balls to a caddie stationed out on the range with a towel and a catcher’s mitt. Penna was outraged by this bold defiance of company policy, [b]not to mention that Ben was using MacGregor golf clubs that bore little or no resemblance to the ones the company sold under his name, two tiers down from their Tommy Armour Silver Scots and Byron Nelson Classics. These clubs, as it happened, were early prototypes of the new ones Ben hoped to bring to market within a year.[/b] Back in Fort Worth, he was already working with one of the game’s most respected club makers to produce a finished model designed for better players. [/i]

[i]“It got heated real fast,” Souchak remembered. The recent Duke graduate was one of a handful of newcomers along with Ken Venturi, Gardner Dickinson, and Texan Dave Marr whom Ben would take a shine to about this time. “Penna demanded to know why Ben was being so difficult and Ben told him to tell Mr. Cowan of MacGregor that his balls and golf equipment were junk. That pretty much settled that.”[/i]

[i][Dodson, James (2012-03-13). American Triumvirate: Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and the Modern Age of Golf (Kindle Locations 5579-5591). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.][/i]

I had to go back and search to find this, but I remembered reading that Hogan had apparently been using his prototype irons at least on the range at Augusta in 1953, which he would win. There was no mention whether he used them during the tournament, and I've never read or heard it suggested that he did. Would it have even been legal to do so? Was there a USGA submission process back then for new irons? Anyway, I found the above excerpt interesting.

He also won the US Open and the British Open that same year, but that would be the last of his majors. So unless he snuck his prototype irons into his bag that year and the whole world missed it, then no, he did not win any majors with his Hogan Company clubs.

[Shade Ruff]

[quote name='scunny' timestamp='1422780450' post='10860881']
Pretty sure Langer used Hogan's in a Wilson bag in the same way Faldo had Mizuno's in his. Give away was the red shaft bands that hogan used
[/quote]

scunny,

Here is the sourcing for the Langer Wilson Staff reference: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Staff"]http://en.wikipedia....ki/Wilson_Staff[/url]

Shade

[Shade Ruff]

Based on information from fellow member freddiec found elsewhere in this forum, I've added Jan Stephenson's 1983 U.S. Women's Open victory to the master list in post #1 this thread.

Shade

[bma725]

[quote name='Woodridge' timestamp='1422457249' post='10834265']
Weren't John Mahaffey, Tom Kite and Lanny Wadkins Hogan staffers?
[/quote]

Lanny was a Wilson guy when he won his major, not Hogan. Mahaffey was on Hogan's staff back then, but I don't recall what clubs he actually used.

[bma725]

[quote name='jonnygrouville' timestamp='1422782650' post='10860923']
I feel that I should be using the word "winningest" somewhere around here, but, overall, aren't MacGregor and Wilson leading the way in wins?
[/quote]

They are the top two, but that is at least partially a function of how long they've been around. The older companies have more winners than we would think of just because there weren't that many big time companies back then. Beyond Wilson and MacGregor you have to look at companies like Powerbilt and Spalding that dominated a specific era and then basically disappeared from tour at some point. Heck, even Ram is probably high on the list just because they had Watson and Price when those guys were winning enough to surpass some entire tour staffs.

At the same time, the companies we have now are by and large newer companies. Titleist was around, but they were just a line of Acushnet clubs with corporate partners like Titlette and Finalist so they weren't pushed in the same way for decades. Callaway has only been around since the early 1980s and didn't have a major winner until Michael Campbell. Taylor Made started in the late 1970s and didn't have one until the late 1990s (Lee Janzen?). Nike is a relatively modern invention in the grand scheme of things. Maybe the only big time company today that you could say is long standing is Srixon because ultimately they have their roots in Dunlop which has been around forever...but even that is a stretch.

[bullrambler]

Good post on the Wilson clubs. I just picked up a set of 1978-80 Staff Tour Blades and gotta try them out.

[Blade Junkie]

The Precision irons used by Jack Fleck to win the US Open got auctioned off on The Golf Auction site recently - went for $37,000 !!!

[url="http://www.thegolfauction.com/Jack_Fleck_s_1955_US_Open_Win_Match_Used_Ben_Hogan-LOT11140.aspx"]http://www.thegolfau...n-LOT11140.aspx[/url]


Plenty of pics, plus a good account of the set and the win in the auction notes at the link above, and reproduced below:

[b] Jack Fleck's 1955 US Open Victory Used Ben Hogan Irons[/b]


[i]These clubs were presented by their producer, Ben Hogan to Jack Fleck, then wielded against Hogan in a most memorable mano e mano playoff triumph in the 1955 United States Open Championship. As the 1955 PGA Tour began Jack Fleck saw a set of Hogan clubs for the first time at the St. Petersburg Open. He was captivated by their design and quality, and received permission to send his specs into the company for a set to be made. Fleck received the irons in a following visit to the Hogan offices the week of the Colonial Invitational. It was the start of a magical ride for these clubs.Hogan would call the quality of his clubs "the Stradivarius of golf clubs", with numerous clubs discarded for not meeting his exacting standards. Iron play would be at a premium for the 1955 U.S. Open contested at The Olympic in San Francisco. As Fleck would say,"a great shot making golf course". The clubs Fleck was using to attack Olympic were the ones which had been recently gifted to him by Ben Hogan (with Bantom Ben refusing to take a cent for them). The only other similar set used in the 1955 Open was by Hogan himself. As one might expect Hogan, in pursuit of his record 5th U.S. Open Championship, played them to perfection and entered the final round of the Open one stroke in the lead, and three ahead of Fleck. He was on the threshold of winning that ever so special unprecedented fifth U.S. Open.

The only player left in the field who could challenge the victory was Fleck as he approached 17 a long par 4 hole that had not been reached in regulation all day. He still stood one stroke behind Hogan. Fleck scorched his three wood to 20 feet. Prompting renown player turned commentator Lawson Little on radio to proclaim, "that is one of the finest clutch shots ever". To no avail the birdie putt slid by and Fleck still needed birdie on 18 to tie Hogan. The Iowa native with ice in his veins laced his three wood off the tee on the short par four (as he had done in all four rounds) at 18 into the first cut some 150 yards from the green, but in an ideal area to go after the pin. Pulling his Hogan 7-iron out of the bag, Fleck rolled the ball to seven feet from the cup and sank the putt to tie Hogan at 287 and force an 18-hole playoff the next day. In what was thought to be a lopsided playoff for Hogan, most surprisingly Fleck was in command after a birdie at 10 put him three strokes up. Though challenged on the back side with his lead as little as one stroke entering 18, Fleck stood tall and finished with a par on 18 to defeat Hogan by three strokes (69-72). Only four other players, all only once, had broke 70 at Olympic Club that week. Fleck with his playoff round 69 broke 70 three times. One of the greatest upsets in sports history was complete.

In the post match remarks Fleck told Hogan that his clubs had, "finished first, and second in the Open". Author James Dodson summed up the magnitude of victory when he wrote in his classic narrative "Ben Hogan: An American Life", "The classic purity of such an upset--the greatest player of the age knocked off by his most humble disciple, the only man in the field using Hogan clubs". It is with immense pleasure that we offer in this lot the Hogan 2-9 Precision irons which Jack Fleck used throughout the week in the 1955 U.S. Open Championship which culminated in his historically significant playoff win that denied Ben Hogan his fifth U.S. Open title. Fleck not only made the course say "uncle" on his final round and final few holes, he caught "The Hawk," then winged him in the playoff. Prepare to watch the bidding take flight as the actual clubs from one of the most historic rounds in golf history are offered here. Unquestionably the most significant pieces of match used equipment to surface from the 1955 U.S. Open. These club's were retained by Jack Fleck from that June 19th, 1955 day when he defeated Hogan, as his most cherished possession on earth. It is only with his passing in March of 2014 that these are made available to the collecting world. A letter of provenance from Fleck's wife, Carmen, accompanies this treasured lot.

This iron set will be the pride and cornerstone of any advanced club or U.S. Open collection, and still proudly displayed 100 years from now as the clubs from the greatest David meets Goliath match in golf history.[/i]

[rex235]

Shade-

You can add one other name to your list-

Sam Adams- 1973 Quad Cities Open- Ben Hogan Apex irons. First LH Win on the PGA Tour.


Langer used Hogan Apex shafts in his Wilson Staff irons, and Ben Hogan didn't like it.....

Hogan even wrote an Official Memo after Langer's 1993 Masters win....

Surely someone has a copy of it...

[rex235]

Bma-

Janzen's irons used in US Open wins were Founders Club at Baltusrol and either TaylorMade or MacGregor at Olympic.

Lanny Wadkins was with Spalding, just like Al Geiberger, Dave Stockton, and Craig Stadler.

Am pretty sure they all had Spalding custom grind irons.

Wadkins' PGA victory in a Playoff over Gene Littler at Pebble Beach.... pretty sure that's a Spalding HBA putter he gets to stand up by itself....