Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number three hundred and fifty three, published on
Speaker 1: October sixteen, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 2: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 1: Sports marketing was a very different beast in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: five than it is in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: It was and a lot of these players made their
Speaker 3: money and made it from countcown to tournament to tournament
Speaker 3: by playing money games in between the tournaments, playing the
Speaker 3: best player in that area, the best player at the club,
Speaker 3: and they'd play in some big money games, and some
Speaker 3: of them made a lot more money when they weren't
Speaker 3: playing tournaments than when they were. I went down to Hickory,
Speaker 3: North Carolina, just last week to see Jack Pluck and
Speaker 3: some of these other legends because they were up there
Speaker 3: playing a pro am at Hickory, which is where the
Speaker 3: Champions Tour event was. But I was sitting next to
Speaker 3: a guy he's a good friend to Doug Sanders. Doug
Speaker 3: Sanders is a great player, a little later era than Black.
Speaker 3: He came along one in the late fifties and early sixties.
Speaker 3: He won a lot of tournaments and he very nearly
Speaker 3: won the British Open. He missed a short cut at
Speaker 3: Saint Andrews in nineteen seventy and he ended in a
Speaker 3: playoff with Jack Nicholas and lost.
Speaker 4: Sounds like another book for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this though I met. He told me that Doug
Speaker 3: Sanders made a lot more money playing Jen Rummy than
Speaker 3: he was playing golf. She said, numbers like twenty five
Speaker 3: thirty fifty thousand dollars playing Jen Rummy when he wasn't
Speaker 3: out on the golf course.
Speaker 1: Golf's greatest upset at the nineteen fifty five US Open
Speaker 1: with author Neil Sagabel.
Speaker 4: This is Golf.
Speaker 2: Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers and golf professionals
Speaker 2: to help lower your score.
Speaker 4: It's worked for your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the
Speaker 4: Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 3: Neil, good to be here, Fred, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4: Thank you for reaching out and mentioning in LinkedIn that
Speaker 4: you had.
Speaker 1: This book because it was kind of perfect for the
Speaker 1: Golf Smarter podcast, and for some interesting reason, I thought
Speaker 1: it was perfect for twenty twelve because this sports year
Speaker 1: has had its own list of upsets, and we can
Speaker 1: get into more about that in a minute, But most
Speaker 1: recently in golf, the twenty twelve Ryder Cup. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was necessarily an upset, but it was
Speaker 1: an amazing comeback and a long shot at best on Sunday.
Speaker 1: But we also had the US Open in San Francisco
Speaker 1: at the Olympic Club here in twenty twelve, and your
Speaker 1: story talks about the US Open back in nineteen.
Speaker 3: Fifty Yeah, well, this year, this is the Open play
Speaker 3: at the Olympic Club. The one in nineteen fifty five
Speaker 3: was the first, and that's where Hogan and Fleck showed
Speaker 3: up in all the other greats of that era. And interestingly,
Speaker 3: it was only the second US Open plate on the
Speaker 3: West Coast, so up until that time, the US Open
Speaker 3: had been more or less an East Coast championship.
Speaker 1: Most sports are our East Coast centric, at least from
Speaker 1: the writer's perspective. What was the first event played on
Speaker 1: the West coast?
Speaker 4: Do you remember so?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the first US Open played on the West Coast
Speaker 3: was at.
Speaker 4: Riviera, then Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then it was the first US Open that
Speaker 3: ben Hogan won.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 4: Interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So let's set this up because during the TV broad
Speaker 1: cast of the twenty twelve US OPE, and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about Jack Fleck and you know,
Speaker 1: like they love to go into the history of it,
Speaker 1: but specifically Ben Hogan at the time was dominant.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 1: It was just a given that Ben Hogan would be
Speaker 1: there at the end, battling for the title or just
Speaker 1: running away with it. And this was the case again,
Speaker 1: but it had been for those who aren't familiar, it
Speaker 1: had been a tumultuous time for Ben Hogan leading up
Speaker 1: to this. Let's start with some background about the big Boy.
Speaker 1: Let's give us some background about Ben Hogan.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of people who followed GoF I've heard
Speaker 3: of Hogan for sure, because he I think he revolutionized
Speaker 3: the game in a few different ways. And part of
Speaker 3: that was because I think it was not easy for
Speaker 3: him to make it out there on the PGA tour.
Speaker 3: We know of him as the great player now, but
Speaker 3: he struggled. He was not as talented as as guys
Speaker 3: like say Byron Nelson, who came out of the same
Speaker 3: caddy yard as Hogan, so he really had to work
Speaker 3: to hone his golf swing. He fought a hook as
Speaker 3: a younger player, and he took him three tries really
Speaker 3: to catch on. On the PGA Tour, he didn't win
Speaker 3: his first tournament until nineteen forty, so he'd been out
Speaker 3: there a while. And he didn't win his first major
Speaker 3: until nineteen forty six. And I can't remember, so that
Speaker 3: would have made him I guess almost Well, he's probably
Speaker 3: about thirty four years old. So it took Hogan a while.
Speaker 3: And there's that famous saying of finding the secret in
Speaker 3: the dirt. He found his swing through a lot of
Speaker 3: practice and no, and I don't know uptill that point
Speaker 3: in time anyone had worked harder to develop his golf
Speaker 3: swing or develop his game at Ben Hogan. So he's
Speaker 3: famous for his work ethic. About the time that he
Speaker 3: was really coming into his home Nelson Byron Nelson retired
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty six, he was really considered the top
Speaker 3: man in golf, but Hogan was coming along. Snead was
Speaker 3: a great as well. Sam Snead. About the time Hogan
Speaker 3: was really starting to get it, he won the PGA
Speaker 3: Championship in forty six. He won his first US Open
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty eight at Riviera in Los Angeles. He
Speaker 3: had that terrible car accident in early nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 3: He was coming back from Arizona, I think it was
Speaker 3: the Phoenix Open with his wife and he was driving
Speaker 3: home to Fort Worth and they were on a foggy
Speaker 3: West Texas Highway and a Greyhound bus had pulled out
Speaker 3: to pass a truck and Hogan and his wife in
Speaker 3: their Cadillac had a head on collision that they were
Speaker 3: just it was a miracle that they both survived in
Speaker 3: and Hogan was in a hospital for two months and
Speaker 3: almost died. And when he came out of that hospital,
Speaker 3: his doctors never really thought he'd played golf again. He
Speaker 3: was fortunate to be walking around, but he was a
Speaker 3: very driven man and he made a comeback what some
Speaker 3: I think to this day considered maybe one of the greatest,
Speaker 3: if not the greatest comebacks in the history of sports.
Speaker 3: Something less than two years after he had this accident,
Speaker 3: he came back and he won the US Open in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty at Marion. And so we see this Hogan
Speaker 3: who now because of his physical condition. He hasd to
Speaker 3: go through this regiment just to play, prepare himself to play.
Speaker 3: He'd soak himself, he'd soak in a hot tub with
Speaker 3: epsom salts. He took asper, and he had to limen
Speaker 3: on his legs and wrap his legs and elastic manages.
Speaker 3: And after this accident he only plays in about six
Speaker 3: or seven tournaments a year, but he becomes this machine
Speaker 3: of a golfer who is incredibly tough and determined in
Speaker 3: the major championships. So after Hogan has his accident, he
Speaker 3: actually goes on to win more majors than he'd won
Speaker 3: before that, And coming into the nineteen fifty five US
Speaker 3: Open Olympic, he'd won four of the last six US
Speaker 3: Opens he'd played in, which is pretty remarkable, and he'd
Speaker 3: won nine majors total. And in nineteen fifty three he
Speaker 3: had probably one of the greatest years in golf at
Speaker 3: any professional golf or has ever had. He won what
Speaker 3: they ended up calling the Hogan Slam. He won the Masters,
Speaker 3: the US Open, and the British Open, and I believe
Speaker 3: all by record scores amazing, and they called it to
Speaker 3: Hogan Slam. And it was at a time when the
Speaker 3: PGA Championship. Was it overlapped the British Open and you
Speaker 3: couldn't play both, really, Hogan, he might not have been
Speaker 3: played during the same week, but because of travel, I
Speaker 3: can't remember if Hogan took a boat over to Scotland
Speaker 3: or if he flew. But it was hard you really
Speaker 3: practice from a practical standpoint, you couldn't play in both.
Speaker 3: So he went and played the British.
Speaker 1: Right and right and they were the British and the
Speaker 1: PGA Championship were happening at the same time that year.
Speaker 4: Is that true?
Speaker 3: And that's why he They were either happening at the
Speaker 3: same time or they were so close together that it
Speaker 3: wasn't practical for him to get back play the PGA.
Speaker 3: The PGA was a match play championship at that time, okay,
Speaker 3: And I don't remember how many matches he had to
Speaker 3: play to win it, but he had to play several matches.
Speaker 1: Actually, just I just found it up on Wikipedia. And
Speaker 1: that year in fifty three. First of all, Hogan was
Speaker 1: forty at the time, which is amazing in itself when
Speaker 1: you look at today's players. But in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: the PGA Championship was from July first to seven one
Speaker 1: through seven, and the Open Championship played at Carnousti that
Speaker 1: year was July six through ten, so they did overlap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, getting the Hogan Slam, he wasn't given
Speaker 1: the opportunity to get the Grand Slam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that terminology I don't really know for my
Speaker 3: research what they were saying, if that was something that
Speaker 3: people were even talking about at that time, you know,
Speaker 3: calling it the Grand Slam. But he won. He was
Speaker 3: professional athlete of the year, not just golfer. In nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty three, there was something called the hiccock Belt maybe
Speaker 3: you've heard of or maybe some of your listeners have
Speaker 3: heard of. He was awarded to the top professional athlete
Speaker 3: of the year. And Hogan wanted in nineteen fifty three
Speaker 3: to the end of this remarkable year where he won.
Speaker 3: He won three majors and I think he won he
Speaker 3: played in six tournaments and he won five. So and
Speaker 3: he never went back to the British Isles. He played.
Speaker 3: He went there once he won it, and that was
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 4: It wouldn't been there done that.
Speaker 3: A lot of Americans didn't play in the British Open
Speaker 3: in those days. It was it typically costs more to
Speaker 3: go over there and play it. Then you got out
Speaker 3: of it. And only some of Hogan's professional friends said,
Speaker 3: then you need you need to go over there and
Speaker 3: play that to be considered. You know, that's kind of
Speaker 3: a full career, and as the great player you are,
Speaker 3: you need to do it. And so he did, and
Speaker 3: he wanted Carnousti.
Speaker 1: He really defies what we know today and just it's
Speaker 1: amazing that he was able to come back with you
Speaker 1: know way science and medicine is today, what they could
Speaker 1: have done for him. But he was in a lot
Speaker 1: of pain, he was limping, and he made it work,
Speaker 1: I mean, and then he came back and played better
Speaker 1: than ever.
Speaker 4: Truly incredible story. Truly an incredible story of a comeback.
Speaker 1: So here he is now, he's he won in fifty three,
Speaker 1: he had the sl the Hogan Slam in fifty three,
Speaker 1: fifty four, he doesn't win any majors. Nineteen fifty five
Speaker 1: he is expected to dominate again and they come to
Speaker 1: San Francisco, but there's something that gets in the way
Speaker 1: of his victory. There there's another character. Give us the
Speaker 1: background on Jack Fleck.
Speaker 3: Well, Jack Fleck is a totally different golfer in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty five. He's one of the guys that's in the
Speaker 3: field playing these tournaments, but he is not well known.
Speaker 3: He's never won on tour. He's mostly been what I
Speaker 3: call a Winner Tour player, meaning he was a club pro.
Speaker 3: He had two pros or two clubs he managed in Iowa,
Speaker 3: and from late December to early April he'd go play
Speaker 3: the Winner Tour out in California, Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana
Speaker 3: up until the time when Golf SI's an open at
Speaker 3: his home courses in the beginning of April, and there
Speaker 3: were a lot of guys that did that. It was
Speaker 3: tough to play the full tour. There just wasn't that
Speaker 3: much money. So he had tournament experience, but he wasn't
Speaker 3: really known, and he was i'd say a middle of
Speaker 3: the pack player. He'd make cuts and he could finish
Speaker 3: in the top twenty and he might make a few checks.
Speaker 3: But he was trying to see if he was good
Speaker 3: enough really to play out there. And at the beginning,
Speaker 3: at the end of the nineteen fifty four season, he
Speaker 3: and his wife had a talk and she said, why
Speaker 3: don't you give it two years and see if you
Speaker 3: can play the full tour and see if you can
Speaker 3: succeed up there and make enough money make it worthwhile.
Speaker 3: By this time, Jack's thirty three years old, so he's gonna.
Speaker 4: Make it sense.
Speaker 1: You know what, Neil, you make it sound so gentle.
Speaker 1: Why don't you know his wife saying why didn't you
Speaker 1: give it two years? I kind of believe anybody who's
Speaker 1: married for any period of time's got to believe that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that simple of oh, why don't you just
Speaker 1: give it two years? It was more like, all right,
Speaker 1: you got two years. If you don't get it done,
Speaker 1: then it's time to change course. Or I mean, did
Speaker 1: your research show that she was that genteel about it?
Speaker 3: Well, it was all from Jack, because she's gone, now right, No,
Speaker 3: you're you're right, I'm saying that in my tone, in
Speaker 3: my style of speech. Yeah, I think it probably was
Speaker 3: more of a challenge to him. Sure, but you know,
Speaker 3: I think it was. In fact, When you read the book,
Speaker 3: you'll see quote from her where she says, go out
Speaker 3: there and find out if you can if you can
Speaker 3: play tournament golf, full circuit, or and if you can't,
Speaker 3: you'll at least get it out of your system, quoted. Now,
Speaker 3: she ran the golf courses for him while he was gone,
Speaker 3: along with his assistant pro. Interesting, so she was I
Speaker 3: would say that she was an encouraging influence. And if
Speaker 3: you were talking to Jack flu today, he'd probably tell
Speaker 3: you that she kind of pushed him out there and said, Jack,
Speaker 3: just just go find out. Okay, you want to you
Speaker 3: want to find out if you can play, go try
Speaker 3: it and give it two years. And if you don't, hey,
Speaker 3: if you're just going to come back to Island and
Speaker 3: be a club pro. And that's the way it's going
Speaker 3: to be. And there are a lot of guys like that.
Speaker 3: It was really hard to play.
Speaker 1: She said, uh, you know, Jack, just go find out.
Speaker 1: So if you can pick it up right around there,
Speaker 1: I'll clean it up.
Speaker 4: And edit it.
Speaker 3: I think you're right about what you said, Fred. She did.
Speaker 3: It was sort of a challenge to him, and she said, Jack,
Speaker 3: get out there and go find out, and if you
Speaker 3: can't make it in two years, you'll get tournament and
Speaker 3: playing tournament golf out of your system. So it was
Speaker 3: a challenge. And he had said to her at the
Speaker 3: end of the fifty four season, just privately, something he
Speaker 3: told me, and it's also in the book. He wanted
Speaker 3: to see if he could play what he called championship
Speaker 3: golf before Hogan and Sneed retired. So he looked up
Speaker 3: to those guys and I think he wanted to see
Speaker 3: if he could play at that level. Now, he wasn't
Speaker 3: going to be Hogan or Sneed, but he wanted to
Speaker 3: be able to see if he could really compete and
Speaker 3: play better than he'd played up to that point. So
Speaker 3: this was his shots. It really was his chance, his
Speaker 3: window of opportunity to go try to play the full tour.
Speaker 4: Had he played in major.
Speaker 3: Before, yes, he had, he played. You know whereas Hogan
Speaker 3: comes into fifty five, he's won four US Opens and
Speaker 3: finished very high on many of the others that he
Speaker 3: played in. Jack flex only played in two. He's only
Speaker 3: played in two, and the first one was in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty where Hogan made that miracle comeback. So the first
Speaker 3: Open that Jack played and he missed the cut. And
Speaker 3: then Jack played again in nineteen fifty three where which
Speaker 3: was a part of Hogan's Hogan's slam year where he
Speaker 3: won the three majors, and that was that Oakmont and
Speaker 3: in that one Jack finished something like, I think he
Speaker 3: finished fifty second, twenty six shots behind Ben Hogan. So
Speaker 3: he's played in fifty four. He tried to qualify, but
Speaker 3: he didn't qualify. He didn't play in fifty four, and
Speaker 3: he had to qualify in fifty five. This is an
Speaker 3: era where pretty much the whole field has to qualify
Speaker 3: just to get into the US Open. There are all
Speaker 3: the exemptions that there are now to get into the field.
Speaker 3: You're looking at all, but seventeen players who qualified around
Speaker 3: the country can get into the field.
Speaker 4: So then talk about the qualification process.
Speaker 3: There were seventeen players that were exempt into the nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty five US Open field out of one hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty two that started. So from that, you can just
Speaker 3: imagine that you have all these players qualifying, and a
Speaker 3: lot of them are really great players. There are players
Speaker 3: that have been playing on the tour and winning money,
Speaker 3: but you didn't have the exemptions like you do now.
Speaker 3: You know, where there's all this different criteria for getting in,
Speaker 3: whether you're in the top fifty in the world and
Speaker 3: all these other things.
Speaker 4: Plus the money.
Speaker 1: You know, probably well, definitely the money wasn't it like
Speaker 1: it is today. But if you were probably out of
Speaker 1: the top what five, top top ten that you really
Speaker 1: didn't win anything.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. So what you had in fifty five,
Speaker 3: the guys that were in were the last five players
Speaker 3: to win the US Open, the players who had finished
Speaker 3: in the top ten in nineteen fifty four, they're in.
Speaker 3: And then you have the winners of the US Amateur
Speaker 3: and the British Amateur they're in. And I think that
Speaker 3: pretty much covers the criteria cheria for being exempt into
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifty five US Open. Field neck ends up
Speaker 3: being about seventeen players.
Speaker 5: The other.
Speaker 3: Going to try to do math here, other one hundred
Speaker 3: and forty five players have to qualify. These are pros
Speaker 3: and amateurs, club pros, guys who've been playing the tour.
Speaker 3: They're qualifying at locations around the country. They were total
Speaker 3: of over fifteen hundred that went to qualifying for one
Speaker 3: hundred and forty five spots around the country. Wow, Jack
Speaker 3: qualified in the Chicago sectional and there might have been
Speaker 3: I don't know, a hundred row a few more in
Speaker 3: that sectional and maybe six seven spots. So it was,
Speaker 3: as some of the players told me, it was just
Speaker 3: an honor. You had to be a great golfer just
Speaker 3: to play in the US. So a lot of guys
Speaker 3: felt like just getting to the tournament, playing in it
Speaker 3: was a huge honor, and they were just it said
Speaker 3: that they are a good golfer just being in the tournament.
Speaker 1: That actually could turn into a lot of work for
Speaker 1: them in those days, just to be able to say
Speaker 1: that they qualified for the tournament. They can become the
Speaker 1: pro for at a club for life, and really that
Speaker 1: that was probably a more secure profession at the time.
Speaker 1: If you talk about that being a profession than being
Speaker 1: a touring.
Speaker 3: Golfer, that's absolutely correct, because there just wasn't There just
Speaker 3: wasn't the money. Yeah, professional golf, playing tournament golf, and
Speaker 3: there were the purses ranged from this is total purses
Speaker 3: for the whole field. They might range from about ten
Speaker 3: thousand dollars to thirty thousand dollars the winner would get,
Speaker 3: so anywhere from two thousand dollars to five thousand dollars
Speaker 3: was the winning check. And all the guys, you know,
Speaker 3: guys that are in the Hall of Fame now that
Speaker 3: I've got to talk to, they said it was just tough.
Speaker 3: It was tough playing out there. You could, you know,
Speaker 3: I talked to Donold Palmer. You could make the cut
Speaker 3: and not earn a chat you had. There were only
Speaker 3: about thirty money places in a lot of tournaments, so
Speaker 3: you could make the cut and not get a check.
Speaker 3: Jack tells the story. Jack Fleck tells a story where
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think it might have been in
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifty three San Diego Open. He finished to
Speaker 3: think twenty seventh and his check for the week was
Speaker 3: thirteen dollars and seventy five cents. And after he paid
Speaker 3: his caddy for the week twenty one or twenty two dollars,
Speaker 3: he came out, you know, eight dollars in the hole.
Speaker 4: It's not good. That's not a way to make a living.
Speaker 1: And get hear why the wife would be going, uh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got this much time and then you're getting back
Speaker 1: to work.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So you know, even the top players, Ben Hogan, Sansny,
Speaker 3: Jimmy Demaret, Lloyd Mangrim, Currie middle Cough, Julius Sporls, these
Speaker 3: top players, they all had club jobs too, and some
Speaker 3: of them were more they Some of the top players,
Speaker 3: like Hogan, maybe didn't have to spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time at the club. Turn his check, But that did
Speaker 3: augment their income because there just wasn't a lot of
Speaker 3: money to be made at the tournaments. And then if
Speaker 3: you're a top player too, there were some endorsements and
Speaker 3: equipment contracts and things like that, and they weren't anywhere close. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the endorsement thing really didn't get going until what
Speaker 1: the nineties or something, when I guess Michael Jordan really
Speaker 1: put it over the top. But also was the Olympic
Speaker 1: the endorsements when the Olympics were in Los Angeles in
Speaker 1: eighty four and you wereros really got the official sponsor.
Speaker 1: So it was a very different. Sports marketing was a
Speaker 1: very different beast in nineteen fifty five than it is
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: It was, and a lot of these players too, made
Speaker 3: their money and made it from town to town and
Speaker 3: tournament to tournament by playing money games in between the tournaments,
Speaker 3: you know, playing the best player of that in that area,
Speaker 3: the best player at the club where they were playing,
Speaker 3: and they'd play in some big money games and they
Speaker 3: fell of them made a lot more money not when
Speaker 3: they weren't playing tournaments than when they were. You know,
Speaker 3: I was at I went down to Hickory, North Carolina
Speaker 3: just last week to see Jack Fleck in some of
Speaker 3: these other legends, because they were up there playing a
Speaker 3: pro am at Hickory, which is where the Champions Tour
Speaker 3: event was. Fred Funk won yesterday. But I was sitting
Speaker 3: next to a guy who I don't know if he's
Speaker 3: he's a good friend to Doug Sanders. And Doug Sanders
Speaker 3: was a great player a little later era than Black.
Speaker 3: He came along war in the late fifties and early sixties,
Speaker 3: and he won. He won a lot of tournaments, and
Speaker 3: he very nearly won the British Open. He missed a
Speaker 3: short putt at Saint Andrews in nineteen seventy and he
Speaker 3: ended up in a playoff with Jack Nicholson lost. That's
Speaker 3: what a lot of people remember about Doug Sanders.
Speaker 4: But sounds like another book for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this fellow I met speaking of this income situation
Speaker 3: back in those days, he told me that Doug Sanders
Speaker 3: made a lot more money playing Jen Rummy than he
Speaker 3: was playing golf because he would make he said, numbers
Speaker 3: like twenty five thirty fifty thousand dollars playing Jen Rummy
Speaker 3: when he wasn't out on the golf course. So That's
Speaker 3: just one example. But they they hustled, you know, because
Speaker 3: he was just a.
Speaker 1: Guy looking for a game, doesn't matter what it was, right,
Speaker 1: he was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a lot of them were like that.
Speaker 4: Interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 1: So now there's a couple of ways I want to
Speaker 1: go with this and I and I want to see
Speaker 1: which you're more comfortable with starting because I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to get you to do both.
Speaker 4: I want to go talk about.
Speaker 1: The different people that you interviewed and their recollections of
Speaker 1: that weekend and how things went. But I also would
Speaker 1: love if you could take us through now it was
Speaker 1: it a three or four day tournament at that time?
Speaker 3: It was a three day tournament which ended up having
Speaker 3: a fourth day because of the playoffs.
Speaker 1: Right, So when they but they would play four rounds
Speaker 1: over the three days.
Speaker 3: Right, they play That's right, they played four rounds over
Speaker 3: the three days. Right, they played thirty six on the
Speaker 3: final day.
Speaker 4: Unbelievable. And Ben Hogan now has to walk.
Speaker 1: That thirty six holes too, which is for him, it's
Speaker 1: painful enough just to walk a golf course. Let Loane
Speaker 1: walk thirty six holes. Lead Loan walk thirty six holes
Speaker 1: in San Francisco at the Olympic Club, which is not
Speaker 1: what you call a flat golf course.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't easy for him to walk, and he
Speaker 3: kind of complained. I mean, his legs tired, they were stiff.
Speaker 3: It wasn't easy to walk that course because it's definitely
Speaker 3: sloping terrain.
Speaker 1: So I would love so the part two of that
Speaker 1: was not only talk about the people that you interviewed
Speaker 1: in the research that you did for the book, but
Speaker 1: to go each day through the tournament and what was
Speaker 1: going on, and what were the high points and the
Speaker 1: low points that led us to that final day when
Speaker 1: you know, on the final round, when everyone thought it
Speaker 1: was over and that Hogan had just it was done,
Speaker 1: and the networks, you know, the broadcast element of this
Speaker 1: story is also very interesting. Yes it is, But so
Speaker 1: how how do you want to pursue that? Which way
Speaker 1: do you want to go with this?
Speaker 3: I'll go either way. I mean I can talk about
Speaker 3: who I talked to, I can I can try to
Speaker 3: go back through through it day by day and tell you,
Speaker 3: give you some snippets and tell you what what happened
Speaker 3: on those days, what was going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but I think I think that that's how
Speaker 1: we climax this story is the day by day. I
Speaker 1: would like to talk about your research process, the people
Speaker 1: you talk to and and what they remember about how
Speaker 1: the weekend proceeded. You know, one of the all time
Speaker 1: favorite T shirts I've ever heard about was this swim
Speaker 1: team who was a collegiate swim team that was highly
Speaker 1: decorated in the forties I think it was, and you know,
Speaker 1: every year they would get together in heavy union and
Speaker 1: I think for their one of the major anniversaries, they
Speaker 1: had T shirts that were made that said the older
Speaker 1: we get, the faster we were. And so I've got
Speaker 1: to believe that some of the stories that you heard
Speaker 1: were embellished a little more than others. Let's just put
Speaker 1: it that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know it was interesting for me, Fred because I
Speaker 3: hadn't written a book before, and so you know, in
Speaker 3: some cases you have to you have to sift through
Speaker 3: and try to understand is I don't know that any
Speaker 3: player I talked to was intentionally trying to embellish anything. Okay,
Speaker 3: I just think maybe through the fog of time you
Speaker 3: remember things differently. And first of all, this book really
Speaker 3: focuses on Jack Fleck, and of course Ben Hogan's gone,
Speaker 3: and I never got a chance to talk to him,
Speaker 3: and he wasn't much for talking about talking to writers
Speaker 3: and reporters late in his life anyway, So I probably
Speaker 3: would have never talked to Ben Hogan. But I can
Speaker 3: tell you that Jack Fleck was was totally straight with me.
Speaker 3: He's a very kind of black and white person. If
Speaker 3: he didn't remember something, he didn't try, He didn't try
Speaker 3: to sort of create something for me. He could just
Speaker 3: tell me. And one of the things that was interesting
Speaker 3: to me was Jack didn't really remember a lot of
Speaker 3: details about the first, second, and third rounds. He had
Speaker 3: some overall remembrances about playing maybe certain holes, and about
Speaker 3: overall feelings he had about how he played that day
Speaker 3: and what he shot, but he couldn't take me shot
Speaker 3: by shot or hole by hole in any of that.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting because I'm always blown away when athletes
Speaker 1: can go, oh, you know, and they say, well, what
Speaker 1: about what about that approach shot? I'm fourteen on Friday,
Speaker 1: and they're like they know exact factly what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: and I would look at him like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It blows me away that they can remember specifics like that.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad to hear that Fleck was going eh.
Speaker 3: He would just tell me I don't remember. And so
Speaker 3: one of the challenges for me as a writer was
Speaker 3: how do I, first of all, how do I recreate
Speaker 3: this tournament for everyone and what happened and make you
Speaker 3: feel like you were there. But secondly, since it's going
Speaker 3: to really focus on Fleck and Hogan, how do I
Speaker 3: tell you about Fleck's first two rounds when he couldn't
Speaker 3: tell me a lot about them. Fortunately, that's where my
Speaker 3: research came in. There was a lot of newspaper coverage
Speaker 3: the Olympic Club where I went, the historian had information.
Speaker 3: I was able to get my hands on the pairing
Speaker 3: sheet for that week, the hole by whole scores. I
Speaker 3: knew the course pretty well from what was written about it.
Speaker 3: It's a different course now, but it's you know, there
Speaker 3: are a lot of features about it that are the same,
Speaker 3: but it's a very different course in fifty five. I
Speaker 3: had a lot of good information, and plus the newspaper
Speaker 3: coverage told me things about Pluck in the first, second,
Speaker 3: or third rounds as well as the other players. So
Speaker 3: I used what I had and it was it was
Speaker 3: a considerable bob of information.
Speaker 4: Well Neil.
Speaker 1: I hate to interrupt you here, but we've kind of
Speaker 1: reached our time limit for the Golf Smarter podcast, and
Speaker 1: I would obviously I have a lot more questions because
Speaker 1: I've just set you up with telling us the story
Speaker 1: about that weekend. Could you stick around and we can
Speaker 1: do a part two and make this a member's only conversation.
Speaker 3: Sure, I'd love to.
Speaker 4: Awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1: So then let me let me remind the Golf Smarter
Speaker 1: audience and let you know that if you'd like to
Speaker 1: hear part two of this conversation and get the full
Speaker 1: story of that weekend as best we can determine from
Speaker 1: the stories that we're told to Neil. Neil Sagabel is
Speaker 1: the author of the book The Longest Shot, subtitled Jack Fleck,
Speaker 1: Ben Hogan and Proge Golf's Greatest Upset at.
Speaker 4: The nineteen fifty five US Open.
Speaker 1: It is available as a kendlebook correct as a digital yes,
Speaker 1: and it's also on hard hard copy as well, and
Speaker 1: we have it in our Golfer Smart at Golfsmarter dot com.
Speaker 1: So you can just go ahead and purchase it for
Speaker 1: yourself right there, whether you do the download version or
Speaker 1: you have it ordered as a gift for you or
Speaker 1: somebody else this holiday season, purchase the book. It's a
Speaker 1: great story, it's an amazing story, and it's timely, mainly
Speaker 1: because of the Olympic Club and the upsets and golf
Speaker 1: in general. So Neil, thank you for a green to
Speaker 1: stick around. Uh and I again encourage everyone to join
Speaker 1: golf Smarter for members only so you can hear part
Speaker 1: two of this conversation.
Speaker 4: Neil, you're sticking around right, I am.
Speaker 3: Thanks, thanks so much. I appreciate being on with you.
Speaker 1: It's time once again to welcome back Terry Kaylor, the
Speaker 1: CEO of score Golf, and it's our score Zone Short
Speaker 1: Game Academy. You can participate in this part of the program,
Speaker 1: and we encourage you to click on the score Zone
Speaker 1: Short Game Academy button at golfsmarter dot com and submit
Speaker 1: your question because if your question is answered on this
Speaker 1: segment by Terry, you will receive a money club of
Speaker 1: your choice, custom fit for you by score Golf, and
Speaker 1: Terry will give you more information. What do we mean
Speaker 1: by a money club? Because he just doesn't like to
Speaker 1: use the W word anymore. Terry, how are you welcome back?
Speaker 3: I'm great for it.
Speaker 5: How are you.
Speaker 4: I'm fine, Thank you very much for asking.
Speaker 1: So we get a question here today from Joe Dolan
Speaker 1: of WASI in Ohio, and he says, look, if I'm
Speaker 1: say about eighty yards from the pin with an open
Speaker 1: green in front of me, and I'm between clubs a
Speaker 1: sixty degree or a fifty six degree in between those two,
Speaker 1: is it better for me to hit a hard sixty
Speaker 1: degree club or it takes some off of the fifty
Speaker 1: six degree And that's his question. My comment is, I've
Speaker 1: never even understood how to take it off or hit
Speaker 1: it hard. You know. It's like to me the swing,
Speaker 1: if you swing harder, you're swinging that's you don't want
Speaker 1: to swing harder, you know. And well, so I'd love
Speaker 1: to get your feedback on this too.
Speaker 5: Well. I think the concept of hitting wedges hard is
Speaker 5: there's something you never want to do. And one of
Speaker 5: the things about hitting your high loft golf clubs and
Speaker 5: I said the debut order, but because he's playing wedges and
Speaker 5: he's not playing scoring gloves, but shameless plug anyway, So
Speaker 5: when you're trying to hit, when you're trying to hit
Speaker 5: a high lofted club harder, invariably what's going to happen
Speaker 5: is you increase your club edge speed. All that weight
Speaker 5: low along the club is going to launch that ball
Speaker 5: higher and it's going to end up going shorter. And
Speaker 5: I think most of your readers can say, yeah, I
Speaker 5: mean I remember that I was trying to kind of
Speaker 5: get on that fifty six a little bit, or get
Speaker 5: on that gap wedge a little bit, and I felt
Speaker 5: the ball hit a little higher on the clubhead and
Speaker 5: I swung harder, but the ball went higher and shorter.
Speaker 5: These clubs are really hard to control distance with when
Speaker 5: you get more than about an eighty percent swing, So
Speaker 5: you know, you really want to put the control pace
Speaker 5: swing on your high loft golf clubs just in general,
Speaker 5: regardless whether it's a sixty or a fifty four or
Speaker 5: fifty eight or fifty two, whatever it is in your hand,
Speaker 5: you put a high loft club in your hand, throttle
Speaker 5: back your swing speed. That your full swing needs to
Speaker 5: be refined from what it is with a seven iron
Speaker 5: or a five iron or away or hybrid or driver,
Speaker 5: particularly so as you so the first part of developing
Speaker 5: good short range performance is to get the right arsenal
Speaker 5: of clubs in your in your bag, and Joe talked
Speaker 5: about it. He's caught between a fifty six and a sixty.
Speaker 5: Get the right cup, have four degree gaps, maybe five
Speaker 5: if you're a shorter hitter, and then go out and
Speaker 5: learn what really is a textbook fifty six, a textbook sixty,
Speaker 5: a textbook fifty two, whatever lofts you're carrying, find out
Speaker 5: what distance you can produce with that control to swing
Speaker 5: rather than think about hitting it, taking something off, as
Speaker 5: Joe says, or hitting hard. You know, the lower club harder.
Speaker 5: I wrote a book number of years ago, called it
Speaker 5: a little booklet called a score Method, and what I
Speaker 5: showed you how to do in that. It's free for
Speaker 5: download on our site at scoreedoff dot com. You can
Speaker 5: poke around, you can find this download. But what the
Speaker 5: score method is all about. Once you have understood your
Speaker 5: quote full swing distance of these clubs, you can then
Speaker 5: dissect those and you should have twelve to thirteen fourteen
Speaker 5: yard gaps in your full swing with your scoring clubs.
Speaker 5: Then you can dissect those gaps by gripping, by changing
Speaker 5: your hand position. So if you grip down on that
Speaker 5: fifty six, for example, a half an inch to three
Speaker 5: quarters of an inch you're going to see about three
Speaker 5: yards come off of that Off of that distance, go
Speaker 5: down an inch, you're going to see about cut in
Speaker 5: half the gap between that club and the next lower club.
Speaker 5: So now you've taken your three or four high loft
Speaker 5: clubs and you've given yourself six or eight quote full
Speaker 5: swing distances. Now you've dissected your gaps. You can then
Speaker 5: dissect those gaps a little more by learning how to
Speaker 5: open the face just a little bit or close the
Speaker 5: face just a little bit. It adds a little off,
Speaker 5: adds a little spin there.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 5: I wrote this booklet called the Score Method that really
Speaker 5: dives into deep detail on how to do this and Joe,
Speaker 5: what it does for you and for all the listeners
Speaker 5: out there is it takes away to take a little
Speaker 5: off or jump on it a little bit and you say, hey,
Speaker 5: I'm a eighty yards. I know that's a fifty six
Speaker 5: degree grip down a half an inch. Just hit it
Speaker 5: and it's going to be within two or three yards
Speaker 5: of that eighty number, or you know it's seventy one yards,
Speaker 5: and I know that's a sixty degree grip down an
Speaker 5: inch with the facehood. It just to hear and you
Speaker 5: learn how to change the relationship between you're swinging the
Speaker 5: club to build these yardages in versus take a little
Speaker 5: off or jump on it a little bit.
Speaker 4: So, Terry, how.
Speaker 1: Does this all fall into the feel versus method? You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of conversation, there's even a lot of
Speaker 1: questions that we've been receiving from people on this very topic.
Speaker 4: When it comes to the short game.
Speaker 1: You know, when you have wedge, pitching, chipping, even putting,
Speaker 1: the feel versus method, how does that?
Speaker 4: How do you interpret that?
Speaker 5: Well? I think first of all, let's talk about feel.
Speaker 5: You have to have some feel of the golf and
Speaker 5: the golf how the ball comes off the club. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's just essential to golf, and you get that through
Speaker 5: hitting a lot of golf shots. You also have to
Speaker 5: have a method that you can rely on. I mean,
Speaker 5: Dave Felts has got a very complex method for nine o'clock,
Speaker 5: eight o'clock, all this kind of stuff. And you can
Speaker 5: spend a lot of time learning that if you want,
Speaker 5: I take a little simpler approach because most people aren't
Speaker 5: going to spend the amount of time, or if they're
Speaker 5: not going to spend the amount of time, and I
Speaker 5: look at say, learn what I'm just talking about with
Speaker 5: the score method, learn your bractet of full swing yardages,
Speaker 5: and then go and practice a half swing. Uh, and
Speaker 5: just learn that this is kind of the field thing.
Speaker 5: And to me, a half wing is you know, if
Speaker 5: you're a right handed player, your left arm goes back
Speaker 5: to parallel to the ground, so your your hands are
Speaker 5: about shoulder high, you know, behind you, and that half swen.
Speaker 5: You know, you can take your golf clubs and you
Speaker 5: can practice that half swen and see what your sixty
Speaker 5: does with a half wing and you're fifty six, and
Speaker 5: you're fifty two, and even down into your pitch, you're nine,
Speaker 5: and again, chart those yardages and know you know that's
Speaker 5: a half swing sixty laid open a little this you
Speaker 5: consist your scoring range performance. The field comes in when
Speaker 5: you get down less than that, and that's really letting
Speaker 5: your ie ND coordination take out. And what I like
Speaker 5: to do is hit most of the of my pit
Speaker 5: shots with some to a half swing because it's long
Speaker 5: enough to be with them. And I developed a little
Speaker 5: method that I've shared with people and they really like it.
Speaker 5: And that is once you really learned this half swing.
Speaker 5: Now you can inject what I call the third element,
Speaker 5: and that's really the field element, the speed element. So
Speaker 5: what's really a fun exercise and it's very eye opening
Speaker 5: and it's and it's it adds a lot of feratility
Speaker 5: to your short range performance. Is to go practice that
Speaker 5: half swing at three different speeds. And I use driving
Speaker 5: as kind as kind of an analzi. So I have
Speaker 5: a half wing at country road speed, which is fifty
Speaker 5: miles an hour and fifty five miles an hour well
Speaker 5: under highway speed. It's not full proddle. It's just a nice,
Speaker 5: you know of a power pace, but well under control.
Speaker 5: And then I practiced that halssling at what I call
Speaker 5: city driving, so it's the same half wing, but it's
Speaker 5: a slower pace, it's more careful, it's more cautious like
Speaker 5: when you're driving in the city. And then I have
Speaker 5: school zone, so I'm still going into a half wing,
Speaker 5: but I'm slowing everything down to the very careful, precise
Speaker 5: driving I would do in the school zone where little
Speaker 5: kids might jump out in front of me. So if
Speaker 5: that's to me, the way to gauge feel is to
Speaker 5: think a feel as a pace.
Speaker 3: Rather than how hard to hit it. Think about how what.
Speaker 5: Your pace of your swing is going to be. So
Speaker 5: now you have created with a fun exercise. It didn't
Speaker 5: take hours and hours. You created multiple distances with each
Speaker 5: club through this full swing exercise of ripping down and
Speaker 5: laying the face openness to air. You've created another whole
Speaker 5: set of yardages with your half swing at regular full
Speaker 5: swing speed. And then another few things you can do
Speaker 5: by burying your swing pace from this country road to city,
Speaker 5: driving the school zone. That's a lot for one little
Speaker 5: podcast session for it. But I think that there's a
Speaker 5: big picture here of how to build a system that
Speaker 5: uses the field you brought to the golf course because
Speaker 5: everybody has eye hand coordination. Everybody has that, and you've
Speaker 5: used those qualities that you have and just a little
Speaker 5: bit of regimentation in hand position on the grip and
Speaker 5: learning this half swing and developing these free paces there
Speaker 5: are only two if you want that you develop a
Speaker 5: faster pace and slower pace, and all of a sudden
Speaker 5: you have a whole arsenal of shots to use inside
Speaker 5: nine iron range.
Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, thank you. I can't wait to go out
Speaker 1: and start trying this now, Yami, we've talked we've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about We've had talk about tour tempo on
Speaker 1: here numerous times, and last time he was on, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I'm blanking on his name right now, but last
Speaker 1: time he was on It'll come to me. We talked
Speaker 1: about how you know the rhythm, the pace, the tempo
Speaker 1: of the short game is a one to one versus
Speaker 1: the three to one that he has on a full swing.
Speaker 1: And I realized in practicing that that in my short game,
Speaker 1: especially in chipping, I speed things up, and when you
Speaker 1: speed things up, you also get a tighter grip, your tents,
Speaker 1: your shoulders up. But when I slow it down and
Speaker 1: get that nice one to one pace, bump, bomp, bomp,
Speaker 1: you know, everything works a little bit better. And so
Speaker 1: combining that you know lesson with what you've just provided
Speaker 1: just kind of cleans.
Speaker 4: It all up for me.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm glad I was able to do that. I
Speaker 5: think that the thing to keep in mind, the closer
Speaker 5: you get to the flag, the slower you work, it
Speaker 5: becomes more of a precision game. And I'd always tell
Speaker 5: the story. I think I've already breed your listeners with
Speaker 5: the idea of painting a house. But when you're laying
Speaker 5: on the big areas of paint, you work fast, you
Speaker 5: work with the powers prayer, you work with a big
Speaker 5: power roller, and it's just get the paint on and
Speaker 5: you work with speed and power. That's your tea game
Speaker 5: and your long ball and even in your middle irons.
Speaker 5: The closer you get to doing the trim work to
Speaker 5: finish off that bank job, the slower and more meticulous
Speaker 5: you are. And so I kind of like on that
Speaker 5: to the way to play a hole of golf. Is
Speaker 5: that the closer you get to the flag, the lower
Speaker 5: and slower and more precise you get, the more meticulous
Speaker 5: you get, because you know you're trying to get it
Speaker 5: in the hole. It's just kind of nice thing to
Speaker 5: keep you thinking. Kind of slow around the greens is
Speaker 5: just slow everything down?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well that's driving.
Speaker 5: In a parking lot versus the freeway. How that there
Speaker 5: you go.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of stuck on the painting thing.
Speaker 1: So that is our score Zone Short Game Academy with
Speaker 1: Terry Taylor, and that's we do on each Golf Smarter episode.
Speaker 1: So we thank score Golf and Terry, we thank you
Speaker 1: very much for the support of Golf Smarter podcasts. Helping
Speaker 1: us stay alive and really enjoyed the lesson.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, bud Well.
Speaker 5: We always enjoyed that look forward to the next show.