Speaker 1: For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and fifty four,
published on October twenty three, twenty twelve.
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Speaker 3: But when Hogan finished, he shot a seventy in the
final round. It was his best score out of the
four rounds. There were very few scores under seventy on
that course. It was so difficult, and everybody thought he'd
want When he finishes, it's about five after five TVs
just come on and Gene Service and comes rushing across
the green with the microphone to congratulate Hogan and interview
him and basically said, you know, you've won your fifth open.
And he even asked Hogan to hold up hand his
five fingers to signify five. And what I understand is
that Hogan started to do that and then he caught himself.
He realized, in a wait of a second, it's not
over and he said that, and he finished the interviewed.
It was a very short interview, and he walked up
the slope to the clubhouse and into the locker room
to wait for the official end of the tournament. People
thought it was over. He was five shots ahead of
Speed and Boll who were tied for second. There's no
one else out on the golf course who really even
has a mathematical chance except this wine player Jack flex.
Speaker 1: Hard too on the greatest upset at the nineteen fifty
five US Open.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers
and golf professionals to help lower your score. It's worked
for your host, Fred.
Speaker 1: Green, Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only. Neil,
it's good, thank you. And we had prepped everybody that
we're just gonna go ahead and record straight through and
make the part two seamless, so we can even have
a good train of thought. Well, computers are our friends.
Except for today and everything that we recorded disappeared, and
so here we are. The Luckily Neil was available and
we were able to record this just the moments before
we were going to publish this episode. So if we
are redundant in any way, I seriously apologize, but I'm
going to try my hardest not to ask the same
questions as I did on episode number one. So, Neil,
let's talk about your book, The Longest Shot, Jack Fleck,
Ben Hogan and pro Golf's greatest upset at the nineteen
fifty five US Open. I wanted to see if we
could go over like how the tournament went by round
and knowing that in nineteen fifty five at the US Open,
they played four rounds, right, they.
Speaker 3: Played, Yeah, they played four rounds, and I remember we
were touching on this a little bit in part one.
They played four rounds in three days, so they played
thirty six sols the final day, and they actually did
that up until nineteen sixty five. Sixty four was the
last time they did that, and that was after kin
Venturi won at Congressional in this terrible heat and he
practically collapsed. And after that they went to four rounds
in four days. But they're still playing thirty six on
the final day in nineteen fifty five, and of course
in this particular US Open, it went an extra day
because they needed a playoff, right.
Speaker 1: And in that four day, and this is the thing,
that blows me away. So Ben Hogan was not well.
I guess he was fully recovered, but still he was
probably in a lot of pain from the accident or
still sufferings from some pain. And he had to walk
the entire thirty six holes. And you wouldn't call the
Olympic Club in San Francisco a flat golf course.
Speaker 3: No, it was not an easy walk for him. And
he he would get back to his hotel at night
and rest. He'd crawl into bed and rest for the
next day's round, and then when he got up in
the morning he did the same thing. I think ever
since the accident. He had this roughly a two hour
regimen of prepping himself to go out to the golf
course and play a tournament round of golf. And that
was soaking in a hot hot water, bats up for
a period of time, and then he rubbed a linament
on his legs, he wrapped his legs and elastic vantages,
and he kind of suited up almost like a you
think of a of a football player or something. But
that's what he had to do to go out and
play golf. And he walked. You know, players told me,
including Jack Fleck, he He looked a little gimpy. He
had a little bit of a limp and his legs
get hurt and they they would get stiff. But that's
that's what he had to do to play. And he
was he was definitely a gamer. He was he didn't
want to go another eighteen that's for sure. When they
got to the place where it was there's going to
be a playoff, but he went. He went to thirty
six holes with the final day and he played a
really great tournament.
Speaker 1: And you were just talking about, you know, talking to
the people who are the people you know that were
there that you had the chance to talk to in
doing research for this book. What kind of additional information
beyond Jack Fleck, What kind of additional information and insights
were you able to get in doing the research for
the book.
Speaker 3: Well, I actually flipped to the page in the acknowledgment,
so I'd feeble to recall the players I talked to.
But I talked to airy Ball, who is he's over
one hundred, he's still alive. He played there. He's been
around so long that he was friend with Bobby Jones.
Speaker 1: Kid. You not wow?
Speaker 3: He played at the British Shopen in nineteen thirty when
Bobby Jones won what they ended up calling the Grand Slam,
so very ball was there. Tommy Bolt, I talked to him.
Tommy died I think in eight dal Finzcherwald, Doug Ford,
Fred Hawkins, Walker Enman Jr. Who was a good friend
the Jackson played within the first two rounds, another friend
named Mike Crack, Geene Letler, Shelley Mayfield, Arnold Palmer, Bob Rosberg,
and Larry Thomasino. So there were some players, definitely, there's
still probably about a dozen or so players around that
played that tournament, that played in the nineteen fifty five
US Open, And there were a few that I didn't
get a chance to talk to, and there were a
few who have passed on since I talked to them.
And I was so grateful to be able to talk
to Tommy Bolt, who's a Hall of Famer, and Bob Rosberg,
who you know some of your I guess forty and
over listers will remember as a long time on course
reporter for ABC. He also passed away not terribly long
after I talked to him. And then another club and
touring professional named Shelley Mayfield, who in his day was
quite a good player and was also a pretty good
friend of Ben Hogan's later on. So it was very
helpful to be able to talk to them and very
interesting to get their perspective on the tournament, this particular
tournament on Hogan on the golf course, and how that
opened set up, and how difficult it was to play
there that week, and the.
Speaker 1: Stories they were telling you. I can't imagine that Jack
Fleck was a big part of their story from what
they remember of that weekend until the end.
Speaker 3: That's true. Some of them knew of Jack. They knew,
you know, as we talked about in the first part,
Jack had been playing tournament golf, but he wasn't well known,
so they might have recognized his name, they might have
seen him around in tournaments. But guys like Rosberg, who
was a pretty good player, he was fairly young. He
was he was younger than Jack at that time, and
he was kind of trapped as one of the up
and comers. He said, he told me, he said, I
didn't really know Jack at that time. I didn't know
Jack Fleck. He said, I knew who he was, but
I hadn't really been around him much. And he got
to know him a lot better later on. In fact,
just kind of a little side note.
Speaker 1: I love the side notes, love the sad notes.
Speaker 3: Jack's last victory on the PGA Tour, he had three
was he beat Bob Rosberg in the Bakersfield Open, and
I think his nineteen sixty one in a playoff. So
he had to our victories, and one of them came
against Rossi, and interestingly too, all of Jack's wins came
in playoffs. But now Arnold Palmer, getting back to who
I talked to and what they knew of Jack, Arnold
told me that he did know Jack, and that kind
of surprised, but he said, I knew who Jack Fluck
was and I played golf with him prior to that week.
But what he told me was he said, we all
knew Jack was a good player. You know, he was
gracious in his comments. He acknowledged that Jack could play,
but he said, you know, none of us really thought
of him as being an open contender, which made sense
because Jack had only played in two opens. He missed
the cut and one the other one he'd finished fifty seconds,
So he's just kind of coming out of nowhere in
a sense, and some of the other players A couple
of his pals were Walker Im and junior Mike Krack,
who are discussed in the book. Walker is really kind
of a prominent character in the book. They're rookies on
the tour and they're kind of no namers too really,
so uh, most most all these players, they were caught
off guard by Jack's performance.
Speaker 1: As well, And that's what makes it such a great
story because it was it's just the little train that good.
I mean, he just came out of nowhere. How many
times did Jack win on the tour.
Speaker 3: Well, he ended up winning. He won three times, and
this was his first win.
Speaker 1: This is first of three wins on the tour, and
each of the three you're saying we're all in playoffs.
Speaker 3: They were all in playoffs. He won the thick five
US Open, sort of coming out of nowhere and shocking
Pogan in the world really, and then he won his
next win. He had a bit of a slide after
the Open. His game went into decline.
Speaker 1: In what sense and no please expand on that.
Speaker 3: Well, he I think like even like you'll see with
some players nowadays, he did have some opportunities after he
won the Open to do exhibitions. He went to New York.
He was able to sign some endorsement deals. He was
like the nineteen fifties version of an instant famous athlete
and celebrity for a period of time, and as someone
who'd come from fairly humble means, he felt like for
his famili's sake, he needed to do what he could
to caplies on it. And it was estimated at that
time that US Open was worth maybe something like fifty
to seventy five thousand dollars in terms of opportunities, financial
opportunities of course, income exhibitions, endorsement deals and the like. Well,
that was pretty good money. And so he wanted to
be able to do that stuff. And I think, like
a lot of players, he thought he'd be able to
maintain his game. And he was trumpeted for a while
in the press too. Is this this player who'd beaten
the greatest player in the game. But it got him
off track somewhat, it got him out of his routine,
and it definitely affected his game. So he doesn't his
game doesn't really He goes off the tracks somewhat, and
once things kind of die down, he really starts to
get back on track. In the late fifties, and in
nineteen sixty he got his second win on tour at
the Phoenix Open, and that arguably was his best year
in golf in terms of his play, even though he
didn't he didn't win something like the US Open that year,
he was very competitive and he probably could have easily
won three times that year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've talked to one other PGA player I'm blanking
on his name right now that I got a chance
to play with him. But he played for twenty years
on the tour and he was complaining he only won
four times, and it's like you won four times on
the tour. Yeah, but I played in almost two hundred events.
But so when you say it was his best year,
he had top five top ten finishes that year. Not
only winning the Phoenix Opened was his third win also
in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 3: He won his third win in the following year in
nineteen sixty one. But this is one of interesting things
about trying to figure out more about Jack Fleck and
even some of these other players who I didn't know
as well. You know, I'd heard of Tommy Bolton versus
Ogan and Snead and Fince Jerwold, some of these guys
i'd heard of, but Fleck and Hawkins and these some
of these other players who were they were good enough
players to play out there, you just haven't heard much
about them because they didn't win a lot. And then
what you find out was that they had some near misses.
And Jack, if you look at his PGA tour record,
I think he had over two hundred and forty starts,
and he had something he had over forty top tens.
I've got it right here. He had five. He had
five seconds, so five runner up finishes in his career,
six thirds and forty one top tens. And one of
the interesting things I think, at least when you read
this book, the fifty five Open and the dramatic playoffs
and all of that, how that all came about is detailed,
and that in itself, I think is a terrific story.
But there are also a few chapters that follow it,
and we follow Hogan and Fleck after there's an aftermath,
and I tell the story that some of your listeners
will probably know about the nineteen sixty US Open play
to Cherry Hills, which is where Palmer came back in
the last round from seven strokes behind and one that
was maybe that might have been the greatest US Open
ever played, just because it was so exciting. There were
so many guys that had a chance. But I detail
that Open as well because Hogan and Fleck are on
the scene and with literally a few holes left to play,
they're right there. They're at one point, Hogan, Fleck, and
Palmer are tie in the final round with you know,
not many holes left. A lot of people probably might
not know that Jack Fleck very nearly won another Open
and Hogan had another. He had at least two more
very good opportunities to win that record fifth Open after
you lost the Jack at Olympic in nineteen fifty five.
So it's it's fascinating, really and I wanted to be
able to tell that because myself, when I researched this,
you finished the playoff and you reached this this exciting finish,
and it's a tragedy for Hogan and it's this great
achievement for the underdog Fleck. And then to me, at least,
I thought, what happens to Jack Fleck after he wins
the Open? What happens to Hogan Logan at the ceremony afterwards?
In an Olympic in nineteen fifty five announced his retirement
from golf. WHOA, he was really disappointed, but that retirement didn't.
Speaker 1: Last very long obviously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was back to the Masters the next spring.
He just you know, he lived to play tournament golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but he was deflated. So when Palmer won
in nineteen sixty, it was And again I really think
that we covered this the first time. We did part
two of this conversation, so I want to get into
it in some depth. And please, if you remember me
talking about it in the first part, stopped me. But
in nineteen sixty, when Palmer wins it, the media coverage
is dramatically different than it was in nineteen fifty five,
especially the television coverage, correct.
Speaker 3: I think, so I didn't look into data as closely
as I looked at fifty five.
Speaker 1: Well, then let's talk about the nineteen fifty five. What
television coverage was in nineteen fifty five, and what happened
specifically with the US Open that year on TV.
Speaker 3: I think one of the fascinating things about this tournament
was with NBC covering it. It's the second national telecasts
of the US Open, the third national telecasts of any
golf tournament, and they have an hour of coverage on
the final day, which is Saturday. It's not Sunday, it's Saturday.
They're playing thirty six goals and Lindsey Nelson is the
announced and Gene Sarazon, golf legend who had won the
US Open, is doing the color commentary. And it's a lot.
It's definitely primitive television by our modern view of TV.
But they have an hour of coverage and it's from
five o'clock to six o'clock Pacific time. And Hogan. We
may have talked about this before, but what was interesting
back in those days TV didn't dictate as much how
these tournaments were played and even how the pairings were
set up and what went on. And at that time
was when you went out on the final day as
a player, whoever they paired you in the third round,
you just kept going with that guy. They didn't repair
after the third round, which the fourth round has played
the same day in the afternoon, so it wasn't they
didn't reorder anyone or repair anyone based on score. So
Jack is actually behind Jack Fleck is behind Hogan. Jack
Fleck's paired with Jean Leitler, They're only about three groups
behind him, and Hogan's paired with a fellow named Bob Harris,
and he finishes an hour before Jack Fleck. And when
he finishes, the television coverage is just coming on. So
it works out really well. And I have a sense
that maybe the USGA had Snead, who was up there too,
in contention until he sort of faltered a little bit
down the stretch. Snead and Hogan and some of the
other those players had them. They're top set up so
that they would finish during the television cutach. But when
Hogan finished, he shot a seventy in the final round.
It was his best score out of the four rounds.
There were very few scores under seventy on that course.
It was so difficult, and everybody thought he'd won. When
he finishes, it's about five after five TVs just come on,
and Jean says and comes rushing across the green with
a microphone to congratulate Hogan and interview him, and basically
more or less said, you know, you've won your fifth Open.
And he even asked Hogan to hold up his hand
to signify five, hold up his hand in his five
thinkers and what I understand is that Hogan started to
do that, and then he caught himself. He realized, you know,
wait a second, you know this, it's not over, And
he said that and he went. He finished the interviewed
it with a very short interview, and he walked up
the slope to the clubhouse and into the locker room
to wait for the official end of the tournament and
got an ovation, and people thought it was over. He
was five shots a head of Snead and both who
were tied for second. Those are the scores in the clubhouse.
There's no one else out on the golf course who
has a chance, who really even has a mathematical chance,
except this one player. Jack flex.
Speaker 1: How many strokes was fleck back when Hogan finished? Approximately?
Speaker 3: Jack, You know, they didn't. I really sort of had
to try to piece that together with the research because
they didn't have the sort of the modern scoring in
the real time scoring that they do now. But as
best I could figure out Hogan's finishing and flecks around
the eleventh or calf fole, and he's about an hour
behind Hogan. And at that point when Jack finally got
confirmation that Hogan was finished, and in the clubhouse at
two eighty seven. There was a marshall out on the
golf course with a walkie talkie and he came and
sold Jack when Jack came off the thirteenth green, And.
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, walkie talkies in nineteen fifty five
was a two tin cans with a string in between, right, Well,
you know, I.
Speaker 3: Think the winks were actually these were actually pretty good
walkie talkies because they were made by the Motorola Company,
and I think they were like army walkie talkies. Okay,
this represented somewhat advanced technology for that time time period.
But Jack finds out when he walks off the thirteenth
green that Hogan is in the clubhouse at two eighty seven,
and Jack is one shot behind as he walks to
the fourteenth tee and this marshal named George Tompkins, he's
a volunteer. He got an acquainted with Jack during the
week and he's kind of excited and he says to Jack,
all you need is a birdie over this last stretch
and you can tie Hogan. And Gene Lettler, who was
Jack's playing partner that whole day and is a very reserved,
quiet guy, doesn't usually say a lot. He overheard that
comment and he said, Drolie, he said, he'll need a
few cars too.
Speaker 1: So he just he needs over the last six seven holes,
he needs one birdy and to par out the rest
and he's now he'll get to be tied or that'll
give him the lead.
Speaker 3: When he steps on the fourteenth key, he needs he
needs one bird in the rest. Pars to ty Hogan
the time. Okay, yeah, and so this is over the
last five holes of a really brutal golf course.
Speaker 1: So take us through the last five holes, because the
last couple of holes at Olympic are just deadly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they were. They were playing seventeen that year
as a par five. No excuse me, it was a
part five.
Speaker 1: But they playing its part four.
Speaker 3: Change that it played it as a par four, and
it was. This was a This was a very difficult
finishing stretch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it still is.
Speaker 3: First the first hole is fourteenth, it's a par four,
and Jack hit a tremendous gas pumped up, the adrenaline
is pumping, and he had a drive, a beautiful drive,
and he hit it farther than he had been hitting
it all week because he's pumped up, and he gets
out there and he doesn't want to know. He doesn't
know what to hit on his second shot, and he
can't make himself hit a seminar rom. So he hits
a six, and he tries to ease off on it
a little bit, and when he does that, he pulls it,
hits in a bunker. He comes out of the bunker
pretty well, but he's got it. It's not stiff by
any by any means, and he misses probably something like
a six foot part. So he bo he's fourteen. Now
he needs two birdies and two bought powers to tie.
Oh my god, And he said at that time, people
are Hogan's done. A lot of people have seen his finished.
There's a lot of excitement. It seems like the tournament's over.
But people start to hear that there's one player out
on the course. It has a chance. Jack has been
playing pretty well and gallery is growing. But when he
makes Bogan fourteen, he said that he noticed that the
gallery they didn't move. They didn't He didn't people weren't moving.
Towards the fifteenth tee, he and he thought to himself,
they think I'm through, you know they you know they
think that I can't do it now. So he goes
to the fifteenth and it's a part three and he
hits It's it's not very long, it's about a middle
iron shot, and he hits it. He hits a good shot.
He puts it on the green, he has about it.
He has a medium length pot and he rolls it
in for a birdy. And so now he's he needs
one more BIRDI and two parts. And he goes to sixteenth,
which is a long part five. He was playing over
six hundred yards. Even back in nineteen fifty five. Jack
Booms's drive booms of three wood, and he still has
about a nine iron to the green, and he puts
it on just the edge of the green and has
about twenty five foot part and he rolls it up close.
It taps in the first par So he goes to
the seventeenth, which is playing the toughest of any hole
at Olympics this week.
Speaker 1: Now, I have to assume by this time, when he
steps up to number seventeen, the TV broadcast only one
hour on NBC is completed. They have crowned him the victor.
All the East Coast reporters are here in San Francisco.
They've got to get their byline in and they've probably
said it's over. Hogan wins again, right, So it's like
a finga complete Everybody is pretty much resigned to the
fact that Hogan's won it, and you have the guy's
on his way up but there's no shot, and so
the presses are running, right, they're saying that Hogan's winning
has won.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've got that's that's pretty close to what happened. Well,
the writers or they're in the press room typing up
their stories because they're on the you know, it's it's tough.
It's tough being on the West coast because you have
those East Coast deadlines, and they're they want to get
their stories written and transmit it via Western Union. I
think that's the way they did it then, and everyone
thinks Hogan's won, and then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also, wait a minute, do he defeats Truman?
That wasn't that far before that either. I mean, one
of the biggest gaffes in print journalism history was, right,
do we defeats Truman? Wasn't it around nineteen fifty or
forty eight? Yeah? Right, So now they're like you'd think
they'd want to like hold off a little bit, they'd
want before they start printing stuff that is not necessarily true. No, And.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think Jack came in. I think he
actually finished. My estimate was he finished around six fifteen
local time. That the telecast went off there at six o'clock,
which was nine o'clock at the east, and that was
prime time, and whatever was on primetime television back in
those days was coming on for for East Coast viewers
and Midwest.
Speaker 1: Viewers, and it was Saturday night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he was somewhere on the seventeenth hole. He was.
He might have been all the way to the green.
But there's a conversation recorded in the book between Lindsey
Nelson and I don't know if it's it's a TV
man either. It might have been the director or producer
on the scene for NBC, and they had this conversation
and the fella's name was Tom Gallery and he he
was when NBC went off the air and Lindsay Nelson
essentially announced Hogan as the winner and winning his records
at the US Open. This solo Gallery was uneasy about it,
and he has Lindsay Nelson was coming down the platform.
It wasn't a great big platform. But he sat up
on this platform. Gallery said to him, you think this
guy Fleck can birdie the last hole? To Ty Hogan
and Lindsay Nelson said, I don't think so. There's just
too much pressure on him.
Speaker 1: That's great, Yeah, that's what everyone thought.
Speaker 3: Sure there. In fact, there was a writer for the
Fan Francisco Chronicle who he just threw some odds on it. Now,
this is before Fleck got to the eighteenth tee. But
when Fleck was out there and he needed a couple
of birdies and a couple of pars or one birdy
in three parts, he said, he's got about an eight
thousand to one shot. This guy from Iowa that no
one knows anything about. All these great players were having
a really tough time getting through this closing stretch of
holes just making parks. It was really difficult. You're looking
at a course where the average score was well, I
think I mentioned to you before, only only fourteen players
broke an aggregate score of three hundred, and the first
round only half the field broke eighty. It's a very
difficult golf course. Right, Jack came in and he tied
the best score of the tournament. On that final round
he shot at sixty seven to catch hope.
Speaker 1: What do you do on seventeen and eighteen? How did
he end up doing? Where did he make the next Bertie?
Speaker 3: Well? Seventeen Again, was playing extremely hard and a lot
of players, believe it or not, we're talking nineteen fifty five,
we're talking wooden headed clubs, and these guys were good players.
But this was a four hundred and sixty one yard
part four the second shots up a slope. Most of
these players were not putting the ball on the green
in two shots. That's how hard it was. Jack hit
a great hit, a big drive, and he hit a
three wood and he knocked it on the green and
he very nearly made the putt for birdie. There had
only been a handful of birdies there all week. If
he came away from there with a part, you were
very happy. So he comes to the last hole and
he needs a birdie to tie, and he knocked his
He hit a three wood there all weeks to control
his teeball. Didn't really need distance, but just sort of
knock it down into that valley and then you have
a short iron shot up up the slope to the
green and he put it just in the edge, very
edge of the first kind of rough about six inches
off the fairway, which I think actually worked out well
for him because the ball was sitting up nicely. He
was fortunate wasn't sitting down in the grass, and the
pin was on the sort of on the right front
of the green, so he had to make birdie, so
he had to go. He really had to go right
out the flag, but with his ball toward the left
hand on the side, just off the edge of the
fair hit the most favorable angle, and he hit a
high seven iron from about one hundred and twenty five yards.
He didn't want to hit an eight or nine because
he was afraid he put too much spin all on
the ball and it would hit and it would spin
off the front of the green because the green sloped
from back to front. So he hit this sort of high,
dead armed, dead hands seven iron that would come down
and just hit like a stone and not spend very much.
And he practiced that shot. He knew what he wanted
to do, and he just executed it really well, and
it flew up there perfect distance and just a little
bit to the right of the pin, and so it
landed and came to us seven feet from the hole.
So he's got this seventh foot putt and he's got
to make it to ty Hogan.
Speaker 1: The longest seven foot putt of his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this people read the book, well, they'll learn
that putting is not the strength of Jack's game. But
his putt, his putting was better this week than it
had been before. And he added this good feeling in
his hands. And the remarkable thing is he said he
wasn't nervous. He was he was just he really he
just went up there and he looked at it. And
one writer who wrote for a lot of the golf
magazines said he only took twenty four seconds, which probably
wasn't unusual in those days because the guys didn't take long.
And it was it didn't. There wasn't much to this
fight other than obviously the moment, the biggest part of
his life, the putt that could change his life. It
broke maybe an inch from right to left, and he
just hit it perfectly, and it rolled and it dropped
right in the left center of the cup.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, phenomenal.
Speaker 3: And Hogan. Hogan's sitting in the locker room the last
hour with reporters gathered around him and they're getting you know,
every few minutes, they're getting updates on Flack and when
the putt rolls in, while other reporters said the building
actually shook, it felt like a small earthquake. There was
just this huge spontaneous ovation and rumbling.
Speaker 1: And in San Francisco, it could have been the earthquake.
Speaker 3: That's right, it could be definitely, definitely. So Hogan is
shocked by this too, because he really he thought he'd
want and I believe that when he came and he
prepared and he and he and he signed up the
Olympic Club golf course, he saw the way it was
set up. This is a man who's won for the
last six US Opens. He was great, a great player
who was really tough in he opened because he knew
how to play these tournaments. I think he shot the
score he wanted to, and he said he thought he'd want.
He really thought he'd want, and he did. He beat
everybody else by at least five shots. So this guy
comes out of nowhere and ties.
Speaker 1: Wow, well I think that obviously he ties, and they
need to do It's an eighteen hole playoff. The next day,
right on Sunday.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So now that we all know that that Fleck won,
I think what I would like to to advise the
golf smarter audience to do is buy the book and
get the details of that playoff round and find out
how Fleck beat Hogan, how he was able to step
up and go toe to toe with one of his
idols and not back down and be able to beat
ben Hogan to win the US Open in nineteen fifty five.
I think you should go get the book. I really do.
It's called The Longest Shot, The Longest Shot, Jack Fleck,
Ben Hogan and pro Golf's greatest upset at the nineteen
fifty five US Open. Kindle version or you can get
the hard copy version, have it sent to you. And
I'm sorry Neilie interrupted you. What were you about to say?
Speaker 3: Oh no, well, I'm sorry. I didn't want to interrupt.
Speaker 1: You, but because I was plugging your book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, Hey, I love that. I should have
never set a beat. But one thing I was able
to do that people will be treated to when they
read the book and the playoff is when we get
to the playoffs, we go shot by shot and tell
you know, set the scene and tell everything that's going on,
and we're able to go shot by shot because Jack
is still with us, and there was a shot by
shot account of the newspapers, and Jack remembered it, and
there was a lot of good information. Plus the Olympic
Club historian who was thirteen years old at the time
and followed that playoff. He's still around and he read
my manuscripts and I talked to him and I did
everything I could to get that playoff and exactly what happened,
you know, get it down and so people would be
able to see what happened. And I think it's.
Speaker 1: Pretty interesting, very interesting. It's a great story. I'm glad
you were able to figure out that it hadn't been
written any U went ahead and and jumped all over it.
And again I advise everybody in the audience to if
this kind of story fascinates you, then you've got to
pick up this book. Should also check out You have
a regular ongoing I guess that's redundant. Sorry, you have
an ongoing blog that you do on golf. Is that true, Neil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's called Armchair Golf Blog. And that's really what
led me to this story just through the process of
writing a blog and making contacts and people writing emails
to me. I got it to to give Jack Fluck
a call, and I wasn't planning on writing a book,
but when I discovered this story and Jack was interested
in working with me, I just thought, what a great opportunity.
Speaker 1: Great opportunity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the blog is something I still do. People can
read it. I update it almost every day so well.
Speaker 1: We have links to it in the last episode and
will of course include links into this episode as well.
Neil Sagabat, thank you so much for saving my butt
again and returning to finish this story that disappeared from.
I don't know where or how, but I really appreciate
you saving me on this one. Thanks so much.
Speaker 3: But it's been a real treat for me. Fred, and
I really appreciate you wanting to talk to me about this.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. Best of luck and good luck with the blog.
Speaker 3: Thanks very much, Fred,