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