Tiger Woods and Ben Hogan: The Search for Perfection

This is not a comparison of Tiger Woods and Ben Hogan as players. Regardless of all that’s been written, it’s been my experience that there is no legitimate method for comparing players of different eras accurately. The levels of the competition, different equipment, and so forth make that sort of comparison impossible. This is about Woods’s and Hogan’s search for perfection and the two different paths they chose to take. The one thing that both players had in common is the burning desire to become the best. Other than that their paths have been totally different.

Tiger Woods. Mandatory Credit: Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

Tiger Woods turned professional in late summer 1996 and by April 1997 he had already won his first major, the 1997 Masters, in a record-breaking performance, winning by 12 strokes. Woods first reached number one in the world rankings in June 1997. Over the decade that followed, Tiger Woods was the dominant force in golf, spending 264 weeks from August 1999 to September 2004 and 281 weeks from June 2005 to October 2010 as world number one.

Nearly a generation before Tiger stepped up to his first pro tee, Ben Hogan turned professional in January 1930, more than six months shy of his 18th birthday. He took a low-paying club pro job in Cleburne, Texas where her married his wife Valerie in April 1935 at her parents’ home.

Hogan’s early years as a pro were very difficult, and he went broke more than once. He did not win his first pro tournament as an individual until March 1940, fully a decade after he’d turned pro. With that breakthrough, however, Hogan went on to win three consecutive tournaments in North Carolina.

Although it took a decade to secure his first victory, Hogan’s wife Valerie believed in him, and this helped see him through the tough years when he battled a hook, which he later cured by refining his grip and swing until he achieved a level of ball control that had never been seen before or since.

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Hogan and his wife, Valerie, survived a

head-on collision

with a Greyhound bus on a fog-shrouded bridge, early in the morning, east of

Van Horn, Texas

on February 2, 1949. Hogan threw himself across Valerie in order to protect her, and would have been killed had he not done so, as the steering column punctured the driver’s seat.

Hogan suffered massive physical damage when, at age 36, his near fatal wreck left him with a double-fracture of the pelvis, a fractured collar-bone, a left ankle fracture, a chipped rib, and near-fatal blood clots.

In his first tournament back he tied Sam Snead for the lead and lost in a playoff and went on to have the most successful period in his career.

The critical difference in Woods’s and Hogan’s separate searches for perfection was that Hogan kept refining “his” swing by himself, hitting untold thousands of practice shots and making reams of notes about what he was working on and his progress. For Hogan it was simply a matter of refining his swing until he reached a level that was as close to perfection as is humanly possible.

Tiger Woods withdraws from the Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament at Torrey Pines. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

Tiger, however, took a different approach. He decided to abandon the swing that got him to a scoring average that has not been seen before or since in favor of someone’s opinion of the perfect golf swing. When each new swing failed to achieve what his original one had accomplished he would abandon that one, change instructors, and start working on another one.

There is reason to reflect on what might have been if Tiger had chosen the path that Hogan took and simply refined his swing until he could control the ball like Hogan. Had he even come close to Hogan’s ball control he would be almost unbeatable and would have easily surpassed Jack Nicklaus’ record for winning the most majors.

Because of the choices Tiger has made, the question is not will he get back to his old form of 2000 when his scoring average was lowest in PGA Tour history at 68.17, but will he ever win again?

Let’s hope for the best, if for no other reason, because of all the buzz and excitement that he brings to the game when he is in the hunt. Sunday’s just are not the same without Tiger stalking the fairways in his final round red and black.

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Editors’ Note: ProGolfNow Staff Writer Sam Adams’s comparison of Tiger Woods’s and Ben Hogan’s search for the perfect swing is the 2nd in a new weekly ProGolfNow Pro Players Profile feature article that will appear on Mondays. If you would like to see a particular player profiled in this series just let us know and we’ll do our best to provide an in-depth analysis. Beth Bethel & Billy Dowling

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