Masters Tournament: The ten best players in Augusta National history
By Bill Felber
4: Ben Hogan – 1938-1962, (1951, 1953), -18.50
That 1942 playoff Hogan lost to Nelson might have been his breakthrough moment. Following the war he returned in 1946 to finish second again, and in 1951 he won his first Green Jacket. Hogan trailed Sam Snead and Skee Riegel by a stroke entering final round play, but birdied two of the first three holes to take the lead and never surrendered it.
The victory was Hogan’s second major win since coming back from his near-fatal 1949 auto accident – he had won the 1950 U.S. Open – and the second in a string of six encompassing just eight major appearances through 1953.
That year, arguably the greatest in major golf history, opened with Hogan’s second Masters win. He dominated, seizing the Friday 69 and eventually beating Ed Oliver by five strokes. Four strokes ahead with just six to play, Hogan birdied three of those last six to erase all doubt. He would go on to win the U.S. and British Opens, his bid for a single-season Grand Slam thwarted by schedule makers who began the PGA the day after the British Open ended.
Although limited his tour appearances following his accident, he, like Nelson, was a regular at Augusta into the 1960s. He was second (to Sam Snead in a playoff) in 1954, second again (to Cary Middlecoff) in 1955 and sixth to Arnold Palmer in 1960, when he was 48.