The U.S. Open’s 10 greatest players: career rating
By Bill Felber
3. Ben Hogan, -1.26 (1938-1961)
As noted in a companion piece on peak ratings, Hogan in his prime was the best player in U.S. Open history.
The career calculations drop him down a couple of places. That’s largely a product of the extremely ordinary start to his legendary career. Between his pro debut in 1934 and 1939 – normally a player’s prime years at age 22 through 27 — Hogan only qualified for four Opens, missing the cut in three of them and barely making the cut in the fourth.
And no sooner did Hogan find his golf bearings in 1940 than World War II intervened, leaving him without a significant golfing accomplishment until 1946, when he was already in his mid-30s.
But when Hogan’s Open career did take off, it soared. Between 1946 and 1960, Hogan won four times, lost a fifth in a playoff, and never finished outside the top 10. Only the near-fatal 1949 car-bus crash that sidelined him for a year interrupted that string of success.
Were we to re-run these numbers for only Hogan’s post-war Open record, he would move up to second place on the career list.
The highlight of Hogan’s Open career – and maybe his whole career – came at Oakmont in 1953. Seeking his fourth championship, he blitzed the field to win by six strokes. He finished 2.98 standard deviations ahead of the field that week, the seventh most dominant showing in Open history and the most dominant of any champion to that date.