Giants of the Game

I just started reading Ben Hogan: An American Life by James Dodson, and it occurred to me just how much I hear and read today about Tiger Woods and his issues, Phil Mickelson, Ernie, Sergio, etc... but we never hear anything anymore about the giants who helped make the game what it is for us today. That’s not surprising, and not unwelcome mind you. I just thought it would be nice to take some time to recognize some of the greats, to help us remember that they are not forgotten.

Greats like Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Bobby Jones... these are people who played golf in an era when golf wasn’t the sport that it is today. Sometimes it’s hard for us to realize, it is for me anyway, of a time when golf wasn’t as easily accessible as it is now, and some of these guys had to “jump the fence” at the local club, or become caddies, whatever... just to make a quarter for 4 hours work on a Saturday afternoon and get the chance to hold a club in their hands.

Nowadays I can grab my clubs and, if I can’t go to my own club because it’s closed for a tournament, I can easily find another place to play within a couple hours drive at most. And I will be welcomed. Not so back then. Then it was more exclusive than now. Not that it isn’t still that way in lots of places. But the point is, for every private club you can’t get into these days, there’s a public course not too far down the road. And it’s affordable.

These greats didn’t build their games by going to a school or having a swing coach to tell them exactly how to hit the ball. They did it by repetition, by observation, by trial and error, and by pure determination. A lot of them didn’t have what we would call the perfect swing in today’s terms. But without them, would we have a foundation on which to build to know today what is a perfect swing?

Tiger Woods’ hero is Jack Nicklaus. A great hero to have. Jack’s hero is Bobby Jones. So then would Tiger be Tiger without Bobby Jones? Would Jack have been Jack?