Normally, our heroes are more larger than life that people expect them nothing less than giants. By any measure, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson had been giants of the game.
For that reason, it really is impressive that in 1956 a couple of young amateurs would challenge the crooks to a match once the experts, in their mid-40s, still obsessed the abilities that figured them amongst the game’s all-time elite. Among them, Nelson and Hogan had won 14 major championships by now.
Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward had been the 2 brash young amateurs who apparently belief that the top way to follow inside the footsteps of giants would be to walk alongside them in head-to-head competition.
Harvie Ward, who was 31, was the reigning U.S. Amateur champion (he would win the crown once again later that year), the 1949 NCAA champion, the 1952 British Amateur champion, and the 1954 Canadian Amateur champion, and the husband had played about the 1953 and 1955 Walker Cup teams (he'd play once more in 1959).
So Hogan and Nelson not merely knew with their competition, but additionally remarked that those two amateurs had the ability to provide them a fantastic fight. In truth, it's possibly a sign of the respect both professionals had for Venturi and Ward that they can even agree to the match, since they definitely had absolutely nothing to realize and every little thing to get rid of. When they won, it had been expected, of course, if they lost, it would be an shame to lose to amateurs.
Just exactly what sort of match found pass and a quantity of other details about the event are shrouded in the type of Hogan-esque obscurity that looks to surround so many events of his life. Probably the most widespread reason for how the game came to be was that Eddie Lowery, that was caddied for Francis Ouimet within the 1913 U.S. Open at Brookline and who possessed a San Francisco bay regional car dealership as there Venturi and Ward worked, build the match with aid from George Coleman, a rich Texas businessman who had previously been close to Hogan and Nelson. It had been agreed how the match could be solely for pleasure, and no funds was knowingly exchanged or wagered. The match would be played at Cypress Point Golf Club.
The match continued within this fashion with what might are already the best display of golf ever seen in match-play competition. Golf Magazine when referred to this match as “the greatest golf match ever played.”
Venturi and Hogan matched birdies on the par-3, 15th. Once the players reached the well-known 235-yard, par-3, 16th hole, the specialists were still clinging for their one-shot lead. Nelson and Ward had been both forced to use drivers to arrive at the putting surface. In the evidence of their prowess, their tee shots build birdie putts that both men would convert.
The 17th hole was divided, setting up the short, 342-yard, par-4, 18th hole because deciding factor. Venturi and Ward’s only chance was for yet another birdie, hoping how the specialists would score a par, at finest. Venturi negotiated his wedge approach shot to inside 12 feet with the cup. In a very microcosm during the day, Hogan hit his approach just inside of Venturi’s. Then Venturi displayed nerves of steel when he easily rolled his ball into the hole. Even soccer ball wouldn't risk enduring Hogan’s wrath because it split the biggest market of the outlet and dropped looking for a birdie, ensuring the professionals’ victory.
Commensurate with the Hogan legend, the match was reported to possess taken location in near total silence apart from the casual “you’re away.” Additionally, no known scorecard using this game exists. Nelson soon noted he would never know whether or not the players kept a scorecard, knowning that a scorecard was needless anyway, because each party knew precisely where they stood throughout the match.
Ward and Nelson found themselves shooting many 67. Venturi shot a 65 and Hogan a 63. The score of amateurs' better-ball was 59, the professionals’ a 58. Being a foursome, they had 27 birdies and one eagle.
