Golf has had excellent players throughout its history, and anyone willing to start a golf career or know more about this sport should know about them. Ben Hogan is one of the best golf players there has been, and players worldwide acknowledge him.

Not only Ben Hogan has some of the best golf seasons a golf player has achieved but has overcome a more than difficult early life to become a pro, which is not something many players, regardless of the sport they play, have reached. Are you interested in learning more about Ben Hogan (Net Worth, Career Paths, Earnings, etc.)? This is the page for you!

Dive into this page to learn more about who Ben Hogan was and what he has achieved throughout his life, such as his journey through the Colonial National Invitational. Learning all these things about professional players can help you become an excellent player since it shows you what turned them into what they are now. This player was famous for his technique, so his biography is an excellent place to start for golf amateurs.

Who Is Ben Hogan?

Ben Hogan is one of the best golf players in the world, and he is considered by many the fourth-best player of all time. The reason for that is he has won all the major tournament championships a golf player can win. It’s worth noting he won three of those championships in a row, something only a few players could achieve.

However, the best way to learn who someone is is by studying how he became that. Let’s get an in-depth look at how Hogan’s career went from the beginning to its end:

How Did Everything Start?

As we mentioned before, William Ben Hogan didn’t have a happy early life since his family didn’t have a lot of money, and his dad committed suicide when he was just a child. Therefore, he was left alone with his mother and brother, who had to leave school to start working full-time.

Thanks to a tip, Ben Hogan could start caddying at the Glen Garden Country Club when he was 11 years old. There, he got to know golf and learned the basics of the game. Hogan even played caddie tournaments with other caddies in the same club.

The Garden Country Club wasn’t the PGA championship, but it was a great start for Ben Hogan since he could keep working there for several years and even started three daily-fee courses. Nonetheless, he already knew he wanted to become a professional player by that time.

Becoming a Pro

Although he was about to finish high school, Ben Hogan dropped it to follow his path of becoming a pro golfer, and when he was 18 years old, he was already one. However, that doesn’t mean he was already successful since he went broke several times for not being able to win individual golf tournaments.

He couldn’t win his first tournament until 1940, and then, he started winning more championships. Ben Hogan showed his first win wasn’t luck by winning three events in a row after that one. You could say the 1938-1959 period was Hogan’s prime since he managed to win 65 pro tournaments.

Unfortunately, his career stopped when he had to serve in World War II. Besides that, he suffered an almost fatal car accident with his wife. That accident made Ben Hogan unable to play golf, and doctors didn’t even know if he would walk again.

After a long recovery, he could not only walk but also play again. Thanks to that, he could make it to the PGA tour. He didn’t win the PGA Championship that time, but great things were coming to him now that he had fully recovered.

However, Hogan developed a blood clot issue in his legs after the accident, and that kept him from playing in some championships.

Triple Crown of Golf

When we said Ben Hogan was in his prime, we meant that’s when he became one of the best players worldwide by winning almost all the tournaments he signed up for. Nonetheless, we are not talking about small tournaments since he won three of the major championships there are in golf in the 1953 season.

Unfortunately, he didn’t win the PGA Championship that year since he couldn’t enter it due to its date. After that, he didn’t want to play in the PGA Championship since he said it didn’t match his playing style and that was unfair to him. Additionally, he couldn’t match some of its requirements regarding how many holes he had to make a day since he was still suffering the consequences of the car accident.

xRegardless of not going to the PGA Championship, people already knew he would win it if he had the opportunity to play at the tournament.

Ben Hogan was used to practicing a lot, even more than any of the golfers at the time. Thanks to that and the results of his training, golfers around the world started practicing as much as he did and even tried to copy his plays.

This excellent player was so important to golf history that the current golf swing theory is based on things he did in the past. You can notice that by seeing that most of the concepts in today’s golf swing theory didn’t exist back then.

Other players such as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus may have won more or the same things as Ben Hogan, but they didn’t influence golf as he did.

Hogan Won the Major Championships in the Golf Circuit!

Winning all the major championships in the history of golf is not something you should take lightly, but it was something Hogan accomplished in his prime.

Apart from all that, he created the Ben Hogan Company, which manufactures and sells golf equipment under his name. Owning a golf equipment company is something many pro players only dream about, so this was one of the greatest successes in Hogan’s career.

Do you want to know a bit more about the championships Hogan won? Here is a list of them:

PGA Championship

Ben Hogan is one of the golf players with the highest number of victories on the PGA tour. Nonetheless, when did he win the PGA Championship? Well, he won it twice, once in 1946 and the other in 1948.

Winning the PGA Championship gave him the title he had left to win all the important tournaments for golf players worldwide. This didn’t only make him famous, but it also caused that, when people talked about Ben Hogan, net worth was one of the main topics.

Masters Tournament

Similar to what he did with the PGA Championship, Hogan won the Masters Tournament twice; one in 1951 and the other in 1953.

Other players, such as Jack Nicklaus, managed to turn back the clock for nine holes in this tournament, while Hogan’s championships came from dominant wins. People also compare Hogan to Tiger Woods, who is remembered for shooting a 66 in his third round of the Masters.

The Open

Remember we said Ben Hogan won the three major championships in the same year? That award is called the Triple Crown of Golf, and one of those tournaments was the Open Championship. Unlike other tournaments on this list, Hogan only managed to win this championship once, and it was in 1953.

Hogan got the Open Championship after scoring 32 on the back line in the tournament’s final round.

The U.S Open

Winning tournaments wasn’t a problem for Ben Hogan when he got to his prime since Hogan won the U.S Open four times before retiring. Winning this kind of tournament is not easy with that many pros playing, and many of them made it difficult for him in the final round, but he managed to win all those times.

Hogan won the U.S Open in 1948, 1950, 1951, and 1953. As you may know by reading this article, Ben Hogan’s last U.S Open win matches the year he won the other two major championships apart from the PGA Championship.

Other Awards

Apart from winning all the championships mentioned on this page, Ben Hogan also won the PGA Tour six times and was named the PGA Player of the Year four times. As for trophies and tournaments aside from the PGA Tour, Hogan got the Vardon Trophy three times and was named the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year in 1953.

The PGA Tour was undoubtedly one of the most important parts of Hogan’s career, and the 64 wins he has there show it. However, having nine major championship wins is already an award itself, and only players such as Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods could compare to that score.

Many consider the World Golf Hall of Fame to be the greatest thing a golfer can look forward to getting. As you may have guessed, Ben Hogan got into the World Golf Hall of fame in 1974.

Hogan also got the Golf World Cup twice while playing with the national team. The Golf and Golf Coaches Association even created the Ben Hogan Award to honor everything this player did to improve this sport.

How Much Money Did Golf Get Ben Hogan? – Net Worth

One of the reasons Hogan’s life is that impressive is he started having no money and ended up becoming a millionaire thanks to golf. Yes, you read that right; Ben Hogan became a millionaire.

Hence, many wonder what his net worth is and how much money a professional golfer can get. Although golf is not as popular as other sports, Ben Hogan got a net worth of $10 million, which is something most people can only dream of. Naturally, he also got a lot of his income from the Hogan Company.

Endorsement Deals

Hogan was so famous in the prime of his career that several brands, golf clubs, and companies of all kinds offered him huge amounts of money for commercial endorsement deals. He would only have to let them use his name and he would get thousands of dollars. The USGA even opened a museum that focuses only on this player, and it is called the “Ben Hogan Room.”

Some of the brands and companies that offered commercial endorsement deals to Hogan were Pabst Blue Ribbon, Bromo Seltzer, and Chesterfield.

The Ben Hogan Line

As we mentioned before, the Ben Hogan brand was one of the reasons this golf player became that rich. Hogan was famous for his golf swing, and thousands of amateur players worldwide wanted to play like him.

This golf player didn’t always use average golf equipment, and that led some to believe the secret in what they did was the equipment he used. Therefore, many were interested in how Hogan’s brand could help them get better at the sport.

Starting a Golf Club Company is a risk not many players want to take since they are at risk of their brand not becoming mainstream. Regardless of that, after what Hogan did at the Open Championship and the PGA Championship, everyone who knew a thing or two about golf knew who he was.

Conclusion

Ben Hogan may not be the best golf player there was, but he is more than surely one of the best ones we are ever going to meet. All the things he achieved under the conditions he did are impressive, and not many people can do what he did.

If there’s a word that could describe this player, that would be tenacity. Noticing that is not difficult once you study his career since Hogan played 32 majors and managed to be in the top 10 of 31 of them.

Other players, such as Sam Snead, are also S-class players people think of when you think about the best golf players in the world, but none of them has Hogan’s ball striking, and neither of them achieved everything he did after going through a near-fatal car accident.

Learning about golf players helps you understand more things about this sport, so don’t hesitate to look up more things about other famous players if you want to become a professional golf player!