Sport: Prophetic Master

The Augusta National Golf Course, with its carpet-smooth greens, lush fairways and pitfall traps, was in fine shape for the Masters golf tournament. So were the Masters. The day before the tournament started, Lloyd Mangrum, golf’s leading moneywinner, broke his own course record with a sensational 63, nine strokes under par. Defending Champion Sam Snead, who took the title away from Ben Hogan, fired a fine 71. U.S. Open Champion Julius Boros, who took that title away from Hogan in 1952, was at the peak of his game with a 67.

Almost lost in the shuffle, but never far from anyone’s mind, was Ben Hogan himself. The taciturn Texan, with eleven sub-par practice rounds under his belt, spent the final day of practice just puttering around the putting green. Admitting he was “in grand shape” (he had not played a major tournament in ten months), Hogan made one prediction: the tournament scoring record—279—would be broken. All Ben failed to say was that he would take care of the record-breaking himself.

Toward the end of his first round, Ben ran into all sorts of trouble; he was in the water on No. 15, in bunkers on Nos. 17 and 18. Each error cost him a stroke, yet he wound up with a sub-par 70 in a tie for third place—one stroke up on Snead, three on Boros, four on Mangrum. A second-round 69 put Hogan in the lead.

But it was not until the third round that Hogan really took charge. Bantam (139 Ibs.) Ben, playing with chunky (220 Ibs.) Ed Oliver, and often out-hitting him, drew ohs & ahs from a crowd of some 10,000 with his fairway-splitting shots. The ahs changed to outright cheers on the ninth green when golfdom’s mechanical man, after careful sighting, crisply stroked a 60-ft. putt into the cup for an outgoing four-under-par 32. The word that went around the Augusta gallery:

They 11 never catch him now.” Ben finished with a 66, “the best I’ve ever played it Augusta,” for an insurmountable four-stroke lead going into the final round. This week cool-as-ice Ben banged out his fourth straight sub-par round, a 69 to beat Runner-Up Oliver and the Masters scoring record by five strokes with a fabulous 274.