When NBC’s telecast of the 1955 U.S. Open went off the air, the announcers pronounced Ben Hogan the winner of his record fifth Open. “Sixth,” Hogan murmured afterward to those within earshot.
Lo and behold, Jack Fleck, an unheralded pro still on the course, rallied to tie Hogan and beat him in a playoff the next day in one of golf’s greatest upsets. Hogan never would set the Open record – that is unless you’re counting the Hogan way.
By his arithmetic, Hogan won his first national open title in 1942 at Ridgemoor Country Club on Chicago’s northwest side, though he didn’t officially win the first of his four national opens until 1948.
In 1997, Hogan went to his grave believing otherwise. After all, the winner’s medal he was awarded in 1942 is an exact replica of the U.S. Open medal. Never mind that the U.S. Golf Association had canceled that year’s national championship due to World War II and the tournament in question went by the name the Hale America National Open Golf Tournament.
The USGA co-hosted the event as a wartime fundraiser with the Chicago District Golf Association and the PGA of America. In many ways, the Hale America Open had the trappings of a U.S. Open.
“It had all the color and pageantry of the Open,” wrote Fred Corcoran, the PGA’s tournament manager. “This tournament was a title test in everything but name.”
Nearly 80 years later some still believe this should be counted as Hogan’s fifth Open victory, while others dismiss the notion entirely. Veteran sportswriter, Peter May, tackles the subject in his new book, “The Open Question – Ben Hogan and Golf’s Most Enduring Controversy” (Rowman & Littlefield, $24.95), and addresses each faction’s arguments. There are too many Hogan books to name, but as May astutely writes, “the Hale America National Open is a story that has never been told in detail, only in passing.”
Not anymore. To the late Dan Jenkins, golf writer and 2012 World Golf Hall of Fame member, the answer to whether Hogan’s U.S. Open total should be revised to five is an unequivocal “yes.” He listened to the Hale America live on radio, read about it in the paper and watched newsreel highlights of it at the Hollywood Theater in Fort Worth, Texas. He wrote in a 1992 Golf Digest article that the USGA deprived Hogan of a major title.
Jenkins’s opinion remained unchanged until his final day. In 2011, when the subject was broached to him during a wide-ranging interview with yours truly, Jenkins slid a book from a shelf, flipped through the pages and stopped at a picture of a smiling Hogan with his five medals – the four recognized Opens and the Hale America. Jenkins looked up and said, “The caption for this picture should be ‘How many Opens do you think this man won?’ ”
Jenkins is not alone. Fellow World Golf Hall of Fame member Carol Mann, who died in 2018, long contended that Hogan’s triumph deserved proper acknowledgement.
“I’m not taking the fifth. I’m giving it,” she said, with a chuckle, in 2011. “Hogan thought it was an Open. The rest of the field thought it was an Open. And the press called it an Open.”
Indeed, after Hogan won, the headline in the Fort Worth Telegram blared: “Hale America is first major title for Texas Ben.” Charles Bartlett, the Chicago Tribune golf writer, referred to it simply as the National Open. And no less than The New York Times declared the field, which consisted of 17 future World Golf Hall of Fame members, “beyond doubt the most brilliant ever to take part in a golf tournament.”
Amid wartime in 1942, the pros played a Masters won by Byron Nelson and a PGA Championship won by Sam Snead that count in the history books. So what happened to the U.S. Open?
On Jan. 9, 1942, barely a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USGA’s executive committee met at its New York City headquarters and canceled the 1942 U.S. Open scheduled for Interlachen in Minneapolis.
“It would be better for the association to devote its energies to something more useful than championships,” read the USGA minutes from that meeting. “Championships in wartime would be hollow and perhaps improper.”
Golfweek cover (May 21, 2010)
But at the same meeting, the USGA approved a request from John Kelly, the assistant U.S. director of civilian defense in charge of physical fitness, to hold a series of tournaments to raise funds for war relief. They would be called Hale America Tournaments, as in “hale and hearty,” suggesting that the country was determined to keep fit through golf.
When Tom McMahon, president of the Chicago District Golf Association, read that the U.S. Open had been canceled, he called the PGA to ask for the vacated dates for the Chicago Open. Days later, the USGA contacted him to suggest Chicago hold one of Kelly’s Hale America Tournaments. Eventually, Kelly’s fundraisers morphed from a competition for weekend duffers into one for the country’s best professionals and amateurs. A then-record 1,540 golfers entered local qualifying at sixty-nine qualifying sites around the country.
Yet for all of the similarities cited, the wartime Hale America bore little resemblance to actual U.S. Open conditions or competition. For starters, pre-tournament long-driving and accuracy contests were staged. So were a clinic and trick-shot exhibition, and on the eve of the tournament a celebrity four-ball match pitted Gene Sarazen and Bobby Jones against actor/comedian Bob Hope and PGA of America president Ed Dudley. Moreover, the Hale America Open had a separate competition, called the “Old Guard” division, for contestants who had played in U.S. Opens held at least 20 years previously. Another telling sign: the tournament did not have a 36-hole cut or a 36-hole Saturday finish, which was customary for all Opens until 1965.
The argument most often cited for why nobody confused the Hale America for an Open Championship? That would be the golf course. Measuring in at 6,519 yards, Ridgemoor was longer than just one U.S. Open venue in the post-World War I era, Worcester CC. Scoring was exceptionally low. Some of the host club members were distressed by the par-busting spree, in which 22 players broke par in the tournament, according to Golfing Magazine. Former USGA executive director David Fay once pointed out that if the 1942 Hale America was considered an Open, the record book would have to be rewritten for low 36-hole, 54-hole and low 72-hole total, (records since obliterated by Rory McIlroy in 2011), as well as the low round (62).
Hogan opened with an even-par 72, a fine score in an Open, but not on a day when 48 players in the field bettered par. Mike Turnesa, from one of golf’s royal families, and Otey Crisman shared the lead with 65s. Turnesa took sole possession of the lead with a second-round 66, but Friday belonged to Hogan, who vaulted from 42nd place into second at 134, thanks to a splendid 10-under 62, only the fourth time that had ever been done in a Tour event. It was a performance, which Hogan’s playing partner, Tommy Armour, called “the nearest thing possible to a perfect round.”
On a rainy third day, Hogan shot 69 for a total of 203 and caught Turnesa. In the final round, another Texan, Jimmy Demaret, made his move, grabbing a share of the lead by the turn and adding an eagle at the 12th. He led Hogan by two strokes with four holes to play before collapsing down the stretch. Hogan birdied two of the final four holes, picked up five strokes on Demaret and finished with a 72-hole of 271, 17 under par.
Hogan received the gold medal the USGA had already purchased for what would have been the U.S. Open. The front is identical, the back is inscribed: Hale American National Open Golf Tournament.
Ben Hogan during the 1940 North and South Open at Pinehurst No. 2
Credit for a fifth Open instead of four would break Hogan’s tie with Bobby Jones, Willie Anderson, and Jack Nicklaus. During a rare television interview with CBS’s Ken Venturi in 1983, Hogan implied it was an Open Championship. But the USGA has never acknowledged it as such. In April 1990, in follow up to a prior conversation at the Masters, Golfweek editor Charley Stine sent a letter to the USGA’s Fay petitioning for Hogan’s victory to be recognized at last.
“Since the war is long-since over,” Stine wrote, “and I guess we won, wouldn’t it be appropriate to put the man who has that medal into the official record books as the 1942 champion?”
Fay responded that his staff had researched past USGA minutes for the origins of the tournament and “in view of what is printed it seems quite clear that the intent of the executive committee was never to have the Hale American take the place of the U.S. Open.”
So, while Hogan never got the recognition he felt he deserved from the USGA, he finally got a book that makes a strong case on his behalf. All that is certain is this: the debate on whether the Hale America National Open should be considered an Open never will be closed.