In the 67 years since they were published, the teachings in “Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf” haven’t changed.
But the writing around them has.
A new edition of the landmark book has just been released (publisher Avid Reader Press hails it as “the definitive edition”), featuring never-before-seen photos and memorabilia from the Hogan estate archives.
There’s also a new introduction by Lee Trevino.
As personalities, the garrulous Trevino and the stoic Hogan could hardly be more different. But they shared defining traits as up-from-nothing Texans who got into golf through caddying and taught themselves to play by digging answers from the dirt. And that’s not where the ties between them end.
Another link is the debt Trevino says he owes to Hogan for helping put him on a path to success long before the two ever met.
It’s a story Trevino recounts in his introduction, kicking off the narrative in December 1957. By then, the 17-year-old Trevino was already showing promise in the game, but he was also restless and directionless. “I was feeling lost and beginning to get into trouble,” he writes. Seeking structure, he mothballed his sticks and joined the Marines, leaving behind his dollar-an-hour job at a driving range for 13-week bootcamp at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. After that, it was off to Yokohama.
As Trevino boarded a troop ship for what would be a 22-day voyage from San Diego to Japan, “golf,” he writes, “was the furthest thing from my mind.” That changed, though, when he wandered into the ship’s library and came across a copy the March 11, 1957, issue of Sports Illustrated, which contained the first installment of a five-part instructional series by a certain famous Texan.
At the time, Trevino knew the name but little else about Hogan. But bootcamp, he writes, had “given me a crash course in structure and discipline for the first time in my life.” A few pages into the article, Trevino sensed that he’d found a kindred spirit and felt “the golf bug stirring again.”
The rest is history, with colorful side notes. Trevino would go on to join the Marines golf team, playing in his first tournaments and winning his first individual titles. A star was born.
After his discharge from the military, Trevino returned to Dallas with renewed fire and focus. When he wasn’t on the range or playing money matches, he’d light out for the course alone and play two balls, imagining that one of them was Hogan’s. In time, he would cross paths with the man himself.
Trevino relays the oft-repeated tale of going to play a round at Shady Oaks Country Club, Hogan’s home course, and seeing Hogan on the range, smashing balls toward a caddie who barely had to move to retrieve the shots. Watching from a distance, Trevino says he noticed how Hogan “controlled his shots with his lower body. And that the more he led with his hips and his legs, the more he’d fade the shot left to right.” In those days, Trevino played a draw that often betrayed him under pressure. Hogan’s method for producing a fade became another foundational lesson. “What I’m saying,” Trevino writes, “is that Hogan is the reason I developed my game.” His gratitude was so great that after winning his first major, the 1968 U.S. Open, he dedicated his own instructional book to Hogan.
