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Show IJllllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllliiiiiiiiiii: I By ROBERT McSHANE S Imh4 by Wtam Ntwtpopw Union j; niiiMiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiimiimii DEN HOG AN, 140-pound profes-- sional from Hershey, Pa., is so accustomed to lining up at golf's payoff window that he can't remember remem-ber just when his winning streak started. When Hogan won the Chicago Open a couple of weeks ago his tournament earnings for the year totaled $11,567 top money In the pro ranks. The Chicago Open was the fifty-first tournament In which Ben has been In the money. Though he remembers the number of consecutive con-secutive meets in which his efforts have been rewarded with cash, he can't remember where or when his streak got underway. He thinks It was in September, 1939, but doesn't know where. The Chicago Open netted Ben $1,200 and he figures he worked hard for every cent of it The record rec-ord bears him out He fired a 10 under par 274 to dethrone Dick Metz, whose 279 landed him in third place, and to beat Craig Wood, National and Masters' champion. Wood's 276 was good for second place. The Pressure Tells Hogan admits that the pressure of these innumerable trips to the payoff pay-off window is beginning to tell. The undersized dynamo estimates that 1 he hasn't been out of the money more than five times since 1937. 1 I : '"X n v W V fe lvVX ! i It t-i m u I ll BEN HOGAN And that means a day-after-day, week-after-week pressure, with never a moment's letup. The golfer who didn't develop internal Jitters would be an iron man. But Hogan managed to quiet any jittery feeling he may have had during dur-ing the three days of battle in the Chicago Open. His opening day 68 five under par put him 'ahead of the field and he tore through the rest of the tourney slapping old man par in the face with rounds of 70-69-C9. Wood took a 73 in the opening round, thereby losing his chance at the championship. His subsequent rounds of 69-67-C7 were nothing less than colossal, but the initial two-over-par effort was too much of a handicap. A'o Walkaway Hogan shot a 69, 2 under par, to take the 54-hole lead with 205. four strokes in front of Wood. During the course of that third round the gallery realized that Hogan was not going to walk away with the tournament. Wood, a champion's champion, had trailed Ben by six strokes at the start of the last day's play. He caught up with the pacemaker on the thirteenth thir-teenth hole of the morning round. However, he took a bogey on the fourteenth and finished 4-5 on the par four seventeenth and eighteenth while Hogan came back with a pair of birdies to assume a four-stroke lead as they went into the final round. In the last 18 holes, Wood came within one stroke of reaching Hogan. But the master workman carried too many guns. From a technical standpoint Ben's victory came at the thirteenth of the final round. He hooked his drive to the rough and his second shot landed in a trap. A beautiful swing with his blaster placed him a foot from the hole and for a par four. From there on he couldn't miss. The outcome of the tournament pleased most of the 8,000 spectators specta-tors who were at the finish. Hogan, the mighty midget had more than his share of supporters. Always a tough competitor, his current winning win-ning streak is to golf what DiMag-gio's DiMag-gio's hitting splurge was to baseball. Fans get a kick out of seeing the diminutive Hogan belt a golf ball Just as far and often farther than his heftier opponents. His size hasn't handicapped him. That is evidenced evi-denced by the fact that he has cashed in on so many consecutive appearances. In addition to bring a fine golfer, Ben Is a falr-to-middling business man. He won the Vardnn trophy in 1910 and led all money earners last year. He wasn't at all overawed over-awed when lie was presented with the $1,200 Chicago Open chec k. In fact, he lonked over the huge, unruly galleries at Klmhurst Country club and opined, via the public address system, that the amount of the purse couldn't have been determined by the size of the rroun. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out just what he meant. |