“Ben Hogan was starving for a tournament triumph as the 1940 tour began,” Gene Gregston wrote in “Hogan: The Man Who Played for Glory.” “The achievements of fellow Texans Ralph Guldahl and Byron Nelson added fuel to the fires smoldering within him until he was walking around the golf course like a volcano on the verge of eruption.”
Hogan was the second-leading money winner, with $3,038 to his credit, when the tour arrived in Pinehurst and had finished second six times — to six different players — in the previous 14 months. He was buoyed by his near-misses, reasoning to wife Valerie that if six different players were one shot better than him, there wasn’t one player head and shoulders above him.
“One day I’ll get so far ahead no one can catch me,” he said.