By Bob Englehart
(based on a true story)
Ben Hogan was the strongest man.
The game had ever seen,
The purest golfer in the world,
Who’d ever graced a green.
He had one dream and only one:
To play a perfect round,
Eighteen glorious holes-in-one
Before he’s in the ground.
One day a wealthy patron,
The richest man in town,
Said “Ben, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,
If you play that perfect round.
I’ll give you a million dollars,
More than fifty grand a stroke.
If you can do what no man’s done.”
Said Ben “Is this a joke?”
“Let’s do it now” the man said.
“Lets have a little fun.”
“OK”, said Ben. “I’ll get my clubs.”
And they walked to number one.
He put his ball down on the tee,
The turf was Kentucky Blue.
He squared his body to the plane,
And swooped his follow-through.
Oh, he started on the first one,
And heaved his mighty whack!
It rolled onto the high side
And dribbled in the back.
The next one was a dogleg,
He waved the crowd away,
The gallery was silent now,
The trees began to sway.
A little breeze had risen up,
He put his club back in,
And took out something with less loft
And a little more backspin.
He hit it with a wallop!
It carved into the wind,
It chose a path below the wrath
And bounced and rolled. It’s in.
The third one was a downhill,
With water on the left,
A line of trees behind the stream
And sand traps hard and wet.
Ol’ Ben let go a low one,
It swallowed up the air,
And blew right through an apple tree,
A peach tree and a pear.
That ball had so much on it,
Though it hardly did rise up,
It scattered rocks and leaves and dust
‘Til it rolled into the cup.
Its cover had unraveled,
Ben bent to lift it out.
He gave it to his caddy
Who gave a mighty shout.
Number four and five the same,
Perfection every shot,
Six through nine were ones apiece.
He was thirsty now and hot.
Number ten, the toughest hole
The golf course had on tap,
A double-dogleg, raised up green,
And a bunker called The Trap.
The Trap was a crater in the ground,
With a rope to climb on down,
And a flashlight on the bottom sand,
By a skull some golfer’d found.
Ol’ Ben just squinted skyward,
And lifted up his chin,
“I want to try to make this shot
Before the darkness settles in.”
He came down through that golf ball,
With a smile of purest pleasure,
And it headed for The Trap at speeds
Impossible to measure.
It dipped into the chasm,
And headed for the gloom,
It plunged down deep in the abyss
‘Til it hadn’t any room.
It hit the skull like a bullet,
Some bone was blown clean off,
Out the top of the Trap it flew
And lined up with the moss.
It rolled two hundred yards or so,
And headed for the cup,
And dropped in with a gentle plop
With its logo facing up.
Eleven, twelve and thirteen,
Were handled much the same,
You couldn’t hold a candle to him,
When Ben was on his game.
The next four holes were all alike,
The ones that came before,
All holes-in-one were on his card,
No twos were on his score.
He strolled up to the eighteenth tee,
His heart was beating loud.
He put his fingers to his lips,
And quieted the crowed.
The last one was a short one,
A straight-ahead par three
There were no hazards anywhere,
No sand trap, pond or tree.
“This should be a snap, ol’ sport”
The patron said as he looked.
He reached into his pocket,
And got out his checkbook.
Ben hit the ball without a tee,
A divot flopped in front,
The ball flew forward to the rough
Like a major-leaguers’ bunt.
It straightened out and bounded for
The cup which was dead ahead,
His target clearly right on line,
“Draino,” the patron said.
But deep inside that little hole,
In the center of the green,
A bug was singing courtship songs
That filled the round ravine.
And on the edge…above him,
His girl bug sat and giggled,
And fluttered sixteen eyelids
Her antennae bobbed and jiggled.
The ball snuck up behind her,
It didn’t see her charms,
And it knocked her off the slippery edge
Right into her boy bug’s arms.
The ball stopped when it hit her.
It wouldn’t moved an inch.
The patron’s eyes popped real wide,
Ben Hogan didn’t flinch.
Ben couldn’t know the truth of it,
He only knew he failed.
He took it all upon himself,
And stomped the ground and wailed.
Other dreams would have to wait.
He couldn’t rest until
He turned around and headed back
To the first tee on the hill.
They say his ghost’s still out there
And on moonlit nights you’ll hear
The pounding of his irons
Against the dimpled sphere.
