Excerpt from New Ben Hogan Biography


[Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from the new book, "Ben Hogan: The Myths Everyone Knows, The Man No One Knew," by Tim Scott. Scott was vice president of Sales & Marketing for the AMF Ben Hogan Company in the 1970s. During his career, Scott worked closely with the iconic golfer and nine-time major champion, and met many of the people who knew Hogan, both in golf and in his personal life.

Here's the passage entitled "The Gentleman," which is part of Chapter Nine, "The Kinder, Gentler Ben Hogan." ]

The Gentleman

Ben Hogan was a gentleman. While in private conversations, he could use locker room vocabulary. The several times I had heard such language in his office, he spoke in a muted voice level that even his secretary in her office next door couldn't hear. If Hogan used a vulgarity, you could rest assured that no women were present, and he had better not get wind of one of his employees getting foul-mouthed in front of women either.

In the mid-1970s, AMF decided to use one advertising agency-Benton & Bowles, for all of its consumer products businesses, including the Ben Hogan Company. Until then, the Hogan Company had used a local Fort Worth agency, Jack T. Holmes & Associates, for as long as the company had used an ad agency. Jack Holmes, who owned and headed the agency, was very mindful of Mr. Hogan and his way of doing things and personally oversaw the Hogan account. No one from AMF had bothered to notify us at Hogan of the change. John Cantwell, the Hogan Company ad manager, found out by reading Advertising Age magazine. That AMF blunder prompted immediate phone calls, including calls from Ben Hogan himself to AMF's chairman of the board, Rodney Gott, to voice his displeasure. It was all to no avail; Benton & Bowles, a big New York ad agency, was now our ad agency.

The Hogan Company held its annual National Sales Meeting each August. It was the company's big event each year to introduce the new product line with much fanfare. The new agency wanted to show the outtakes from some of their TV commercials at the opening dinner, which followed the first day of the meeting. Since few people in the Hogan Company had never seen outtakes, we all agreed it would be a novel addition to the meeting, but several of us who had seen these outtakes at a previous AMF function questioned the propriety of one commercial in mixed company. We knew it would infuriate Mr. Hogan if it were shown when women were present, so we insisted that it be removed. The agency said it didn't have time to edit it out the offending piece of 16mm film, but they did say that they could simply stop the outtakes before the offensive ad came on because it was close to the end of the reel. We finally acquiesced. I was concerned about it, but apparently not concerned enough.

As the outtakes were shown after dinner the laughter from the audience grew louder and louder with each humorous outtake. I was holding my breath. Then, Ricardo Montalban was doing a coffee commercial. He raised the cup to his mouth to take a drink as the camera panned in for a close-up shot. Then Montalban quickly jerked the cup away and gasped, "Aahhh, too f@%$ing hot."

The reaction in the audience was mixed, some laughed, some snickered, and some gasped. I was angry that they had shown it, but I was especially mad because I knew Hogan would be absolutely livid, and Hogan's positive participation in the sales meeting was always crucial. After the outtakes film ended, the lights came up and Bill Sovey, the president of the company, made a few closing remarks. I strained to look for Hogan. He was white hot, as if all the blood had drained from his face. When Sovey finished, Hogan made for the exit, his eyes fixed on the door. He spoke to no one, and he never broke stride. He was gone in a matter of moments.

The next morning I got the expected call from Claribel Kelly. Shirley Givant, my secretary, took the call and came into my office. "Mr. Hogan wants to see you," she said, with a look of dread on her face. I headed straight to Hogan's office. He wasted no time, exchanged no pleasantries, and minced no words. "Tim, who the hell's in charge of advertising at AMF?" I told him and in a few moments Claribel appeared at the door and indicated that Don Fox, the AMF Advertising VP, was on the line.

Hogan was not pleasant, and the conversation was very direct. "Fire that advertising agency," Hogan demanded in no uncertain terms, and, no he didn't care if they were the agency for all of AMF's consumer products, he wanted them off the Hogan account beginning today. If he was unwilling to make that decision, Hogan said he wanted to speak to Rodney Gott, the AMF Chairman of the Board. He said we didn't run the Ben Hogan Company that way and Fox should be embarrassed that his ad agency had greatly offended a mixed crowd of Hogan employees with their crude outtake on the film. Getting no satisfaction from Fox, Hogan ended the conversation and tried to call Rodney Gott, AMF's chairman, but Fox must have gotten to Gott first because Gott was "unavailable" to take Hogan's call.

I went back to my office and called John Ferries, the B&B executive responsible for the entire AMF account. I had met John several years previous, when I was a second year MBA student at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Professor Ken Davis suggested that I invite John to participate in a Tuck marketing/advertising career panel, and John graciously came to Hanover, New Hampshire, to participate. Consequently, I felt comfortable in calling him directly, and since he had not been at the meeting, laying out the whole scenario, from our not being informed of the agency change to the commercial outtakes and Hogan's reaction.

B&B wasn't fired that day, and relations with it were quickly smoothed out when Ferries immediately came to Fort Worth to personally assure Hogan that such a faux pas would not happen again. In fact, despite the outtakes incident, Hogan later cooperated fully with the agency in making the first Hogan Company TV commercials. He was the main attraction of all the commercials that followed.

One Hogan Company president had a particularly foul mouth. One day Hogan came out to Rosemary Russell's desk to ask her about something. Rosemary had been hired to help Claribel Kelly who was growing older. The Hogan Company president was on a tear about something. Although his door was closed, the vent over his office was apparently connected to the one over Rosemary's desk. The torrent of foul language coming from the next office was almost like it coming from a muffled speakerphone on her desk. Hogan left Rosemary and marched straight into the president's office and told him he had better clean up his language because women all over the office could hear him. Hogan raised his voice loud enough that all the women in the vicinity could hear what he was saying.

Rosemary noted, "The interesting thing to me was that Mr. Hogan did like the man, and never seemed to hold a grudge. It was as if he needed to admonish him for his lack of manners in mixed company, almost like a parent. Later Mr. Hogan was very caring and compassionate toward him when his daughter became seriously ill while away at college. Mr. Hogan continued to check on her condition and encouraged the president to take time off and to go get her if he needed to."

Mike Wright, the Shady Oaks Director of Golf, one day asked Mr. Hogan how he would like to be remembered. After a long pause, Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, looked at Mike with his blue eyes locked on Mike's, and said, "Mike, I want to be remembered as a gentleman."

This excerpt from "Ben Hogan: The Myths Everyone Knows, The Man No One Knew," by Tim Scott, is printed with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information, visit www.triumphbooks.com/BenHogan. To order the book, visit http://www.amazon.com/Ben-Hogan-Myths-Everyone-Knows/dp/1629370967/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423777785&sr=8-1&keywords=ben+hogan+tim+scott or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ben-hogan-tim-scott/1120557354?ean=9781629370965.