Ben Hogan

Hogan never won another major tournament after the British Open, but he soon started on a new and profitable career: manufacturing golf equipment. Hogan had had an endorsement deal with MacGregor for about twenty years, but they had a very public falling-out around the time of the 1953 U.S. Open. Days after returning to the United States from Scotland, Hogan was hard at work setting up his own club and ball factory in Fort Worth. Once the Hogan Company was established, Hogan worked a two-hour day, from ten to noon, and then spent the afternoon playing golf. He continued to compete in tour events until 1971, winning his last tournament, the Colonial National Invitation, in 1959.

Ben Hogan

Marvin Leonard, a department store magnate whom Hogan had caddied for at Glen Garden and become friends with, built his own golf course in Fort Worth in the late 1950s. When the Shady Oaks Country Club opened its doors in 1959, it became Hogan's home course and would be for the rest of his life. He and Valerie even built a new home near the course. Hogan had a private, reserved table in a corner of the clubhouse, overlooking the eighteenth hole, where he ate lunch alone many days even after he stopped playing golf in the late 1980s. Hogan died in Fort Worth in 1997, after battling colon cancer and Alzheimer's disease.