Ben Hogan - The "Hogan Slam" Season

The "Hogan Slam" Season

The win at Carnoustie was but a part of Hogan's watershed 1953 season, in which he won five of the six tournaments he entered and including three major championships (a feat known as the "Hogan Slam").

It still stands among the greatest single seasons in the history of professional golf. Hogan, 40, was unable to enter — and possibly win — the 1953 PGA Championship (to complete the Grand Slam) because its play (July 1–7) overlapped the play of the British Open at Carnoustie (July 6–10), which he won. It was the only time that a golfer had won three major professional championships in a year until Tiger Woods won the final three majors in 2000 (and the first in 2001).

Hogan often declined to play in the PGA Championship, skipping it more and more often as his career wore on. There were two reasons for this: firstly, the PGA Championship was, until 1958, a match play event, and Hogan's particular skill was "shooting a number" — meticulously planning and executing a strategy to achieve a score for a round on a particular course (even to the point of leaving out the 7-iron in the U.S. Open at Merion, saying "there are no 7-iron shots at Merion"). The second reason was that the PGA required several days of 36 holes per day competition, and after his 1949 auto accident, Hogan struggled to manage more than 18 holes a day.