[ARETE] Gruver, Bringing the Monster to Its Knees

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find below and attached Duncan Jamieson's review of Ed Gruver, *Bringing
the Monster to Its Knees: Ben Hogan, Oakland Hills, and the 1951 U. S. Open*
.
Thanks
Duncan

Gruver, Ed, *Bringing the Monster to Its Knees: Ben Hogan, Oakland Hills,
and the 1951 U. S. Open*. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2021.  XXV + 224 pages.
Photographs, Sources, Index.  $29.95.



Reviewed by Duncan R. Jamieson, Ashland University.

                An avid golfer, Dad emigrated from Kilwinning, Scotland to
New York City in his early 20s.  Perhaps his biggest regret in life, after
watching the Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles in 1957, was that none of
his three sons, of whom he always bragged to anyone who would listen,
shared his passion for golf.  Dad never lacked for playing companions; he
and Ed Jorgensen regularly played the city’s course at Kissena Park, in
Fresh Meadows, Queens.  Though short at 4,665 yards this hilly course with
demanding greens presented them a challenging game.  Open to the public, he
would get me up alternate Saturdays to drive over around 6:00 a.m. to book
a tee time; on the other Saturdays Ed would drag one of his kids out for
the same excursion.  Later when Ed and his family moved out to Nassau
County, they had access to county parks there.  Dad and Ed occasionally
went up to Westchester where they played Saxon Woods, Dunwoodie or Mohansic.
They played all the courses at Bethpage, including the famed Black course.  Dad
knew many of the pros, and when he retired, he picked up a part time job
selling golf clubs and equipment at different pro shops.

                As a result, when *Bringing the Monster to Its Knees* came
in, I put it out on the list thinking surely someone would request it.  To
my surprise, and if I’m being honest, my joy, no one did, so here are the
thoughts of a duffer, and a tribute to my father.  Ben Hogan was perhaps
Dad’s favorite golfer, followed in no particular order by Sam Snead, Arnold
Palmer, Gary Player, Gene Sarazen and Byron Nelson, all among the golfers
mentioned by Gruver.  I’m sure Dad followed others, but these are the names
I remember.

As the subtitle indicates, beyond Hogan the stars of the book are the
Oakland Hills South Course and the 1951 U. S. Open.  Oakland Hills was
designed by Donald Ross, born in 1872 in the Scottish Highlands town of
Dornoch.  He learned golf in his hometown, winning several notable
championships.  Not content just to play, Ross apprenticed under Old Tom
Morris, the pro at St. Andrews who had built courses throughout the British
Isles, including Royal Dornoch where his greens are still played today.  After
two years Ross returned to Royal Dornoch where he became greenskeeper, pro,
and a builder of golf clubs and gutta percha golf balls.  In 1899 he
emigrated to the United States, bringing this knowledge of British golf
across the pond when he became the pro and greenskeeper at the Oakley
Country Club in Watertown, Massachusetts

In 1916 Ross focused his attention on course architecture, establishing
Donald J. Ross Associates.  Connections led him to Pinehurst, North
Carolina, where he designed its first four courses, forever changing golf
history.  That same year as the automobile industry was growing in
southeastern Michigan, a couple of business executives were looking to
establish a classy country club where they and others could meet and greet
business associates.  They bought 450 acres of farmland which they proposed
to turn into two golf courses, hiring Ross for the task.  A practical
designer, he used topographical maps to lay out the South Course, remaining
as true to the natural contours of the land as possible.  Moving the least
amount of soil, which had the added benefit of reducing costs, he gathered
the rocks and stones he found to create “humps, hollows and swells . . .
reminiscent of the Dornoch links” (32).

                By the mid-1930s hickory shaft golf clubs and gutta percha
balls gave way to steel shafts and livelier balls offering better golfers
the advantage as they began hitting beyond the traps and obstacles that
earlier had stymied them.  As a result, Oakland Hills, one of the finest
courses in the world, needed a redesign.  “After witnessing a birdie fest
at Oakland Hills in 1937, U. S. Golf Association officials planned a
bloodbath for the 1951 Open.  It was the first time the USGA had ever
contrived to alter a course layout, and the result was a bunker-filled
fiend that promised to play long—6,927 yards—and difficult” (57-58).  In
the midst of updating Oakland Hills Donald Ross died and Robert Trent Jones
“stepped in to pick up where his mentor had left off” (54).  Jones grew up
in Rochester, New York, where at age 16 he set a record in the Rochester
City Golf championship.  He met Ross in 1926, entered Cornell University
and built his own course of study geared toward course architecture.  He
designed and redesigned multiple courses during his career, including the
“Monster,” the South Course at Oakland Hills.

On to Ben Hogan, who brought the monster to its knees.  Born in Texas in
1912 he learned to play golf when he started caddying at age eleven.  He
learned from local golfers, mimicking the top players.  Through
determination and constant practice, he developed his deadly accurate,
carefully controlled swing.  Quiet and introverted, perhaps due to poverty
and his father’s suicide when he was nine, Hogan remains one of the
greatest golfers of all time.  He dropped out of high school in his senior
year to turn pro, playing though the Great Depression to become the leading
money winner in 1940, 1941 and 1942 when he joined the Army Air Force.  Rising
to the rank of captain he trained pilots at the same time he played golf
exhibitions to raise money for the war effort.  After the war his career
was in jeopardy when traveling to a tournament in early 1949 his car was
hit head on by a Greyhound bus.  Nearly killed he suffered multiple
fractures and blood clots in his legs.  After two months in the hospital,
he regained his strength through extensive walking though for the rest of
his career he played in constant pain, his legs wrapped in elastic bandages.
He made his comeback on the pro tour at the 1950 Los Angeles Open where he
tied Sam Snead, only to lose in an eighteen-hole playoff eight days later.

The next year the U. S. Open was played on the South Course at Oakland
Hills, with Hogan and Snead as the favorites.  In the first round Sam Snead
took the lead with a 71, one stroke over par.  At 76 Hogan was well back in
the pack.  Round two saw Bobby Locke move into first place with a 144
total, while Snead, 8 over par, tied with Hogan who shot a 73, giving the
favorites 149, 5 off the lead and well back in the pack in 16th.  At this
point only two players had made par and several previous open winners
failed to make the cut for the third and fourth rounds, played on the same
day.   For the third round, played in the morning Hogan shot a 71 to move
him into a tie for 5th, two strokes behind the leaders.  In the afternoon’s
final round Hogan carded a blazing 67, three under par, to win.

The U. S. Open, Oakhill Hills and Ben Hogan are among the very best in golf.
Oakland Hills hosted the Open five times and continues to challenge anyone
who plays there.  Hogan went on to win four Opens (five if you count the
1942 Hale America Open which was to be a substitute for the cancelled U. S.
Open).  As Gruver reminds the reader, Oakland Hills shares the limelight
with the men and women who play it.  In 2019, to maintain its sobriquet of
The Monster, Gil Hanse gave the links its second makeover as he restored
the Donald Ross layout.

*Bringing the Monster to Its Knees* should be read by duffers and top fight
pros along with all who enjoy the tension and skill found in the game.
Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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