I’ve heard that great people do things that are different. I never thought when I went to work for Mr. Ben Hogan, however, that the man would have his own personal set of numbers and math.

I learned this about Ben Hogan when I tried to reconcile the number of degrees on a personal wedge Gene Sheeley was making for him. That same wedge design and specs would later need to be forged and duplicated at a Chicago factory.

Sometime long before I came along, Mr. Hogan, Gene and previous engineers developed a unique fixture to measure the loft and lie angle on irons and wedges, which you can see below. It was a rotation turret table pitched at an angle with some extra engineering measurement features welded on. With this fixture, one could fix or press the face of the club to a plate and turn the turret handle until the butt of the club pointed at a target lie measurement scale (in the shape of a sweep radius). After the club was aimed correctly, one could site out and read the lie of the club on the scale radius. At the same time, the loft could be read on the turret gauge.

With no engineering or formal physics schooling, Mr. Hogan knew instinctively that the loft and lie of an iron combined to determine the launch vector. He must have learned these specifications were interrelated and synergistic while “digging his game out of the dirt,” and Mr. Hogan and Gene had come up with this ingenious fixture. It was very creative thinking for its time. After they conceived and built the one fixture, it was used to set and gauge all of Mr. Hogan’s clubs — both his personal clubs, and his company’s clubs. It became the only standard for Hogan touring pros, the factory and all things Ben Hogan.

Years later, Gene gave me this historic fixture. I have since donated it to the Ben Hogan Museum in Dublin, Texas, where it is on display. I think Gene and Mr. Hogan would have wanted that. I would implore anyone who loves Hogan lore (or his real clubs) to make a trip there some day. The museum is full of Mr. Hogan’s things and is a wonderful tribute.

Back to 1988 in Fort Worth. The one problem with the ingenious loft and lie machine was that the fixture did not travel. It was massive — about the size and weight of a modern washing machine. And while Mr. Hogan’s loft and lie fixture was very consistent and the products of this machine fit his eye and expectations, it did not read in true engineering degrees. That’s right, what Hogan and his machine called 56 degrees was not really 56 degrees. Hogan degrees were about 1-to-2 degrees different!

As the head of the product development team in Fort Worth, I needed to communicate the actual and accurate degrees and dimensions of irons and wedges to vendors in California and Chicago, so I was in a box. As a side note, Mr. Hogan was a patriot and wanted all clubs and components under his name to be 100 percent made in the USA.  I will give you a detailed story of how I know this on a later hole.

Earlier in my engineering training, I had learned the engineering standard measurement technique for machined parts required a sine plate and a Bridgeport-type mill. Yes, the same sine as you might have learned in high school trigonometry. Early in this club degree dilemma I tried to have a discussion with Gene about it, but he didn’t see a problem. As far as he was concerned, he, Mr. Hogan and their bulky fixture were right and the trigonometry and engineering worlds were wrong. “Case closed,” Gene said, and he would never bring it up with Mr. Hogan. I considered pushing the math matter higher up the company food chain. If I did, however, it might appear to embarrass Gene and Mr. Hogan. I also considered the fact that sometimes the messenger with bad news is killed, or in my case, fired.

Only recently during one of our jaunts up to his office had Mr. Hogan shocked me by asking me a question. Mr. Hogan asked me how much hook I saw in a wood Gene was showing him. Without knowing when, I must have crossed over a trust line and paid the final installment of my dues.

“It does look a bit hooked,” I stammered. That was a safe response, because Gene had told me Mr. Hogan sees everything a couple of degrees more hooked than it measures, and I’ve run across many elite players over the years who see face angles the same way. With Mr. Hogan actually talking to me now, I wasn’t ready to blow up the new trust by telling him and Gene his machine “lied” consistently by a couple of degrees. With that, I quietly developed a chart and formula that would convert all Sheeley/Hogan fixture degrees to true engineering sine-plate calibrated degrees. With this secret formula and chart, I was able to do my job properly and those two incredible and historic men of the club I loved could stay happy.

A bit later, however, I screwed up and got bit in the butt. By this point, I could go in and see Mr. Hogan alone. One morning I went in there to show him one of Gene’s new prototype models. I don’t remember where Gene was. When I got to his office, Hogan dropped the wedge to the floor and eye balled it like he always did. Just a few seconds later, he barked at me and told me it was 0.75 degrees too weak.

I’m sure Mr. Hogan could see my skeptical reaction and read my thoughts. In my head I was saying to myself:

“That old man can’t sit in that chair on his butt and look down and see 0.75 degrees. No way. There are 360 degrees total and he says it is off by less than 1. I don’t think so!”

I walked out of his office and headed to the backroom shop with the wedge in question. All the way, I was muttering to myself the same disbelief. I grabbed my conversion chart and the sine plate and measured the club several times. I found both showed a discrepancy of 0.5-0.75 degrees.

He was right, I was wrong. I then had to go back up and eat some sour crap.

On the way back to his office, I vowed to never argue or doubt Mr. Hogan again. In the future, I would measure his clubs not once, but multiple times (with both measurement systems) before I went in to see him.

That incredible man who some called “The Hawk” could indeed see minuscule amounts of golf club right and wrong. He did it again and again during my time at his company. Many years later, I would work a “Tiger” — another super talented golf creature — who too had that same kind of alien accurate eyes and feel. He could discern incredibly small differences in clubs that were not able to be noticed by normal humans, and a certain “Golden Bear” could do the same thing.

I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m wondering if maybe some of the greatest players in the history of our game were dropped on earth by spaceships and have been living among us posing as our elite golfers. I’m not kidding! I’ve seen examples of a different perception and wiring system in them, and I’m certain they are different!

Maybe, I will tell you some of those stories on the back nine.

Related

• Introduction: Why I’m writing 18 stories for GolfWRX
• Hole 1: The Day I Met Ben Hogan
• Hole 2: Gene says, “Let’s go see Ben”
• Hole 3: Ben Hogan: “I had a dream”
• Hole 4: Ben Hogan had his own math
• Hole 5: Ben Hogan’s “Prototype” fly swatter