Sport: Little Ice Water

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Most of the nation's 3,000,000 golfers were in hibernation. Last week, except for a burst of New Year's Eve celebrating, country clubs from Maine to Medicine Hat were silent and windswept, their fairways and greens deserted. One that was not lay in a small coastal canyon about a mile from the Pacific Ocean. Golf balls by the dozens whizzed down Riviera's lush fairways; crowds of gawkers hustled along among the eucalyptus trees; caddies were busy as bird dogs. The $15,000 Los Angeles Open, which puts golf's winter circuit in high gear, opens there this week.

Golf's big names were there, straining to put a final touch of polish on their games. Ed Furgol, who manages to break par despite a withered left arm, had been drilling over the course for a month. Jimmy ("Smiles") Demaret, the best wind-shot in the business, and slim Lloyd ("Mustache") Mangrum haunted the practice rounds along with some 120 others. Besides high-compression temperament and a steely command of the emotions, it had taken hard work to get to the top of the tournament business and it was taking hard work to keep them there. With most of them golf was a matter of win-to-eat.

As the pros (and a sprinkling of amateurs) readied themselves for the big push, the man who held the top spot by virtue of his temperament, tireless diligence and many more qualities, was slim, wiry William Ben Hogan, 36, of Fort Worth, the U.S. Open champion and one of the greatest tournament players in U.S. golf's 54-year major-tournament history.

Some of Hogan's fans call him "Blazin' Ben," but another nickname—"Little Ice Water"—fits even better. He stands 5 ft. 8½ in. and weighs only 140 lbs., but he manages consistently to hit one of the longest and straightest balls in golf. Apart from such purely technical skills, little Ben Hogan is the fiercest competitor in the game. With his relentless training schedule and assembly-line precision, Ben is all business, considers a social round of golf the most boring thing in the world. Any man who outscores the champ more than once this year will have to have most of the same qualities, because machine-like Golfer Hogan rarely has a bad day, rarely plays two bad holes in a row.

"Till Hell Won't Have It." Hogan knows every foot of Riviera's 7,000-yd. course. Two years running he has won the Los Angeles Open there. And there last June, leaving a hare & hounds trail of half-smoked cigarettes in his wake, he won his greatest triumph thus far—the U.S. Open championship. He played Riviera as if he owned it; the caddies called it Hogan's Alley.

Hogan had no intention of relaxing on that account; 1948's laurels are no good in 1949. He hadn't played tournament golf for eleven weeks and he had some catching up to do. For an hour after he got to Riviera, he sprayed balls from the practice tee—first with the No. 9 iron, then the No. 8 and on up the ladder to the woods. He considered the wind and terrain even in practice, controlled every shot as if the tournament had begun. He has a horror of what he calls the Sunday golfer's gravest sin: "Just hitting the ball without thinking." Like cigar-chomping Walter J. Travis, golf's hero of half a century ago, Hogan likes to say that he never hits a careless shot.