Rave of the Day:
The Fundamentals of Hogan

By the Editors of Golf & Travel Magazine

Broadsides, infatuations, rants and swoons from the editors of Golf & Travel Magazine

By Merrell Noden

The Fundamentals of Hogan
by David Leadbetter
Sleeping Bear Press, $27.50

Ben Hogan's instruction book has stood astride the practice range like a colossus since 1957. Now the most famous teacher in golf takes a much-overdue look at the great man's fundamentals

In 1956, a generation before video cameras and computers turned swing analysis into cold science, Sports Illustrated sent the great golf writer Herbert Warren Wind to Fort Worth, Tex., to interview Ben Hogan for a series of instructional articles.

Accompanying Wind was illustrator Anthony Ravielli, who photographed the game's purest ball striker and most obsessive experimenter both in full swing and in a series of poses, demonstrating what he thought were key points in his swing.

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Helped tremendously by Ravielli's faithful drawings, the series became, in the words of Hogan biographer Curt Sampson, "the Gray's Anatomy of golf."

As each installment appeared, golfers raced to the range, article clutched in hand, eager to incorporate Hogan's ideas into their games. All five were published in 1957 as Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, a book that has now sold more than 6 million copies, making it the best selling sports book in history.