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Nelson recalls 70-year friendship with Hogan

By MIKE COCHRAN / Associated Press Writer

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - Born in 1912, they grew up together, caddied together, sharpened their games together, traveled together and went on to become two of golf's greatest names.

And yet Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson were as different as night and day.

"Ben and I've been friends since we were 13 years old," says Nelson. "That's over 70 years."

Nelson, 85, was "very saddened ... but not surprised" by Hogan's death in Fort Worth on Friday. He said Hogan's health had declined sharply in recent weeks and he suffered a "major stroke" on Thursday.

In a telephone conversation from his home in nearby Roanoke, Nelson spoke of growing up with Hogan as kids and caddies and their early struggles to make a living on the fledgling professional golf circuit.

"We didn't go hungry but we had no money and we had trouble getting sponsors," he recalled.

"Ben had a difficult time getting started. ... I never saw anybody who was as determined to make a good golfer, who worked as hard and long as Ben did.

"When he did bloom late, he really bloomed wide open and played great."

Nelson indicated that Hogan demonstrated his greatness when he fought back from a near fatal car-bus collision in 1949 to win six more major championships.

Nelson also marveled at Hogan's long, frequent and intense practice sessions and remembered with a chuckle that his friend once took him to task for his own less vigorous work habits.

"Byron's a pretty good player but he's lazy and doesn't practice enough," Nelson quoted Hogan as saying during a rare radio interview.

Actually, Hogan was more reticent than blunt. Nelson said Hogan would sometimes concentrate so hard he would forget to even speak to partners in the old 2-ball and 4-ball tournaments that once were so popular.

Then and later, Hogan's silence, which sometimes bordered on surliness, was what set him apart from his lifelong friend - despite Nelson's princely nickname of Lord Byron.

Warm and outgoing, and at ease around golf writers, Nelson is accessible even to this day during the tournament that bears his name, the Byron Nelson Classic in Irving.

By contrast, Hogan, a five-time winner at Colonial in Fort Worth, surrendered his trophies and memorabilia for display at his hometown course but rarely himself.

He preferred the relative solitude of the 19th hole at Shady Oaks Country Club near his home.

Nelson was at a bit of a loss to explain why Hogan often seemed cool and aloof on and off the golf course. But he said his opinion was that it was due in part to an unhappy childhood.

"His father committed suicide," he pointed out, and other members of the family were "all kind of loners."

And often his concentration was simply such that he appeared in a trance.

"That's why people thought he was cold and indifferent on the golf course," Nelson said. But he suggested also that it went deeper than that.

"I don't want to say Ben didn't like strangers, but ... he didn't like talking to people that he didn't know. I don't think he was unfriendly, but some way they made him nervous and upset him.

"It was almost like they scared him."

Nelson said Hogan was different around him. They and their wives often traveled in a caravan from one tournament to another, eating and staying in the same places.

One of their favorite places was the El Capitan Hotel in the remote far West Texas town of Van Horn.

"We liked to stay there because they had good biscuits and gravy." Nelson said. "That's where Ben was going when he had the accident."