The Ben Hogan Foundation - Robert Stennett, CEO

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle. Then it started to hook just a wee.

Mike Gonzalez 0:16

Well, Robert, I guess, first of all, why don't you start out by telling us how you got involved with the Ben Hogan Foundation?

Robert Stennett 0:22

Certainly. About uh 12, 13 years ago, the uh great niece of Ben Hogan, Miss Lisa Scott out of Los Angeles, wanted to start a foundation to honor her great uncle, uh Ben Hogan. And uh she, not being from Fort Worth and knew the foundation needed to be in Fort Worth, uh, contacted me and said, Can you help us get a foundation started to honor my great uncle? And I said I was in aerospace at that time, but I said uh I'd be honored to help. And uh we pulled together some friends that knew Mr. Hogan and created a mission statement that we thought Mr. Hogan would would like, things that we uh think that he would want to support, youth development and education, and uh got it going about 12 or 13 years ago.

Mike Gonzalez 1:11

So this got started uh uh nine or ten years after he passed in 1997. Uh you must have had a connection to Ben Hogan, yeah? I did.

Robert Stennett 1:19

I was very fortunate uh to know Mr. Hogan in the uh mid-1970s. I was uh 14-year-old uh coming to Shady Oaks and met Mr. Hogan at that time. And those of us that were fortunate enough to be around Mr. Hogan knew Mr. Hogan was more approachable by a young person than perhaps uh most adults. And he was uh I have a very fond memory of meeting him with my father, and uh and how gracious and how much of a gentleman he was.

Mike Gonzalez 1:50

And your father and he were friends, I suppose?

Robert Stennett 1:53

They were long-term friends. They were almost business partners at one time, doing a development of a golf course that Mr. Hogan was thinking about, and uh it just didn't work out, but they remained friends the rest of their lives.

Mike Gonzalez 2:07

And Bruce Devlin, of course, uh we've talked about your relationship with Mr. Hogan as well, starting back to uh your first practice round with him at the Masters back in the early 60s when you came over with Robert Van Nyta. But uh, how did the two of you get together?

Bruce Devlin 2:20

Well, it's interesting. Uh when uh when my wife Gloria uh got bad COPD up in the mountains in Arizona, we decided to move back to Texas. And the very first time that I met Robert Stenett was at Ben Hogan's house. A couple had bought the home and was planning to refurbish things, except for one thing. They left Mr. Hogan's office exactly the way it was when he was alive, which I thought was a a great tribute to him to think that they'd spend all this, you know, they had to put a couple of new bedrooms on for their kids in the bathrooms, and they did this and that, and they left that office exactly the same way as it was when Mr. Hogan was alive, and I thought that was terrific.

Robert Stennett 3:05

You know the neat part of that too. If you remember, they had a wood floor in there, and Mr. Hogan would walk to his bedroom with his spikes on, and you could see they would polish that floor and it would bring out the spike marks that was in that floor, and they would never replace that floor because that was Mr. Hogan's spike marks in the floor of their home. So they kept that floor that he would walk from his entrance into his bedroom.

Bruce Devlin 3:33

So he he he he affected a lot of people, not only in the golfing industry, but uh as Robert said earlier. No, he was he was one of the great gentlemen of the game.

Mike Gonzalez 3:44

Well, I think uh our listeners would enjoy uh each of your reflections of of Mr. Hogan the man, Mr. Hogan the player. Of course, he had a great career, born in 1912, uh uh passed in 1997, 64 wins as a professional, nine majors. Uh, we'll talk more about some of his accomplishments as a golfer and professionally, but uh you know you both know him as as not just Ben Hogan the golfer, but Ben Hogan the the man, the person.

Robert Stennett 4:11

Yeah, that's true. I I yeah I knew Mr. Hogan more in his grandfatherly stage. I did not know him like Bruce knew him as in the in his competitive days, but I had the opportunity to see Mr. Hogan hit golf balls, and he was still a remarkable ball striker in his 60s and his 70s. Uh the sound that came off his golf club was just different than everybody else's. But I knew him more uh later in life, um, and my memories were were how how neat of a sense of humor he had. You know, what what I would tell the listeners is how different the Mr. Hogan knew than the perception the world kind of saw. You know, uh I knew him as as a gentleman, I knew him as uh as somebody that loved dogs. We actually um we actually adopted two dogs whenever I was a young kid there at Shady Oak Country Club. We cut holes in the building and the dogs ate filet mignon because Mr. Hogan liked them, you know.

Bruce Devlin 5:12

So you gotta tell a story about when Mr. Hogan was practicing down at Seminole, and of course he went down there without his dogs. Great story. What happened?

Robert Stennett 5:22

Great story. So I'm a dog lover as well, and the the border collie that was there, his name was Max, and Max would only watch Mr. Hogan practice. And I didn't learn until about 10 years ago why. And I learned that on the way to the little nine where Mr. Hogan would practice, he'd go by the 19th hole and pick up a cheeseburger. And that was Max kind of like those cheeseburgers. So Max would sit on that cart, watch Mr. Hogan practice on the little nine. But Mr. Hogan went down to Seminole to to prepare for the masters. Uh, had a good friend, George Coleman, down there, and and um he had been gone a little while, and the employees at Shady Oaks took a card and took an ink pad and took Max's paw and took a paw print and put it on the card and said, We sure are missing you. Please come back soon. And they said that that touched Mr. Hogan so much that he cut his trip to Florida short to get back to Shady Oaks to say hello to his friend Max.

Mike Gonzalez 6:35

Oh, that's a great story, especially for dog lovers. That's a great story. Yeah, yeah. Uh Bruce, uh you had a chance to get to know uh Mr. Hogan uh back in the early 60s, as I mentioned, and uh saw him as a younger man, uh not pr probably uh in his prime uh years of uh playing professionally, but he was still pretty good back then, wasn't he?

Bruce Devlin 6:56

The early 60s. Uh uh, you know, I got to play a lot of practice rounds with Mr. Hogan uh up until he retired in 1969. But in the early days of the 60s, uh I first met him in 1962 at Augusta. And uh he was a great partner to have. And I would play with him against anybody they like to put up against us because he could still he could still get the job done. I can promise you that. He was still a wonderful player. And of course we uh I I've told the story a lot of times. Uh probably the probably the greatest day that we ever had together against a couple of guys by the name of Nicholas and Palmer was when we took money out of their pocket.

Mike Gonzalez 7:39

At Augustine practice round.

Bruce Devlin 7:41

That's right.

Mike Gonzalez 7:42

Yeah, and you had a chance to uh to make a trip, I believe, the U.S. Open at an Olympic, was it, with uh with Mr. Hogan and Valerie as well?

Bruce Devlin 7:49

That's true. In 1966, uh my wife Gloria and I were in Miami, and uh we were we decided uh we were we were actually playing in the 66 Open at uh in San Francisco and uh I used to go Miami, DFW, San Francisco, and when we landed in uh Dallas, Mr. Hogan and his wife Valerie got on the plane, and we both stayed, both couples stayed at the top of the Mark Hotel, and we got to go out each day to the practice range, played a couple of practice rounds together, and then we had dinner each night. And I think I think the one thing that really impressed me more than anything else was uh and I I wasn't sure whether I should do it, but I on the first night when we had dinner I said to Mr. Hogan, you know, we uh we've read so many stories about what happened when you you know when you finished playing in El Paso and headed back home and that you know that horrible thing happened and off he went. Monday night, the story didn't get finished. Tuesday night, just about the time we were ready to get up off the table, was when he was walking up at Merion, the last hole at Merion. So it was two nights of I mean intense detail about everything that happened, about the lights coming at him in the fog and sliding over in front of Valerie and you know leaving his legs behind, which is where he got all the damage. But uh he was he's a very warm-hearted, wonderful guy.

Mike Gonzalez 9:20

Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm sure a lot of folks have seen the movie that uh that tells that story and how as it goes he leaned over to protect his wife, which probably saved his life. It did.

Robert Stennett 9:31

It did save his life. No doubt about it.

Mike Gonzalez 9:34

And still, uh I I forget the number, was it 59 days or so in the hospital?

Robert Stennett 9:38

He was in, I'm not quite sure the number of days, uh, but he was in the hospital, and then he had back then they would never do this now, but you know, the he had all the injuries, but he also got blood clots in his legs, and they removed his vena cavas, which is the main blood flow return to the heart, which often will kill you now. They would never do that. But you know, he had that challenge the rest of his life, you know, of having inferior legs uh to walk on, which makes the story so amazing. Uh that here's a guy that they said, you know, perhaps would never walk again, and 16 months later he's winning the U.S. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 10:22

I mean, some parallels, I suppose, of the way tigers come back from a number of injuries uh to even end up winning at the Masters in 2019. But uh uh talk about perseverance and what he must have gone through to get his body and mind prepared again to compete at that level.

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Bruce Devlin 10:38

I don't think it ever affected his mind. He had a he had a mind like a like a trap. He um he was a very intense individual when he was on the golf course. But like like Rob and I both have said, you know, you you couldn't meet a nicer guy socially. Although I have one quick story. When the senior tour started uh at Onion Creek, where the very first tournament, when Liberty Mutual got behind with NBC, and I happened to be working for NBC, and uh John Brodie was my play-by-play guy, and I was a color guy. And uh Don Olmeyer, who was the uh executive producer for for uh NBC, said to me, Look, I know you've got Ms. You've been a good friend of Mr. Hogan's. Now this is 1980. Uh this is 11 years after he finished playing. He said, You know, uh we'd love to have Mr. Hogan come up and and sit in the booth with you and John. And I said to him, Well, I'm I'm not afraid to call him, but I can tell you exactly what he's gonna say right now. And he said, Well, so what's he gonna say, Smarty? I said, He'll say to me, Bruce, I you know, I couldn't think of a nicer thing to do. However, if I go to Onion Creek, this being the first tournament, first of all, I don't wanna put myself in a position where I'd where I become the story, and secondarily, and more importantly, I'd have to answer the same damn questions I got asked forty years ago.

Robert Stennett 12:10

You know, Bruce, you talk about I'll tell you a funny story, you said something that reminded me. Um, you know, we talk about Mr. Hogan, the gentleman, uh, how much we enjoyed him in that phase. But you Bruce used the word intense, and and Mr. Hogan, you know, even though he wasn't competitive and we didn't see him in his competitive days, he was still an intense competitor. And I learned this story just pretty recently. Our executive director, Chip Graham, was a first assistant uh in the golf shop there, and he's a 22 or 23-year-old kid, and Mr. Hogan is just about not playing golf anymore, and you know, maybe in his early 80s or so, and and Chip mentioned something to one of the other assistant pros there. He says, you know, he said, I think I could take him now. And Mr. Hogan walked by the counter and Chip just kind of smarted off a little bit to him, you know, playing with Mr. Hogan because they liked him so much. And he says, You know, Mr. Hogan, he said, I think I could take you now. And he said, Mr. Hogan turned to him with the most amazing stare, and he said, I could beat your country butt left-handed. And then Chip said he walked away and he thought about what he had said, but that was his knee-jerk reaction was that intensity at a 80-year-old man that didn't hardly play golf anymore. And he turned around and he walked back to Chip and he apologized. And he said, Hey, I'm sorry, Chip, I didn't, you know, mean to come on that strong, you know, and everything. And Chip said, the look in his eyes was so intimidating whenever he said he was dead serious whenever he said that to me, you know, but he just triggered that that level of intensity that he had until I think he died.

Bruce Devlin 14:00

Yeah, I do too. And it's very typical, I think, that you know, he says, basically what he's saying is, you know, big boy, put the T in the ground on the first C and let's go.

Mike Gonzalez 14:11

Yeah, yeah. Was he was he you must have been pretty intimidating, competing against in his prime. Uh yeah.

Bruce Devlin 14:18

Um, you know, I I only played about I think three actual rounds of golf with him in an actual tournament. So I didn't and they were they were very difficult for me, I can tell you that, because you know, I I held him in such revere as uh not only as a as a great player, but uh as a really great gentleman. And I was I was nervous as hell playing with him.

Robert Stennett 14:47

Yeah, they talk they talk about the stare of the hawk, you know. We were talking about Dean Beaman a little bit earlier, and he had a great quote, you know, on that. And he said, you know, Ben Hogan didn't look you in the eyes, he looked you in the pupils. Yeah. It's great because his stare was so intense.

Bruce Devlin 15:03

Yeah.

Robert Stennett 15:04

The stare of the hawk.

Bruce Devlin 15:05

One more intense story that I think is yeah, I I was not there, but I'm assuming that it was the truth. He was playing in a golf tournament, and his partner made a hole in one, and he made a two. And as they're walking off the green, Mr. Hogan said, You know, that's the first time I've ever birdied this hole.

Robert Stennett 15:25

I've heard that story too. By the way, what did you do? He was pretty focused. Oh, very focused. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 15:33

Well, one thing that struck me about his playing record, I you know, did a little research and just looked at his his U.S. Open record. For the ten years from 1946 to 1956, U.S. Open now. Four wins, two seconds, one third, one fourth, and two sixths.

Bruce Devlin 15:54

Astounding, isn't it, really, when you think about it.

Robert Stennett 15:56

And you know, Mike, you can take that even a hair further than than that. Between I can't remember the years, I think it's 1940 and 1960, for 20 years in the US Open. They didn't play it every year because you had World War II.

Bruce Devlin 16:10

Yeah.

Robert Stennett 16:11

But every year he played in, and he didn't play it in the year of the car wreck. But for 20 straight years he never finished out of the top ten. His worst finish, and that was tied for 10th.

Mike Gonzalez 16:23

Astounding, in that twenty straight years of U.S. opens.

Bruce Devlin 16:27

It's un it's unfathomable today with you know uh uh You know, and it's not like just one little point, it was it's not like there weren't some pretty damn good players back then, too, when you think about it, you know. Sneed and DeMarit and Middlecoff and Nelson. Yeah, I mean, you you take you put that in perspective. It was a pretty fantastic record.

Mike Gonzalez 16:52

Yeah, and here's a guy that missed uh at least what three years uh with uh service in the military during his absolute prime that he had to step aside from competition.

Robert Stennett 17:01

Yeah. Uh it's you know, you can make a pretty compelling case that between the and Mr. Hogan was, you know, he didn't regret that one bit. He was very proud of his service to the country. And that's one of the reasons with the foundation, you know, one of the things we do is we do a military appreciation event to honor the soldiers, and Bruce will be going down there with us next week. You know, you can make a pretty compelling case that if you didn't subtract the years for World War II and you didn't subtract the years for the car wreck, and you didn't um take out that he really only played three, four, five, six events for the rest of his life after the car wreck. If you just take the numbers that he was doing before that time and extrapolate that out, you can make a pretty compelling case that he would have won over a hundred tournaments.

Bruce Devlin 17:49

Yeah. Yeah, somebody did that the other day. I saw I saw somebody that uh that that actually did that and said that the nobody else would uh even come close to a record like that.

Robert Stennett 18:00

We sh we in our newest Ben Hogan Learning Center that we're about to open one of the panels that we put up just to kind of have a little fun because we're trying to tell the Hogan story and trying to put some unique information on Mr. Hogan. And I think, Mike, it's kind of like one of those statistics where you're looking at his U.S. open record. But one of our panels says, Was Ben Hogan the greatest golfer that ever lived? Question mark. We don't state that he was, but we ask that question.

Bruce Devlin 18:27

It's a damn good question, though.

Robert Stennett 18:28

And then we provide four or five compelling facts. And then at the end of the panel, it says, you decide your call.

Bruce Devlin 18:35

Yeah.

Robert Stennett 18:36

One of the compelling facts that we provide in there is Ben Hogan played in 292 PGA tour events. He finished in the top ten in 241 of those 292 events. He finished in the top three in 49% of those events, about 140-something events out of the 292 he played in, he finished first, second, or third.

Bruce Devlin 19:02

And the first two years that he was on the tour were pretty weak. Right. But after that, boy, whatever his Hogan secret was, he sure he sure knew how to imply it, that's for sure.

Mike Gonzalez 19:17

What a record. Well, you mentioned uh you mentioned Lisa Scott, the board chair of the foundation, and I think she authorized the uh the biography back in 2004. She did Ben Hogan. Uh uh written by James Dodson, who our listeners may uh have read some of his stuff. He he wrote a book called Final Rounds and and one about Arnold Palmer called A Golfer's Life. And uh this book was entitled Ben Hogan and American Life. And so he got into the early life of Ben Hogan uh uh and mentions the fact that uh that uh Ben's father committed suicide when when Ben was quite young. Uh facts are a little unclear as to as to how that might have impacted Mr. Hogan, but uh clearly it must have had some impact on his on his young early life. He loved his dad, you know.

Robert Stennett 20:04

He we have we see childhood pictures, you know, of him. His dad was a blacksmith in the days when blacksmiths were the automobile was being introduced and blacksmiths were kind of kind of going away. But um yeah, he cherished his uh he cherished his dad and uh and it was a you know kind of a and Mr. Hugan would tell you, you know, he he he was as tough as he was because of he you know he said he he had a tough he had a tough life. He had, you know, not just the the potential seeing his father kill himself, uh arguably, uh whether he was in the room or not, but um extreme poverty. Um you know, where he, you know, had to drop out of high school, you know, to go sell newspapers and then later do loops at Glen Garden for 65 cents, you know, to give his mother money so they could put bread on the table, you know. And that one of the stories that not too many people know is on those loops at Glen Garden and he was still doing the paper route, Mr. Hogan would keep a couple of newspapers at the end and he would take use one of them to line one of the bunkers that he was gonna sleep in, and he'd use one of the other ones to cover up in so he would get the first loop in the morning, you know, to show how tough of a guaranteed job he had. So but that sixty-five cents was critical to his family so they could eat.

Bruce Devlin 21:35

Taking that a little bit further, yeah, you mentioned uh the two Ben Hogan centers that we have here in the Fort Worth area. There are nine different panels that go on each of these facilities, and they are Robert.

Robert Stennett 21:49

Oh, I can't say all of them, but perseverance and honesty and judgment and accountability, uh responsibility.

Bruce Devlin 21:58

They all tie into him. Single one of them.

Robert Stennett 22:01

That's one of the reasons, you know, whenever we were early on the foundation and trying to think about what we could best do to honor Mr. Hogan, the first T kind of jumped out and it was in its infancy. You know, it was a pretty young organization. And the the chapter here in Fort Worth has some amazing statistics.

Bruce Devlin 22:19

Matter of fact, the first T doesn't even include the first T of Fort Worth in their statistical information, right?

Robert Stennett 22:26

Trevor Burrus The retention of the first T here in Fort Worth is 87% of the kids that join the program come back. And nationally they were trying to grow it to 20 percent. So of the 209 chapters or whatever, they throw one of the data points out, and that's Fort Worth, because it skews the data. But if you think about it, if you think of the symmetry of what Mr. Hogan stood for, you know, the honesty and integrity and perseverance, and then you think of the nine core values that they're trying to instill in the young people, the symmetry is perfect. You know, you say, what better example could you have for a young person than than Ben Hogan? So we love uh we love that partnership.

Bruce Devlin 23:07

And it's interesting if you go to uh the Hogan Foundation for an outing, uh quite often you see the the kids that have gone through the program get up and make a speech about one thing or another, and you're thinking, my God.

Mike Gonzalez 23:24

And how they've been impacted.

Bruce Devlin 23:26

Yeah, how they've been impacted by this whole thing is quite remarkable. And Robert, you you know, I think the people would like to know about the scholarships that the Hogan Foundation does. Uh I think that's a very interesting part of what is done by the Hogan Foundation along with some of the university.

Robert Stennett 23:44

Well, we do um we now have five scholarship programs. Again, Mr. Hogan couldn't pursue his education, but it was something that he valued. And Mr. Hogan was an extremely intelligent person. He paid for Lisa Scott, our board chair. He paid for her college at USC. And but we, you know, in honoring Mr. Hogan, that's one of the things that we do. So we have five programs. One of them is every young person at Fort Worth that achieves ACE level, we give a scholarship to. We have a partnership with the Northern Texas PGA, in which we do scholarships for their junior golf foundation. We have an inspirational program with Texas Health, where it's called the Award of Perseverance, where we take a young person that has overcome an amazing amazing uh sports injury of one kind or another and persevered. Uh we have a mentor partnership, and then we have our military scholars. So uh again, something Mr. Hogan would be very, very proud of uh and uh something that hopefully is making a difference.

Mike Gonzalez 24:52

Yeah, tell us about some of the other things. There there's so many things that the the foundation gets involved in uh uh in terms of events. I I just looked on the website to look at the uh Ben Hogan Breakfast Club and see the list of prominent speakers you've had over the Well, we've been really lucky in the first one you're looking at here.

Robert Stennett 25:11

So I kind of had a Bruce Devlin brainstorm here. You had a bad day at the office, didn't you, when you invited me. You know, somebody was saying we ought to have a breakfast club, and it's just a fun social way to keep the foundation, what we're doing, relevant with, you know, a hundred or a hundred and fifty friends. And I called Bruce uh, I don't know, probably ten years ago now or so, and said, let's I want to create a Ben Hogan breakfast club. And uh would you be our first speaker? And he he was gracious enough to do it. And we've been very fortunate. Uh and it's not just golfers, you know, Nolan Ryan did one for us, and we've had Jay Novichek football players and Pat Green, country western singers, just an interesting speaker, and it's just kind of an excuse to get together with good friends, celebrate Mr. Hogan, and have a fun breakfast.

Bruce Devlin 26:04

And it's never been undefunded from people wanting to go there. You gotta you know, they gotta stop it. Yeah, probably too. Yeah. Yeah, we we're too many people want to go to it.

Mike Gonzalez 26:15

So yeah, we have a great turnout. Yeah, and you've got an event coming up, uh, the Ben Hogan Classic at Fort Hood. Of course, Hogan served in the Army Air Corps back during World War II, so uh you've got that coming up uh later this week, right?

Robert Stennett 26:28

Very proud of his service. I'll tell you uh an interesting story that I uh had as a young person way before I became involved with the foundation, but I was with General Dynamics in aerospace, and and I was a young, about as low a level individual as you can kind of get at the company, and I get a call from one of the top-level executives, and they said, uh, we need you to go play golf today. And I said, Well, I can't get off work. And they said, No, you're you're off work, and we've got the Air Force Thunderbird pilots here, and you and somebody else are gonna take them out to Shady Oaks and play golf with them. And I said, Wow, you know, have I ever come to work for the right company? You know, you're gonna pay me to go play golf, you know. So anyway, I took them out, we had a great day with the Thunderbird pilots out at Shady Oaks, and we're in having a cocktail after golf, and there's Mr. Hogan over at his corner table, and they spot him and they say, Is that Ben Hogan? And I go, Yeah, that's Ben Hogan. And they said, Well, we'd like to meet him. And I said, It doesn't work that way, boys. So 10 minutes goes by and they said, No, we're serious. We really want to meet Ben Hogan. And I said, Buddy, we don't bother Mr. Hogan. This is his sanctuary. And anyway, they wore me out after about 30 minutes, and I go over to Mr. Hogan and say, Mr. Hogan, I'm sorry to bother you, but I've got the United States Air Force Thunderbird pilots here, and these are our elite fighter pilots of our piercing eyes, and he says, It'd be my honor. And he hops up from the table and puts his arms around and takes photos with him, and just couldn't have been, but it was because they were our country's military. You know, he was very patriotic. So, in that in that realm, you know, we're we're proud, and this will be our ninth year, and Bruce has been down almost every year helping us honor the soldiers. But we go down, we have one of the largest military installations here, a couple of hours south of us. And we go down and put on a golf tournament uh for the soldiers. And we reached out to them a while back and we were trying not to be presumptuous. We said, you know, what can we do? Do you want us to build care packages to send to Iraq, or what can we do to help you out? And they said, We want you to come to our base and put on a golf tournament on our golf course. And we said, Well, we can do that.

Bruce Devlin 28:54

Yeah.

Robert Stennett 28:55

So we take uh quite a few volunteers down, and uh we go down and and uh we figured after after the first year it really wasn't a golf tournament. It was more about giving the soldiers the day off. And thanking them thanking them for their service. So we have uh 200 soldiers that will play in it and we make them feel like rock stars, and we give them neat gifts, and we feed them and we entertain them, and we we serve that we give them a day off.

Bruce Devlin 29:25

When they arrive in the parking lot, there's somebody there to pick up their golf clubs, to carry them down, to put them on the card and say, Thank you, sir, for your service. And when they're finished, somebody's there to clean the faces off their golf clubs and again thank them for their service. So I think I think they enjoy it. Well, Robert, great story this year.

Robert Stennett 29:46

Yeah, we're we're really excited. We were down meeting with the um commanding general, General White, um, a couple of months ago, I guess in January, and um he said, you know, this has really become a big deal. And uh said, you don't realize it, but between between COVID and we just did a one-year deployment to Iraq and the negative media publicity that we've had recently, morale's low, you know. And he said, Your deal, you all come in for a weekend, but the soldiers talk about this tournament all year long. It's a big deal, you know. And they said, We it is one of the premier events we do at our base each year, and which was really, really nice to hear. But the general looked over at me and said, you know, you do so many nice things for us. What can we do for you? And I said, Well, sir, a flyover would be nice. So we're we're adding a flyover to our opening ceremony, and then we have the um special forces jump team that will bring the flag in. So we've got an opening ceremony like the Super Bowl, you know, and then we actually have a cannon there to start the tournament, and we take a bagpiper down and we lead the soldiers out to America of the Beautiful on the bagpipes. It's just an absolutely inspirational story.

Bruce Devlin 31:07

One other thing. They open it up for the soldiers to register for it. How many minutes did it take to fill the 200 spots?

Robert Stennett 31:18

Uh it was full with uh 16 teams on the waiting list. We have 50 teams, 200 soldiers, and it was full in six hours. Oh my and they have to go register in person.

Bruce Devlin 31:30

Yeah, they got to register in person.

Mike Gonzalez 31:32

Well, I hope you get some good videotape of all those opening ceremonies because you want to get that up on your website, send them to your you know, your funders and so forth.

Robert Stennett 31:40

That'd be we we ask Mike, you're spot on. We're actually this is the first year we're actually taking a videographer down with us because the opening ceremony is so over the top.

Mike Gonzalez 31:48

So we'll you'll get a lot of use out of that video, I'm sure.

Bruce Devlin 31:52

And we have a general uh who's coming back this year that was a commanding officer there uh, I guess for about two or three years, and was actually born uh within five miles of Fort Hood itself. Uh he's since become a four-star general. Uh, and he's coming back to play golf with us this year, which we think is pretty good.

Robert Stennett 32:16

Yeah, General Funk's become a great friend, and uh and uh he is uh he has found some business in town, and I think he's gonna come join us. So we're always thrilled to have General Funk join us.

Mike Gonzalez 32:27

That'll be fun. Well t tell us a little bit more uh about your relationship with First T, which I think uh goes back to at least 2007, um, and uh and and and also the two Ben Hogan Learning Centers.

Robert Stennett 32:40

Yeah, the the First T again, um, you know, if you kind of think about what Mr. Hogan stood for, and you think about those nine core values they're trying to instill in young people, it's just a perfect partnership. And uh they needed a facility and uh reached out to us and when we were brand new and didn't have any money in the bank, and uh we pledged uh half a million dollars, and I'm sitting here saying, How in the world am I gonna pay our bills and raise half a million dollars on top of that? But it worked out. But we were uh we built uh the first Ben Hogan Learning Center, opened it in 2011, and and Bruce was talking a little bit about some of the statistics, and we were talking about retention rate, but when they started they had three, four hundred kids, and the year before COVID, last year before COVID, they in 2019 they had 50,000 kids. So I've grown it from 300 to 50,000. So now there's a new one. Now there's a new facility. May 1st, uh out here west of town, also for the first TF Fort Worth, we are opening our second Ben Hogan Learning Center here at uh Squaw Creek Golf Course. And um it's kind of a middle of some really growing communities, and we think it's going to be just as successful and make one heck of an impact on the young people out here in this area.

Mike Gonzalez 34:07

And you know, for those listeners that are thinking Learning Center and thinking, oh, it's just a bunch of hitting bays, it's all about golf. No, no, no. It's much more, isn't it?

Robert Stennett 34:14

You're very right. Yeah, the the you know, it's it's introducing a lot of kids to the game of golf that Mr. Hogan would like, but probably more importantly, it's teaching them character. And there is a lot of classroom time, and that is the way you move through the levels of parr and birdie and eagle and ace, is through classroom time and skills, and and they go from age seven and the introduction and the tournament of how to shake hands with somebody and look them in the eye when you shake their hands and say, nice to meet you, sir, to as they advance, they go into conflict resolution and mentoring and things like that. But it's uh, you know, Mr. Hogan would like every aspect of it. He would love that it's it's it's introducing the game of golf to kids, but he would also love that it's instilling the important life skills.

Mike Gonzalez 35:11

Well, let's talk about the support of the Ben Hogan Museum in Dublin, Texas, which is where he grew up. Um you do get involved in supporting that museum in some way?

Robert Stennett 35:22

We do. Um and it's actually in a historic building. Uh Karen Wright down there um we met quite a few years ago. And Dublin is a little farming community, but they really have a great um number of museums to celebrate history. And Mr. Hogan was was born and spent his early years in Dublin, Texas, and uh their most famous citizen. And we created uh the Ben Hogan Museum of Dublin down there, and I think it's perhaps one of the largest museums there are dedicated, you know, to honoring Mr. Hogan. And uh it's it's something that you need to see. It's uh it's a little community, but it's a it's a first-class museum.

Mike Gonzalez 36:08

And speaking of museums, uh your board chair Lisa Scott was quite involved in overseeing some significant contributions of Hogan Memorabilia, both to the USGA uh museum that was created in honor of Mr. Hogan, as well as at the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Robert Stennett 36:22

Yes, yeah, Lisa was um uh has worked extensively, and the um matter of fact, one of our honorary board members was the curator there uh at the USGA at the USGA Museum, Dr. Andy Munch. And um we did we still work with Andy on some projects and and I think we're gonna work with him on an upcoming project at Shady Oaks. But he worked with Lisa and um setting up the uh Ben Hogan room there at the USGA.

Mike Gonzalez 36:51

And for those that can't make it to Far Hills, New Jersey, uh you can you can tour the museum virtually online on the USGA website, which is kind of a cool tour, yeah. And uh uh and and and go through the rest of their facilities and museums because they've got areas dedicated to Jack Nicholas, Arnold Palmer, and some others. But uh it's a it's a w wonderfully done museum. Yeah, first class. Yeah, yeah. Um just back a little bit about uh about Ben Hogan. I mean, back to his childhood, uh you mentioned him caddying it uh really, I think about age nine. Uh one of his fellow caddies was Byron Nelson. Byron Nelson.

Robert Stennett 37:25

They grew up in a caddy yard together, and uh yeah, and we're uh anyway, yeah, they had uh they had great uh competitions and uh and you know Byron Nelson was kind of the more likable, more personable, you know, uh caddy there, and and they had some competitions uh there, but um I think that kind of helped Mr. Hogan with his competitive instincts at an early age.

Mike Gonzalez 37:52

Well, he had good competition there going up against Byron Nelson. I'll I'll tell a quick personal story. Uh uh my wife and I were having dinner with some friends at uh Pebble Beach in the sort of the casual restaurant overlooking 18 up on the second floor, and uh and we we we walk in and we get seated at our table, and as we're walking to our table, kind of in a corner, we walk past this big circular table, and at the circular table is is uh uh Arnold Palmer and his second wife. Uh Ferris, the the the the airline CEO United. That was was uh you know part of the the ownership there. Peter Ubroth, also part of the ownership group, and wives, right? And so they had this group of eight people there. And uh so we we sit down and there's an older couple at the time they might have been in their early 80s, was sitting right next to us. So they're sort of in the corner in a two-spot, and we're at a four-spot right next to them. And uh and at some point we just start casually talking and whatever, and and and uh next thing you know, the woman of the of the the wife of the the fella sitting next to us goes over and starts talking to Mr. Palmer. Ten, fifteen minutes go by. She comes back, about ten minutes later, Arnold Palmer comes over, sits right next to me and starts engaging these two in conversations and telling stories. And and you know, we we weren't paying much attention, but uh so he goes back to his table and then we get to talking to this couple again. Well, turns out the fellow was uh Mr. Hogan's insurance man, who you probably know who I'm talking about. Yeah, Gene Smyers. Gene Smyers, and a Gene Smyers and his wife, and he did all of Hogan's personal insurance and business insurance, right? And ended up being a Paul Bear at Mr. Hogan's funeral. And so he starts telling us just some stories about back in the day, and the reason I bring it up is because of Byron Nelson, and he he tells the stories about when they first got going on the tour. It was really those two couples traveling by automobile from tour stop to tour stop. And they got to one town and they needed some new tires. And if one of them didn't have a good finish, they weren't gonna be able to get to the next town. And ended up, I think Mr. Hogan won the tournament, won $300 enough to buy a set of tires and pay for another couple nights of motel. I mean, it was tough being on the road back then.

Robert Stennett 40:14

Yeah, and it, you know, um, we're fortunate. We've got his in the Hogan office in the safe. We've got, I'm not sure I've ever even shown it to you, Bruce. We've got Mr. Hogan's little black book. No, you haven't shown it to me. Okay. That um Valerie Hogan maintained in the early years. And you can turn to the page, and I think it was in Oakland, and I don't maybe call the Oakland Open or something like that, that Mr. Hogan said that was the biggest check that he ever made, and that was where they were picking the oranges off the trees to because they didn't have enough to eat, and you know, da-da-da. And and um Mr. Hogan had had told Mrs. Hogan this was their last shot, and he was going to go back and partner with his brother in the office supply business and not pursue golf. And I think he had a sixth-place finish in Oakland and made $265.

Bruce Devlin 41:06

Kept him.

Robert Stennett 41:07

And he said that was the biggest check that he ever got in his life. And then you turn the page and, you know, just another tournament too, and then I think it was the Pinehurst North South that he won, and then he won like two or three tournaments almost in a row, you know. But he said that that one check that he had was the biggest check of his life because he was just about to not be a professional golfer.

Mike Gonzalez 41:28

Yeah. So so Mr. Hogan had his serious wreck in in 1949, which we talked about, won the the U.S. Open at Marion in in 1950. Interesting uh little tidbit about that. My understanding is he didn't carry a seven-iron that tournament. And somebody asked him about that. He says, Well, there isn't a seven-iron shot at Marion.

Bruce Devlin 41:47

I've heard that story. It's pretty classic, isn't it, to hear a story like that about Mr. Hogan. That's it.

Robert Stennett 41:55

You know, I would believe that too. I've heard that story, but I would believe that he would that he would design his bag around that golf course. I would believe that story.

Bruce Devlin 42:05

If he wanted to carry an extra whatever it might be. And that's something I'd like you to talk a little bit about after we finish on this subject, is he was probably one of the most innovative people that actually built golf clubs in the world. Scientist. Brilliant. Yeah.

Robert Stennett 42:24

It's uh it's a very how did he get into that? Before we go there, I'll tell you one other interesting story. You made me think about this. I had a good friend that we came over from Louisiana and brought our foursome over to Shady Oaks to play golf, and his name was Pat McGonagall. And Pat's dad was Jimmy McGonagall, who won the California State Amateur in Mr. Hogan's day five or six times. Great amateur golfer, Mr. Hogan. Thought very, very well of him. Matter of fact, I saw Mr. Hogan jump up from his table and run across the room and hug him whenever he walked into the 19th hole, and I only saw him do that to two people in my life. But they came up to Jimmy and they asked him, they said, or they come up to Pat and they said, uh, we would like for you to Mr. Hogan wants you to play golf with him today. Well, it screwed up our game, right? Because he it was our forceman. Pat comes up to us and he said, Hey guys, I don't know what to do. I've been invited to play golf with Ben Hogan. And we said, There is no decision. Absolutely. We'll play a threesome. You go play golf with Ben Hogan, you know. And Pat was about a scratch golfer, he was a good golfer. And he went and played, and I remember asking Pat after the round, I said, How was it? And he said, Man, it was amazing. And he said, Mr. Hogan and I were partners. And he said, on the fifth hole, which is a par three at Shady Oaks, and you know, maybe 185, 190 or so. He said, Mr. Hogan knocks it up about 12, 14. Feet in the hole, hits a beautiful shot, and he said, Mr. Hogan, he said, May I ask you what club you hit? And Mr. Hogan said, Well, certainly, Pat. He said, I hit a 5-8 five-iron. He had it dissected pretty good. Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 44:17

Oh my. Did he ever give you, Bruce, any advice or criticism of your golf game, comment on it in any way?

Bruce Devlin 44:24

No, he he never he I never actually stood with him and had a lesson. My son got a lesson from him, but I didn't.

Robert Stennett 44:31

But uh He'd criticize your buggy, Welp.

Bruce Devlin 44:34

Yeah. But uh no, you know, real hard and fast lessons. But uh I I think I've heard him say to other people that he liked the way I swung the golf club. And maybe that's why we played so many practice rounds together for so many years. It was uh pretty special.

Mike Gonzalez 45:01

Yeah, Robert, were you alluding to the fact that maybe he might have commented on Bruce's equipment from time to time?

Robert Stennett 45:06

He did. There is Bruce has told me that story before. I was trying to give him a lead in there about uh, you know, Mr. Hogan probably had the stiffest shaft made the that mankind could create in his driver so he couldn't draw the ball, so he didn't have to worry about the hook. And he would always kid other golfers about how much flex there was in their shaft.

Bruce Devlin 45:26

He used to he used to put an apex five shaft in his driver and then he'd tip it as well, so it was like I'd value it like a 3X shaft in his driver. Um every time we every time we walked on the first tier, it didn't matter where we were, Augusta or anywhere else where we were playing a golf tour together, he'd go to my bag and he'd pull my driver out and he'd put it in his hands and he'd wiggle the head of it and he'd say, Hmm, you're still using that buggy whip, huh?

Mike Gonzalez 46:01

Well, you did fine with yours and he did fine with his. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he he won the the the 1953 Open Championship at Carnoustie. Only time playing the Open Championship. Right. You did he do you know whether he regretted that? Uh just playing it last time.

Bruce Devlin 46:18

I don't know that he would have regretted it.

Mike Gonzalez 46:21

It was a it was a big investment for an American player to make that trip because it was expensive. You know, the the the purses weren't that great. Took a boat over. Yeah, you know.

Bruce Devlin 46:30

Missed the PGA the next week. Yeah.

Robert Stennett 46:32

Because he he was traveling back on a boat. I had the the opportunity to go to Karnowski um, I don't know, six or seven years ago, and uh representing Mr. Hogan's foundation. I guess the word got there, and I felt like I was an absolute rock star.

Bruce Devlin 46:52

Yeah.

Robert Stennett 46:52

I mean, the the chairman of the club came out and I was greeted by everybody because of Mr. Hogan. I mean, you know, here this is that was 1953, you know, here it's 60 something years later, and then how revered he was and how celebrated he was with that open win.

Bruce Devlin 47:14

Yeah.

Mike Gonzalez 47:16

You know, Bruce mentioned uh a minute ago about uh Mr. Hogan being uh an innovator uh uh relative to golf technology and so forth. Why don't you talk a little bit about that?

Robert Stennett 47:26

Yeah, thank you. We we actually just shot a mini documentary on uh Hogan the innovator or Hogan the Scientist, um that and I think a lot of people know the story of you know Hogan the ball striker. You know, was he the best? Arguably. They know the story of Hogan, the story of perseverance, of how he persevered, so many aspects, so many challenges in his life. Few people know how innovative he was in the game of golf and how much of a scientist he was. And and in our office, we have some some pretty tangible examples of that innovativeness. Um and one of the examples that we have that he created uh around the early 1960s is the first hybrid. And he didn't call it a hybrid. No, but you can look at it and you can say it's a hybrid. It sure as heck looks like a hybrid to me. Um we also have the first Bore Thu shaft, you know, in a wood. And what twenty-five years later, after that club was made, the Big Bertha came out with the Bore Thu shaft, and maybe perhaps one of the biggest selling golf clubs in the history of God. Um we have the metal wood. And woods were woods. And there's Mr. Hogan creating a metal wood. We have uh perimeter weighting and the putters, where he was putting weight in the grip, you know, and now that's the big thing on tour, you know, and everything. Just people didn't realize and and and and I can kind of make a case based upon some correspondence I have in the office. When Mr. Hogan was on the McGregor staff in the early 1950s, I kind of think he was probably wearing them out with his changes, and I'm sure they couldn't react quick enough to his demand for changes in equipment. And I would make the case that I think that's the reason the Ben Hogan Company was started in 1953, was because Mr. Hogan had so many creative ideas about the golf club that he'd had to create his own company to keep up with the advancements that he was coming up with.

Mike Gonzalez 49:36

Was there anything in his background educationally that that uh prepared him for that?

Bruce Devlin 49:39

It was just all what he learned. Absolutely not. I think he was just you know uh it's not the right phrase to use, but he's sort of a to me it's like a mad scientist. You you you're using these golf clubs and you're saying, well, how can I you know how can I tweak this to make it a little bit better? And and so he just go ahead and like Robert said, uh you know, a hybrid uh fifty years short of where you know they're using them now.

Mike Gonzalez 50:10

And long before you would have had any data, you there were no track man and right analytics to look at, so it all would have been uh well, you know, he was the Iron Byron, so he would go create it.

Robert Stennett 50:21

I'm sure 90% of the time he'd never produce it, but he would create it in his locker at Shady Oaks. He had two lockers. He had the one locker where he had his clothes and shoes and golf balls and everything, and he had the other locker where he had his experimental clubs that he would make at the Hogan Company, bring them out to the little nine, hit them to perfect them, you know. But we've got clubs with unique groove patterns. He was trying aluminum golf clubs at one time, you know. He never produced them, but he was he was, you know, and you'd say, well, he's stoic and you know, a traditionalist. And he was extraordinarily innovative in the game of golf and introduced so many new concepts to equipment uh that few people know about.

Mike Gonzalez 51:04

You didn't need a test machine, he was the machine.

Robert Stennett 51:06

He was the machine.

Mike Gonzalez 51:08

Yeah, yeah. Robert, I'd always heard that uh that Mr. Hogan had an interesting response when asked the question, how would he like to be remembered?

Robert Stennett 51:17

Yeah, I think so, Mike. Um, you know, you would think that Mr. Hogan would would answer that as, you know, perhaps the greatest golfer or something related to golf, but uh late in Mr. Hogan's life, the director of golf at Shady Oaks, Mike Wright, was sitting with Mr. Hogan and he said, uh, Mr. Hogan, how would you like to be remembered? And Mr. Hogan said, I'd like to be remembered as a gentleman. That's simple.

Mike Gonzalez 51:44

What a great way to finish. And uh Robert, we appreciate your time. We wish you luck with the Ben Hogan Foundation. Uh nice having you. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being with you.

Intro Music 51:54

And that's when McCaddy lost sight of it. That little white pallet has never been.

Mike Gonzalez 52:00

Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Good of the Game. And please, wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, spread the word, and tell your friends. Until we tee it up again for the good of the game, so long, everybody.