Ben Hogan is revered as perhaps the most consistent golfer in history, but he was also a pure ball-striker and a majestic swinger of the club. While not necessarily being remembered as a particularly long hitter off the tee, he utilised precision and accuracy to dominate the game.
Hogan's impeccable timing allowed him to put the ball in a great position with regularity, and when catching it right he could even rival the big-hitting Sam Snead on occasion.
In the modern era, we now have readily available stats and data on every facet of the game. The statistics give us vital insights into player's performance with the driver, indicating how far players hit the ball and how accurate they are when doing it.
Unfortunately, this data was not being collected when Ben Hogan was in his prime, which makes it difficult to say how far he drove the golf ball. However, based on anecdotal evidence obtained through the work of golf historians over the years, we can make a fair estimate.
As a starting point – Golf Digest did a study in a 1953 edition, taking a look at hitting distances from the tee on the 18th hole at Oakmont Country Club in the third round of the US Open (an event won by Ben Hogan.) Interestingly, the study was carried out by Robert Trent Jones.
The wind was slightly behind on the day, and Trent Jones estimated that gave players an extra five to eight yards on average. The average total length of drive that day (including run) was 261 yards. Ben Hogan is reported to have driven the ball 266 yards, while Sam Snead hit it 290 yards!
Admittedly that’s just one drive, on one hole, with particular weather and ground conditions... but it does give us a reasonable clue.
A few years earlier, in a 1949 article contained within Time Magazine, the author states that Ben Hogan hit his driver 265 yards – that agrees pretty closely to Trent Jones’ study in 1953. Then, in a 1960s Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf match against Sam Snead, Hogan was still hitting his drives around the 265-yard mark.
In the 1950 US Open at Merion, when Hogan hit that famous 1-iron to the 18th green, the hole was measuring 458 yards and Hogan hit from roughly 200 yards out… That would mean his drive went somewhere around the 258 yard mark. It should be noted that Hogan wasn’t at full strength at that time, given the injuries he’d suffered in a car crash just over a year earlier. Maybe he was losing a few yards… again suggesting a normal hitting distance of around 265…
We don’t know for sure, but it seems likely that during the prime of his career, Ben Hogan would drive the ball around 265 yards on average.
