RIP Jack Fleck - UPDATED

Boy, way too many of these posts lately...

Jack Fleck, the absolute nobody who beat Ben Hogan in a playoff to win the 1955 U.S. Open

at San Francisco's Olympic Club, died today at age 92. John Strege gives the background:

Hogan was on the threshold of winning a record fifth U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, when along came an obscure Iowa farm boy with no credentials, none, at least, that would portend his turning history on its head. 

Jack Fleck shot 69 and defeated Hogan by three in a Sunday playoff, one of sports' most notable upsets that simultaneously was Fleck's greatest triumph and an enduring disappointment in one regard. 

"[I]t has always been thought of as the U.S. Open that Ben Hogan lost, not the one Jack Fleck won," Fleck said in a My Shot column in Golf Digest in 2005. "I never felt I was given credit for how well I played."

I read Neil Sagebiel's account, The Longest Shot, in conjunction with the 2012 Open at Olympic, and it's a great story.  Hogan and Fleck came from similarly impoverished backgrounds, and perhaps because of that Hogan treated Fleck with unexpected kindness.  As I've noted previously on this blog, Hogan's equipment company was still a fledgling at the time of the '55 Open, and only two players in the field were using its clubs, Hogan and the man who went on to beat him.  Fleck made an unannounced visit to the company earlier in the year, and Hogan welcomed him warmly (which was not the case for most others) and agreed to furnish him a new set of clubs, for which Fleck was not charged.  The last of the set, a wedge finished shortly before the Open, Hogan brought with him and hand delivered to Fleck.

In an eerie coincidence, in 1948 Fleck drove through Texas on his way to Florida late one night after missing a cut at a Tour stop.  An ambulance and several police cars went screaming past him in the opposite direction, and it was only the next morning that he learned from the newspapers that the ambulance was carrying Hogan after his near fatal collision with a bus.

Fleck had never previously won a professional tournament and, if I'm remembering correctly, the only one he subsequently won was a Super-Senior event.  It's hard to overstate how stunning an upset this was, as Hogan was seemingly at the peak of his prowess.  In those days the leaders were spread throughout the pairings for the benefit of the spectators, and Hogan played well ahead of Fleck in the 36-hole final day.  Hogan walked off the 18th green thinking he had won his fifth Open, tossed his ball to a USGA official and said, "This is for Golf House (The USGA Museaum)."

Neil Sagebiel has a brief remembrance posted here.

UPDATES:  Jack Fleck's My Shot feature from Golf Digest can be found here.  Lots of interesting reflections, such as this one:

I knew Ben Hogan in the years previous to the '55 Open, but he didn't know me. He was my secret idol. In 1947 I stayed in the background and watched him in practice rounds. He would hit a couple of shots into each green and then look to each side of the fairway, memorizing the clubs he hit and the location of trees, bunkers and whatnot. I copied him and actually did him one better: I began pacing off yardage, which nobody else had done to that point. I knew exactly how far I could hit each club. Several years later, an amateur, Gene Andrews, was recognized as inventing the idea because he passed it along to Jack Nicklaus and Deane Beman. But I was the first. I was just too unknown to be given credit for it.

Nicklaus does generally get credit for this, but happy to correct the record.  Lots of other good stuff, including his account of the fateful night on the Texas roads.  But to me the most interesting part is Hogan's kindness to Fleck, and the resulting ironies.  Here's Jack on that subject:

At St. Petersburg in the spring of 1955, I heard there was a box of new irons in Skip

Fleck in a 2005 photo.

Alexander's pro shop. They were made by the Ben Hogan Golf Company, which was brand new. Skip let me open the box, and after looking at the irons I asked some other pros if they thought Ben Hogan would make me a set of clubs if I asked, and they said don't bother; Mr. Hogan would never approve it. I wrote anyway, and the general manager wrote back telling me that Ben said to send in my specs. I also received word that I was one of two "likely prospective pros"—Dow Finsterwald was the other player—who were invited to play at Colonial, which was Ben's tournament. Why he chose me, I had no idea. I still don't know why. 

When I got to Colonial I went to Ben's office and factory on Pafford Street to see how my clubs were coming along, and after his secretary announced me, here came Ben with a very hearty greeting and an invitation to go to his plant. When I got out to Colonial, word spread that I had observed the manufacturing area. Lloyd Mangrum, Jimmy Demaret, Jackie Burke, Cary Middlecoff and others were shocked by that. They all said they had never gotten past the front office. Why did he like me? I'll never figure it out, unless it was that I had grown up poor and worked hard like he had.

Lastly, I intentionally skipped this part of Fleck's story because it makes him seem a tad flaky, but you might as well go along for the ride:

On Saturday morning before the final rounds, while I was shaving and listening to Mario Lanza singing "I'll Walk With God," a voice came out of the mirror and said very audibly, "Jack, you are going to win the Open." I was startled and looked around the room. While I was looking away, the voice came out of the mirror again: "Jack, you are going to win the Open!" I got goose bumps, and it was as if electricity was going through my body. It was all I could do to calm down and do my stretching and breathing exercises.

A couple of additional observations from your humble blogger.  First, when you consider the biggest historical upsets in the game of golf, the two that stand apart are Fleck and Ouimet.  I'm struck by the similarity of circumstances, with the two favorites out ahead of the upstarts, thinking they had won (OK, in the 1913 analogy Vardon and Ray were tied and coming back on Sunday all the same), then learning from the crowd noise of the two late birdies by Fleck and Ouimet.

Secondly, the grace of Hogan in difficult circumstances can't be overstated.  Not only did he appropriately think he had won his fifth Open (they tied at +7 on a brutally difficult golf course, what were the odds of Fleck making two birdies over the last few holes?), but he couldn't be sure that his legs had another round in them after surviving the 36-holes on Saturday.  The descriptions of what Hogan went through just to be able to play are a testament to the fortitude of the man.

Lastly, Fleck might have been a lucky winner, but he also outworked everyone else.  Golfweek has re-posted this Jeff Babineau piece from 2012, with this detail on Fleck's week:

He wanted to know the golf course better than anyone in the field, and was willing to put forth the work to accomplish that goal. He arrived to San Francisco on a Saturday that year, playing 18 holes in the late afternoon. That was followed by an impressive ironman regimen: 44 holes Sunday; 44 holes Monday; 44 holes Tuesday; and 36 more holes on Wednesday. That’s 186 holes BEFORE he'd play 90 more in the tournament. Why play 44 and not 45? Fleck would play two and a half rounds, choosing to walk up the steep hill to change his shoes after completing his third visit to the par-3 eighth hole, which finished at the clubhouse. Most others back then played 18 holes and called it a day, choosing instead to rest for a grueling week.

One addition detail about the infancy of televised golf:

A primitive 1-hour NBC telecast capping the U.S. Open’s 36-hole Saturday finish already had signed off at 9 p.m. in the east, with announcer Gene Sarazen ending the show by congratulating Hogan on his victory. Sarazen even requested Hogan hold up five fingers, signifying his fifth Open title.

Babineau's piece also includes video of a 2012 Jeff Rude interview with Fleck at Olympic that refuses to embed here.  Also, golf.com has a gallery of photos of Fleck

Jack Fleck warming up before the playoff at Olympic against Hogan. 

Jack Fleck and Billy Casper, previous winners of Opens at Olympic, congratulate Webb Simpson after his victory in the 2012 Open.  I am outraged, outraged I say, by the omission of the 1987 winner.