Ben Hogan
Gary Player
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Ben Hogan at #3 and Gary Player at #6.
Head-to-head FAQ
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The case for Ben Hogan
Ben Hogan is the game's ideal of ball-striking perfection, the man whose swing has been studied frame by frame for seventy years. He won nine majors despite losing prime years to World War II service and a near-fatal 1949 car crash that shattered his pelvis and legs. Sixteen months later he won the 1950 U.S. Open at Merion, and in 1953 he produced the greatest single season of his era, winning the Masters, U.S. Open and Open Championship, the only three majors he entered that year, a run remembered as the Hogan Triple. He captured 64 PGA Tour titles and four U.S. Opens across his career. His 1957 book, Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, remains the most influential instruction manual ever written and shaped how generations understood the swing.
The case for Gary Player
Gary Player, the Black Knight from South Africa, is golf's greatest globetrotter, credited with more than 165 professional victories worldwide across six decades and an estimated 15 million air miles. He won 9 majors and became the third man to complete the career Grand Slam, at 29, winning each of the four at least once, including the 1965 U.S. Open, three Masters and three Open Championships. A fanatical devotee of fitness and diet decades before it was fashionable, the diminutive Player overcame a lack of length through iron will, a superb short game and outstanding bunker play. He was also an advocate for the game's growth on every continent and, in his later years, a tireless ambassador who has remained a visible presence at the Masters into his late eighties, a symbol of golf's global reach.