Ben Hogan
Walter Hagen
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Walter Hagen leads 2 of 3 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ben Hogan at #3 and Walter Hagen at #8.
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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 Walter Hagen
Walter Hagen was golf's first superstar professional and its greatest match-play performer. He won 11 professional majors, a total surpassed only by Nicklaus and Woods, including four consecutive PGA Championships from 1924 to 1927, when the event was contested at grueling match play. Hagen claimed five PGA Championships and four Open Championships in all, plus two U.S. Opens, and won 45 PGA Tour events. Flamboyant and theatrical, he did as much as anyone to raise the professional from servant to celebrity, famously refusing to accept the second-class treatment of pros until clubhouse doors were opened to them. His gamesmanship, showmanship and ice-cold clutch putting made him the dominant figure of the 1920s alongside the amateur Bobby Jones, and he reportedly earned and spent a fortune in the process.