35mmgolf.com Rare Vintage B+W Photos Ben Hogan

CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR LARGER VIEWS.

History of the Photos

In early 1957 golf artist Anthony Ravielli was contacted by Ben Hogan and asked to illustrate a series for Sports Illustrated Magazine. Hogan had in mind five core lessons that could be understood by the average golfer and applied to their golf swing. The Modern Fundamentals: The Five Lessons Of Golf, as it was titled, was first released in the March, 1957 issue of Sports Illustrated.

Since then it has gone on to become golf's undisputed instructional best selling book with sales reported to be in excess of 10,000,000.

In order to best visually demonstrate his ideas, Hogan chose Ravielli, whose work he had seen in another S.I. feature called Tips From The Top. Ravielli's crisp clean 'scratchboard' style drawings caught his eye. For the purposes of doing these illustrations, Ravielli and Hogan spent the day at the closed Colonial CC driving range. Ben Hogan verbally explained his ideas to author H.W. Wind, and visually demonstrated them for Ravielli's camera. Ravielli then used the photos as direct reference in creating the famous drawings within The Five Lessons.

The photos remained in the posession of the artist, unpublished and virtually unknown for over 40 years until their discovery in late 1997. 85 photos from this collection were published in 2001 in the best selling instructional work The Fundamentals of Hogan by David Leadbetter. In it Leadbetter used the images of Hogan shot by Ravielli, in order to revisit The Five lessons, as well as apply the theories to the modern golf swing. A great combination of the classic techniques developed by Hogan combined with the incite of one of todays top instructors.