The best-selling golf book just got even better. Here’s what’s inside

When it comes to golf books, publishers believe in two absolutes. First, golf books generally sell better than other sports publications. The endless game is so relatable that it’s perfect readableagain.

Second, golf books tend to be published only a few times a year: April, around the Masters; mid-June, to coincide with Father’s Day and the height of the golf season; and during the holidays, when the only items in stock are the ball sleeve and the $19 paperback.

Using the top golf books on Amazon, however, may leave you confused. Today’s best-selling golf book is the best-selling from three months ago. And three years ago. And, yes, even three decades ago. “The Five Lessons of Ben Hogan,” was first printed in print Sports Illustrated in 1957.

Not only is the hard copy edition consistently ranked among the top 5 golf books – usually by no. 1 — but the Kindle version usually stays in the top 25. Last weekend the audio book came in at No. 58. Most titles are just aspirational one of its programs that will be broadcast gradually among the top 100. Hogan’s wisdom – as told by legendary golf writer Herb Wind and illustrated on the scratchboard by Anthony Ravielli – continues to be widely used in all media. If the Laws of Golf are the 10 Commandments of the game, this book is the closest thing it has to the Bible.

A common question goes along with that idea: Should it be?

That depends on who you ask. After all, many 12 handicappers are bogged down in Hogan’s intricate details of the difference between supination and pronation. A better question then is How has the book endured over time? It seems that every great artist of the 20th century has a manual, or several, to their name. Watson, Nicklaus, Trevino, Palmer, Snead. How and why did Hogan separate himself?

John Garrity had a better idea than anyone. Before a long career on the golf club at Sports IllustratedGarrity was an associate editor at Simon and Schuster in the early 1970s, when textbooks were always given the green light. The books didn’t cost much and didn’t make much money, Garrity said, but they also never lost money. They all seem to sell the same number of copies – 12,000 – regardless of who did the cover. “There are a few exceptions to that,” Garrity said. “Ben Hogan’s ‘Five Lesson’ is another bestseller.”

The way More.

Estimates from industry experts – the manuscript has been licensed to many publishers over the years – put the number of copies sold at over a million. And counting. This week, Simon and Schuster published a 40th anniversary edition of the book, leaving the original text intact but including a new foreword from Lee Trevino and adding 97 new pages of “History, Context, Legacy.” The new and improved “Five Lessons” are bound in a glossy, electric green cover, a nod to the magazine’s original design palate. SI published those five studies gradually, in five consecutive issues, during the magazine’s infancy in 1957.

The Five Lessons of Ben Hogan

$29

With a new introduction by Lee Trevino, this is the definitive first edition of the timeless golf classic that has sold more than a million copies—now featuring never-before-seen photos and memorabilia, hand-picked from the Hogan estate’s archives, and nearly 100 pages of new material that expands on Hogan’s incredible life and career story. wonderful.

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Simon and Schuster editor Jofie Ferrari-Adler worked with longtime golf writers Michael Bamberger (GOLF.com contributor) and Jaime Diaz to bring new life to the work of Hogan, Wind and Ravielli. What they have created is like a museum exhibit of books. The 67-year-old artifact is the main event, but now it’s paired with a rich context about the men who created it. There are game stories from the ’50s, columns from the ’90s, and even an interview between Hogan and Ken Venturi from a 1980s CBS broadcast. The new show is an ode to Hogan, of course, but also to one of the game’s greatest writers in Wind; this book includes Wind’s greatest hits, compiled by the next generation of writers.

But none of this explains it why this book remains very popular – or became popular in the beginning – especially with the advent of digital golf instruction, much of which can be customized and distributed through the big screen in your living room and the 6-inch screen in your pocket.

Like any old recipe, the staying power of “Five Courses” is fueled by its ingredients. He had the best batsman of his generation paired with the best wordsmith. (Ravielli, the illustrator, was not the third wheel.) The assembly took 10 months to complete, but it came at a time when recreational golf was booming. Soon after SI after publishing the study, the magazine’s editor wrote that Hogan’s songs were so popular that readers were tearing out the pages SI copies of the Yale Club and golfers in the snowy Northeast couldn’t resist a quick drive to the practice range.

Perhaps the best modern combination of Academic success is ESPN’s The Last Dance documentary, which revealed many of Michael Jordan’s thoughts on basketball and his career for the first time – and on the game complete time, when the world was sheltered from the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. We were all at home and hungry for new content, and Jordan, like Hogan, was coming more than ever. Hogan, like Jordan, long believed he had something special, but rarely discussed his talents publicly.

“I think it’s the mystique that really sells the book,” said Jaime Diaz, “because Hogan was an amazing genius and inside and didn’t want to talk about anything when he finally did it, it was like, Oh my God, the vault is finally open.”

The tips themselves are thick. Nineteen pages are devoted just to holding the club. Twenty five in football planning. The text has an authoritative, instructive border, and a perfect clause and plenty of italics that emphasize that golf genius. requirements what you need to focus on. The ultimate goal, in Hogan’s mind, was to get bogey golfers to break 80 consistently. But the book’s final message is simple: never hit it left.

“It’s an anti-hook book,” said Diaz. “I mean, a really weak grip and making sure the club doesn’t swing. The Tour player’s swing. But even Tour players can’t repeat it often.”

Herein lies the truth of the game. No single set of courses can solve golf’s riddle of the infinite number of body types and abilities we see on the driving range, even the PGA Tour driving range. (As Arnold Palmer preached, swing your swing!) That idea, all these years later, is repeated earlier, in Trevino’s preface. In the first five pages, Trevino turns the clock back to 1957, when he found the magazine while on a Marines ship bound for Japan.

Even Trevino admits that “it is possible that he did not understand everything that Mr. Hogan and Mr. Wind, but their words furthered my golf education.” Trevino joined the Marines overseas golf team and played more than ever. After his discharge, he practiced alone with two golf balls – one for his score, the other for Hogan. A few years later, Trevino visited Hogan’s club, Shady Oaks, in Dallas; he resented Hogan’s body movements, memorizing how Hogan’s hips led his action. As Trevino writes, “That’s where I started to be beautiful.”

For Trevino, Hogan was both an inspiration and an inspiration. And isn’t golf feels for all of us? If we want one thing in this game, it’s kind of to hearcooked up in our imagination or inspired by something. Anyone. Trevino’s ball flight was a fade, just like Hogan’s, but it doesn’t look like Hogan’s fade. Trevino had taken the “Foundations of Modernism” and made it his own.