Ninety-two is such a good innings; may we all be so lucky.
Interesting ... it will always be Tom Kite, never Tommy Kite, and always Tommy Bolt, never Tom Bolt. Tommy Bolt’s case was so indicative of many of the best players: he only started to win once he kissed goodnight to his hook. Henry Picard, Jimmy Demaret, Hogan, too, are solid cases in point.
Hogan addicts will know that Bolt was very much liked by Bantam Ben, and admired, too. But not for the usual reasons that Hogan may choose to take a fellow professional into his corner, although there were precious few. Hogan liked the way Bolt acted around him; he gave the little Texan lots of "grief", sledging his character for fun, wisecracking about Hogan's addictive nature. More than anything, Hogan was amused that Bolt wasn't the usual “kiss-ass” type of US pro at the time. It's a story for another day, but much of the mystique of Hogan developed by Hogan thinking he had to act that way; that people expected to be some type of deity; that when he became semi-unstoppable people started to act differently around him, and so he did, too. But Bolt didn’t, and was one of the few who didn’t lay down the carpet.
Bolt’s summation of the relative merits of Jack Nicklaus and Ben Hogan is both telling and succinct. Said Bolt, famously: ‘I often saw Nicklaus watch Hogan on the range; but I never saw Hogan watch Nicklaus’.