Ben Hogan

The promise was the finest golf clubs ever made, and the man making it scrapped his own first production run to keep it. Ben Hogan opened the company in Fort Worth in 1953, the year he took the Masters, the U.S. Open and the Open Championship, with nine majors already standing behind his name. Precision arrived the year after and became the template a lot of later blades borrowed from. Apex came in 1972, and the Edge, late in the eighties, put perimeter weighting inside a forged head when almost nobody was attempting both at once.

Owners changed repeatedly after that and club production stopped in 2008. Terry Koehler brought the name back to Fort Worth in 2015 with the Fort Worth 15 irons, sold as single lofts from twenty degrees upward so a golfer could build a set on even four degree gaps instead of accepting factory numbering. That gapping principle outlived the marking system that carried it. Golf Brands licenses the name today, works out of Henderson, Nevada and sells straight to the golfer: forged 1025 carbon steel irons, Equalizer wedges on a V-Sole, made to the buyer's spec. Hogan's rivals gave that wedge its name. Woods, hybrids and putters have since been added around the irons, every club carries a twelve-month warranty, and the logo can be stamped to order.