Masters 2026: Rare pictures of Ben Hogan's golf swing shoot at Augusta National

It was 1948 when Ben Hogan's first instruction book, "Power Golf," hit the shelves.

It was an iconic manual that popularized many of the golf swing ideas we take for granted today. Hogan's unique change-the-stance-not-the-ball-position idea started in "Power Golf." As did his detail about the benefits of a flatter backswing, which later caught mainstream appeal with his famous pane of glass illustration in "Ben Hogan's Five Lessons."

Later versions of Hogan's "Power Golf," the kind you can buy today, featured illustrations of Hogan's swing—mechanical drawings, of sorts, designed to focus the reader's attention on the technique first and foremost. But the first edition looked different. Hogan was pictured demonstrating the moves. But not just that. He was pictured sharing his secrets from the revered grounds of Augusta National Golf Club.

"To Cliff Roberts, Bob Jones, and the other members of Augusta, Georgia, National Golf Club for their kind permission to use their course as the background for the pictures used to illustrate this book," he wrote in the foreword of his book.

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Ben Hogan shares his book, "Power Golf" with former Congressman Will Rogers, Jr. and Ed Sullivan on the set of the CBS weekly variety show "Toast of the Town," in July 1952.

CBS Photo Archive

The almost unfathomable confluence of golf's best ball-striker ever, sharing his secrets from the hallowed grounds of Augusta National, was a product of this unique moment in time.

Hogan would of course go on to become a legend, but he was far from it at the time: He had no green jackets in his closet at the time of the first edition of "Power Golf." But Hogan was very well-regarded within the club even before he would go on to cement himself on golf's Mount Rushmore with eight majors, and two green jackets.

It's also unfathomable to think Augusta National could serve as such a subdued backdrop for an unrelated golf instruction book. The equivalent would be Padraig Harrington shooting a batch of his Paddy's Golf YouTube tips at Amen Corner. But again, Augusta National was a very different place in this moment in time.

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As David Owen outlines in his book, "The Making of the Masters," Augusta National was originally intended as a resort-style destination, and the club's finances weren't on solid ground until the early 1950s. Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts worked hard to generate publicity for the club in those early days, with Augusta National even serving as the backdrop for various commercials over the years. That Hogan would use the course for his own commercial product wouldn't have been as unheard of at the time as it would be now.

So, it came to be.

The pictures of the course are subdued—not the front and center placement we're used to seeing Augusta National today—but there's something special about knowing they were there in the first place. How, for a brief moment, golf's most revered ball-striker shared his ideas about the golf swing on the game's most iconic course.