A little golfing lore on the eve of the U.S. Open (Bloomberg) -- Non-golfers (ahem) are likely to be clueless as to why the 1960 U.S. Open holds a sacred place in the hearts of the duffer faithful. HBO explains it all in ``Back Nine at Cherry Hills: The Legends of the 1960 U.S. Open,'' which airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. New York time, the eve of the 108th U.S. Open. Even those who prefer the 19th hole to the previous 18 will find this an hour pleasantly spent. The 1960 championship, after all, featured golf's holy trinity -- Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus -- and memories of the event continue to electrify those who love the game. Sportswriter Dan Jenkins says the matchup was ``too big, too wildly exciting, too crazily suspenseful, too suffocatingly dramatic,'' adding that ``in the span of just 18 holes, we witnessed the arrival of Nicklaus, the coronation of Palmer and the end of Hogan.'' Other than being great golfers, the three titans had little in common. Only Nicklaus was from a country club background. His father ran a string of drug stores in Columbus, Ohio and young Jack was something of a prodigy, shooting a 51 his first time around nine holes (at age 10) and winning the Ohio Open at 16. He was also a highly talented beer drinker, as he reveals in an interview. All the Beer in Columbus ``I tried to drink all the beer they made in Columbus, Ohio,'' he says, an exertion that saddled him with an impressive gut. Palmer had a gentrified connection of a different sort. His father was groundskeeper at the Latrobe Country Club in Pennsylvania. Arnie was ``taught as a young boy that I was not a member of the club,'' which meant that instead of swimming at the pool he cooled off in a nearby creek, sharing those rustic facilities ``with the snakes.'' Hogan, meantime, rose from ``the dirt,'' as he called his hardscrabble origins in Dublin, Texas. His story is by far the most tragic of the three. His father committed suicide when Hogan was 6; according to a newspaper account, he shot himself as young Ben looked on. Hogan got into golf on the ground floor, caddying for 65 cents per 18 holes and sometimes, the film says, sleeping in sand traps when he didn't want to make the long walk home. Comeback Kid He also showed an affinity for the game and a tenacity that saw him through hard times, including a 1949 collision with a bus that nearly killed him. His comeback was the stuff of legend and a Hollywood film: ``Follow the Sun'' (1951) starred Glenn Ford as the heroic Hogan. Hogan, who died in 1997, was definitely the prickliest of the three. ``He was never friendly to me,'' Palmer recalls. ``It didn't mean that I didn't appreciate the fact that he was one of the great guys, great players of all time. But as my father said to me, there's no reason why you can't be good and be nice.'' The show builds slowly to the championship at Cherry Hills County Club, outside Denver. Hogan was the sentimental favorite but an initial spree of poor putting made some wonder if he'd even make the cut. Indeed, there was ferocious hacking all around, with Nicklaus and Palmer spending significant time in Bogeyville. Yet Palmer staged one of the most amazing comebacks in golf history, with six birdies on seven holes. Hogan hit the wall on the 17th hole of the final round, where his ball landed in a water hazard. We watch the aging great take off one shoe and sock and blasting the aqua-ball onto the green, where he missed his putt. He gruffly recalled in a later interview that hardly a month went by when memories of the 17th didn't ``cut my guts out.'' The future was brighter for Nicklaus and Palmer, with Arnie buying the Latrobe Country Club in 1971, having come a long way from bathing with the snakes.
