Magic moments in golf? For me, all of them concern Ben Hogan, who seemed to fill my golfing life from an early age. At this stage, a year after his death, I feel especially privileged to have known the man as a fellow Texan, to have spoken regularly with him and to have played golf with him.

I was fascinated by everything about him - and with good reason. There was the time in 1951 when I was a sophomore at college and working in my spare time at writing golf for the Fort Worth Press. And I would describe myself as a pretty useful golfer, playing off scratch.

One day, on one of my regular visits to Colonial, I went into the golf shop and asked: "Where is he?" I didn't have to say more; I knew he'd be out on the golf course somewhere, practising. "He's on 11," I was told. So I grabbed a cart and went out to see him.

There he was hitting balls to a practice caddie. They were little knock-down three-irons from 152 yards. I waited for the proper moment, when he lit a cigarette, before approaching him. I said, "Ben. What the hell was that all about?" His reply was that he would need the shot at Oakland Hills.

I don't know whether he used that particular shot at Oakland Hills, where he scored that famous final round of 67 when winning the US Open for a third time. The point was that he had the shot in his bag, if needed. Hogan never left anything to chance. That was the occasion, you'll recall, when he talked about bringing the Monster to its knees.

Be prepared, was his motto. And he always told me that he never wanted a scorecard that told him distances. "I don't want to know that it's 157 yards," he would say. "I may want to hit a two-iron, if that's what the shot feels like." That's how he played.

Those memories came flooding back when I watched the guys in the British Open recently at Birkdale, fighting the wind. It seemed to me that many of them were fighting themselves.

How would Hogan have approached it? In a situation with a 35 mph wind and cold, damp conditions, he'd put on an extra sweater, hit the fairways and greens and do a score that he believed would be good enough to win. Remember, having been the player who invented practice, he had acquired supreme skills at working the ball, whatever the weather.

I know it sounds like a crazy simplification, but, in essence, he would play the course as he felt it needed to be played and shoot the score he thought he needed to shoot. And if somebody was good enough to beat him, he would just shake his head and remark, "They must have played wonderfully."

That comment would have been based on the genuinely-held belief that anybody who succeeded in playing the course better than he did deserved every credit.

I played with Ben numerous times and have precious memories of our games together at old Colonial, which was a very tough golf course. It had smaller greens, more trees, tighter fairways and a lot more unmanicured areas than the way we know it today. As for me, I was a youthful, slender, long-hitting collegiate in those days. I'm talking about 1953, when he won the Masters, the US Open and the British Open.

Anyway, in one of those games we had together, Hogan shot a 66. Afterwards, when we were having a drink, I said: "Ben. That was as good a round as I've ever seen played." He looked as me and replied: "That wasn't a good round of golf at all."

Taken aback, I suggested he must be joking. He eyeballed me again. "I didn't hit one shot that turned out the way I wanted it to," he said. So I asked him to define what, in his view, was a good round of golf.

"A good round of golf," he said, "is when you can hit three shots that turn out exactly like you envision them before you swing the club." That was Hogan, a man who provided countless moments of magic for everyone he came in contact with. In this regard, I happened to be luckier than most.

Dan Jenkins, the celebrated US golf writer, is the author of several books and a regular contributor to Golf Digest.