When Ben Hogan crossed into North Carolina in the early spring of 1940, he had been a professional golfer for nearly a decade without a single individual victory. He was low on money, low on confidence, and by WNC Magazine’s account, weighing whether to quit the tour for a club job in Texas. Then came a three-week swing through the state that changed the history of golf.

It started in Pinehurst with his first individual title at the North and South Open, continued with a nine-shot rout at Greensboro, and ended in Asheville at the Land of the Sky Open. Across those three tournaments, Hogan played 216 holes at 34 under par, breaking par in eleven of twelve rounds. He three-putted just twice in those three weeks — both times in Asheville, which tells you something about the greens he found here.

The Land of the Sky Open was Asheville’s tournament, held from 1933 to 1951 — and part of the PGA Tour from 1939 to 1942 — always landing in late March or early April as the last stop before the Masters. The field in 1940 played three of the region’s Donald Ross courses across a single weekend, a fresh set of greens each day. That meant 18 holes Friday at what was then Asheville Country Club (today the golf course at Omni Grove Park Inn), 18 more Saturday at the Beaver Lake layout that became Country Club of Asheville, and a 36-hole Sunday finish at Biltmore Forest Country Club. Players adjusted to four rounds on three different sets of Ross greens in three days.

And the fields were loaded. The 1940 edition drew PGA money leader Jimmy Demaret and the full U.S. Ryder Cup team — selected even after the war in Europe canceled the matches. Ryder Cup team members Dick Metz, Ralph Guldahl, and Lloyd Mangrum opened with 64s. Hogan’s first-round 67 at Asheville Country Club left him tied for fifth with Byron Nelson.

On Saturday at Beaver Lake, another 67 pulled him to within one of Guldahl, and Hogan stunned the gallery by nearly driving the green at the 353-yard par-4 16th. Then he seized it: Sunday’s 36-hole finish at Biltmore Forest was a pair of 69s. With drive after drive in the fairway and approach after approach at the flag, Hogan ran away to a three-shot win. He left with $1,200, the money-list lead, and a line he would repeat for the rest of his life: That Biltmore Forest’s second hole was the greatest par-4 on the PGA Tour, a conviction the plaque at the hole still celebrates today.

The win even loosened him up. At the trophy ceremony, Hogan needled Frank Coxe, the head of the Asheville Civic Sports Association that ran the event, about the gnats that had plagued the field all week, declaring that the tournament should be renamed “Land of the Fly.”

In 1941, Hogan’s title defense nearly got away from him as all four days of the tournament were held at Biltmore Forest. He carried a four-stroke lead into the 36-hole final day, shot a morning 75, and suddenly trailed by five after Lawson Little had stormed out in 66. In the afternoon Hogan answered with a two-under 69 — surviving a four-putt on a green where two of his putts rolled back down the slope to his feet — while Little ballooned to a 76, and the title stayed in Hogan’s hands by two.

The 1942 finale, also at Biltmore Forest, was perhaps the best theater of the three: Little tried again, and again a third-round 66 put him in front. Little led by three with nine holes to play and Hogan simply ran him down, closing with a 32 to erase five shots in a six-hole stretch to win by one. A week later Hogan lost an 18-hole Masters playoff to Byron Nelson by a single stroke.

Of Hogan’s 64 career victories, three belong to Asheville — and when the Biltmore Championship tees off at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove in September, its winner will be the first person to win a PGA Tour event in these mountains since the man they then called Bantam Ben — the world would come to know him as The Hawk.

Sam Snead chased the same purses — he would play in the Land of the Sky Open — and mountain golf was nothing new to him: Snead was raised in Virginia’s Blue Ridge and learned the game caddying at The Homestead in Hot Springs, VA. He was among the legends who kept returning to Biltmore Forest through the first half of the century.

Bobby Jones’ second home was in Highlands: He struck the opening tee shot at Highlands Country Club when the course debuted in 1928, returning to the plateau summer after summer until his health made the trip from Atlanta too difficult, and shot a course record 62 there in August 1934. He knew the way down the mountain, too: In August of that first Highlands summer, Jones shot what was then the course record at Biltmore Forest with a 69 — one of more than 30 course records LINKS Magazine credits to him worldwide. His photograph still hangs in the Biltmore Forest clubhouse — the USGA lists Jones among the club’s regular visitors of the era — in company that also included Cary Middlecoff, Babe Zaharias, Patty Berg, and Louise Suggs (who recalled a career of exhibitions alongside Hogan and Snead).

Biltmore Forest’s amateur invitational drew a teenager from Morganton named Billy Joe Patton, who won there in 1940 and later said the victory convinced him he could win anywhere. Where that conviction carried him — to within one stroke of a Masters playoff against Hogan and Snead — is a story for another issue.

None of it was a coincidence. When July bakes the rest of the Southern golf map, the mountains stay cool enough to play all day — the same draw that pulled Jones up from Atlanta. A hundred years on, that part of the story has not changed.

And on the Highlands Plateau, the connection never ended. Each August, Highlands Country Club hosts the Bob Jones Invitational — which its organizers bill as the country’s biggest annual reunion of former Walker Cup players — on the course where Jones hit the opening shot. Since 1982 the tournament has raised millions for the Highlands Cashiers Health Foundation, and this year’s edition tees off in early August.