10 GREAT MOMENTS

Ben Hogan’s first victory in a major didn’t come until he was 34, when he won the PGA Championship in 1946. He would win 63 PGA Tour events and nine majors in his career--two Masters, four U.S. Opens, one British Open and two PGA Championships, and remains the only person to win three Grand Slam events in a single season, winning the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open in 1953.

Hogan won 13 tournaments and six majors after the 1949 car crash that nearly killed him and mangled his legs, leaving him unable to play without pain the rest of his life.

A small, quiet man who lost himself in concentration on every shot, Hogan didn’t talk about himself very often. But his many victories--and the memories of those who witnessed the great moments of his career--still speak for him.

A look at some of the moments that made Hogan’s career:

* A late-1920s caddie championship at Glen Garden Country Club in Fort Worth provided the golf memory of a lifetime for the few who saw it. Hogan, 15, lost the tournament to another boy his age: Byron Nelson. By 17, Hogan had turned pro, joining the tour full time at 19 in 1931. He neared bankruptcy several times until he won his first tournament at the Hershey Four-Ball in 1938. That proved to be the first of 63 victories--third all-time to Sam Snead’s 81 and Jack Nicklaus’ 70.

* Beginning with his breakthrough major at the 1946 PGA Championship and ending with his British Open triumph at Carnoustie in 1953, Hogan played in 16 major championships and won nine. From the time of his discharge from the Army in August 1945--just after his 33rd birthday--until the head-on car crash that almost took his life in 1949, Hogan won 37 tournaments, including two PGA Championships and a U.S. Open.

* On Feb. 2, 1949, while driving home to Texas from a West Coast trip, Hogan’s car collided head-on with a bus on a foggy stretch of highway near Van Horn, Texas. Hogan threw himself across the lap of his wife, Valerie, to protect her, and may have saved his own life as well. His wife walked away from the accident, but Hogan’s legs were shattered. A few weeks later, he almost died when blood clots formed in his left leg.

* Eleven months later, Hogan teed off in the L.A. Open at Riviera Country Club to see if he could play tournament golf again. His four-under-par 280 for 72 holes put him in a playoff with Snead, who had to birdie two of the final three holes to catch Hogan. Snead won a playoff a week later, shooting 72 to Hogan’s 76.

* Five months later--and only 16 months after the accident--with his legs still bandaged from ankle to thigh, Hogan won the U.S. Open, finishing the grueling 36-hole final day at Merion, then winning a playoff with Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio the next day.

* A brutally difficult course battered the field of the 1951 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills in Birmingham, Mich., yielding only two sub-par rounds the entire tournament. The course played to an average score of 77. But Hogan’s final round--a 67--is regarded by many golf historians as one of the greatest rounds ever. “I’m glad I brought this course--this monster--to its knees,” Hogan said.

* In his unparalleled season of 1953, Hogan won three of the four Grand Slam tournaments: the U.S. Open, the Masters and the British Open. He played in only six tournaments that year--and won five.

* Hogan’s fifth U.S. Open was within reach in 1955 at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, but with Hogan already in the clubhouse, Jack Fleck came from behind to force a playoff. The next day, Fleck walked away the champion. Still, only Nicklaus, Bobby Jones and Willie Anderson matched Hogan’s four U.S. Open victories.

* In 1960, at age 48, Hogan was tied for the lead in the U.S. Open. But on the next-to-last hole he gambled for the pin at Cherry Hills and hit a ball that spun off the green and into the water. Before that, he had hit 34 consecutive greens, all 18 in the morning. The tournament was won by Arnold Palmer, and 20-year-old Jack Nicklaus finished second as the torch was passed to a new generation.

* The last great round by arguably the greatest golfer ever came in 1967, when Hogan shot a 66 in the third round of the Masters at age 54. Long past his prime, 14 years past his last major championship, eight years since his last victory and 18 years after the terrible crash, Hogan finished the back nine with a brilliant 30, making birdies on all of the treacherous holes at Amen Corner. “I think I played the best nine holes of my life on those holes,” Hogan said years later. “I don’t think I came close to missing a shot.”

--Compiled by ROBYN NORWOOD