Hogan Triumphed, Overcame Tragedy

Ben Hogan and his wife, Valerie, had just passed through El Paso, Texas, when they saw the bus cross over the double line in front of them.

Hogan swerved his sedan right but couldn’t go farther because a roadside culvert was next to the highway. Knowing the bus would hit them, he threw himself across his wife.

Thus began the story of the comeback of Ben Hogan, who suffered a broken ankle, pelvis and ribs in a crash that nearly killed him 50 years ago.

The 137-pound Hogan had been golf’s leading money winner in 1948, but now the question was, could he walk again, much less play competitive golf.

His instinctive act of heroism saved Hogan’s life, said Valerie Hogan, who emerged from the wreckage with only a black eye.

“Both the engine and the steering column were driven right into where he’d been sitting,” she said.

The Hogans were returning to their home in Fort Worth from the Phoenix Open.

Early in his recovery, Hogan had to battle a life-threatening blood clot in his right leg.

Eleven months later, he was in Los Angeles, battling for a championship with Sam Snead, who tied Hogan at 280 in the 1950 L.A. Open. In a playoff a week later, Snead shot 72, Hogan 76.

But the following June, the comeback became whole. Hogan won the U.S. Open.

Also on this date: In 1962, two world track and field records fell. At New York’s Millrose Games, John Uelses became the first pole vaulter to top 16 feet--by a quarter of an inch--and New Zealand’s Peter Snell set an 880 record of 1:45.1 in Christchurch, New Zealand. . . . In 1954, Bevo Francis scored 113 points for tiny Rio Grande College of Ohio in a 134-91 victory over Hillsdale.

In 1949, Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller, unhappy that the Indians wanted to slash his $82,500 1948 salary by $20,000, stormed out of a negotiating session. . . . In 1918, John L. Sullivan, former heavyweight boxing champion and the first American athlete to earn more than $1 million in his career, died at Abingdon, Mass., at 59.