What Could Have Been

No golfer wants to require a comeback. Sure, comebacks are crowd-pleasers, and often the grist of popular movies. But Tiger Woods, for example, would rather not be dealing with knee surgeries. As for the all-time category leader, Ben Hogan -- well, when late in life he advised the members of his then-fledgling Hogan Tour, "Watch out for buses," he was being appropriately droll. It would have been too rueful to say, "Watch out for comebacks," though It probably went through his mind.

It has been 60 years since the Cadillac sedan carrying Hogan and his wife, Valerie, along a foggy two-lane road outside Van Horn, Tex., was smashed by a Greyhound bus that had crossed the center line. With so much scrutiny being paid to Woods' return, it's a fitting time to take a fresh look at Hogan -- the ultimate U.S. Open player -- and how his comeback defines and distorts the way he is remembered.

Though for a remarkable few years his game seemed unaffected, Hogan the golfer was permanently diminished by the events of Feb. 2, 1949. Valerie escaped devastating injuries, but Hogan's collarbone, pelvis, left ankle and a rib were all broken by the impact. He also suffered deep cuts and contusions around his left eye. Each injury would cause Hogan pain and problems for the rest of his life. But when doctors discovered blood clots formed in his legs were threatening to block the veins to his lungs, it forced the most consequential violation to Hogan's system. Cutting through his abdomen, they tied off the inferior vena cava, an inch-thick tube that is the main carrier of blood from the lower body. It meant that for the rest of his life, Hogan's legs would swell and fatigue whenever he walked.

Hogan's post-accident performance, in which he won the 1950 U.S. Open at Merion in an 18-hole playoff and five of the next seven major championships he played, is rightly considered epic. In the history of sport, it is perhaps rivaled as a comeback only by Lance Armstrong overcoming cancer to win the Tour de France seven times.

But the drama of Merion eclipsed the excellence that came before, and the crescendo of Hogan's "Triple Crown" major victories at Augusta, Oakmont and Carnoustie in 1953 made it easier not to dwell on his protracted and often melancholy denouement. It also seemed to make Hogan's place as the most dynamic swinger of a golf club ever -- along with any wistful wonderings about the record-book colossus he might have been -- somewhat beside the point, except among white-cap-wearing pronators and supinators.

Hogan might have held up Merion as his proudest achievement and called Carnoustie his greatest pleasure, but as an artist of the game, he believed that his pre-accident golf was his finest work. In a 1983 interview on CBS with Ken Venturi, Hogan was describing his 11-month recovery from the accident when he said, "Finally, I got to where I could play a little bit. Not as good as I could before. And I don't think I will ever play as good -- or ever have since -- even though I won some tournaments. But I was better in 1948 and '49 than I've ever been."

I remember being surprised by those words at the time because I'd never heard the pre-accident Hogan celebrated. All I knew was that Hogan had overcome a supposed lack of natural talent with extraordinary industry. Turns out, Hogan helped that along, the little he ever said about himself usually being self-deprecating. "I had to practice and play all the time," he told Venturi. "I've told you before, my swing wasn't the best in the world, and I knew it wasn't. And I thought, Well, the only way I can win is just to outwork these fellas."

So it was with Hogan. As late as 1987, he told Nick Seitz in Golf Digest, "This sounds stupid, but I thought I was always in a slump." Sam Snead wrote of Hogan, "You got the feeling that Ben hated -- I mean, hated -- the mistakes he made. The manner in which he talked about his performance when it was poor was so angry and unforgiving that you found yourself feeling sorry for him."

Hogan was after a Platonic ideal of golf, and it seems that by his measure the year before the accident was the closest he ever got. "Ben was cheated out of years of golf by the accident," Valerie said in 1999, 18 months after her husband's death and just a few before her passing. "We always looked at it as how fortunate he was to play again, that God let him live. But, as he got older, there was a sense of loss. There was sadness. He would have loved to have played forever."