Golf · 1950 · Ardmore, USA
The Miracle at Merion
Sixteen months after a car crash nearly killed him and left doctors doubting he would walk again, Ben Hogan plays 36 holes in a single day and wins a play-off for the US Open title.
Won 18-hole play-off
Result
16
Months after near-fatal crash
5
Later majors won
In February 1949, Ben Hogan's car collided head-on with a bus on a foggy Texas highway; he threw himself across the passenger seat to shield his wife, a move that likely saved his life but left him with a fractured pelvis, collarbone, ankle and ribs. Doctors were unsure he would walk normally again, let alone return to competitive golf.
Sixteen months later, at the 1950 US Open at Merion, Hogan played the demanding final 36 holes in a single day, as the format then required, his legs wrapped and increasingly unable to bear the strain by the closing holes. A photograph of his one-iron approach into the 72nd green, a near-perfect swing framed against the crowd, became one of the sport's most reproduced images; the putt he made moments later forced an 18-hole play-off.
Hogan won that play-off the following day against Lloyd Mangrum and George Fazio, completing a comeback still referenced as one of the great feats of endurance in professional sport. He went on to win five more majors after the crash, but the 1950 US Open, played on legs that could barely support him, remains the result people mean when they call Hogan the toughest competitor golf has produced.
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