On this day in 1949 golfing champ Ben Hogan was seriously injured in a car accident.
Hogan and his wife Valerie were hit by a Greyhound bus that had moved over into their lane while trying to pass a truck in bad weather. The bus ploughed head-on into Hogan’s Cadillac and at the last second he hurled himself across his wife, probably saving his life as the steering wheel and part of his car’s engine went through the cushion of the drivers seat.
Hogan suffered lacerations to his face, a fractured left collarbone, a double fraction of his pelvis, a broken ankle and a chipped rib. He wife escaped with a few minor cuts and bruises.
His first game back was June of 1950, 16 months after the accident trying to reclaim his place as golf’s greatest competitor at the US Open. Hogan won in a playoff.
