Valerie and Ben were driving home from the West Coast Tour in February 1949. On their way home, heading down into Van Horn, Texas, the roads were really icy and a heavy fog had descended upon the whole area. Valerie and Ben entered a low bridge and once on there was no way off.
As they entered the bridge, Ben saw four lights coming at him. A grey hound bus was passing a large fruit truck and was heading straight for the Hogan’s. Ben jumped over and covered his wife. The steering wheel went through the drivers seat and the Cadillac was pushed completely off the bridge from the head on collision.
A few military guys were heading home when they saw the Hogan’s car. They got Ben out of the car and thought he was dead from how broken his body appeared. Valerie had a couple of scratches and bruises but she was otherwise okay. The sergeant reached down and tried to feel for a pulse on Ben but couldn’t find one. The ambulance arrived on scene and took Ben’s broken body to the hospital where the great Babe Zaharias was recuperating from cancer.
As the ambulance drove in, a reporter ran alongside and as the gurney came out of the ambulance, the reporter asked, “Is that Mr. Hogan?” The attendant confirmed it was and that Ben had passed.
It spread across the nation and the world that the great golfing legend Ben Hogan had died in a horrific car accident in Van Horn, Texas. But Hogan, being as strong willed man as you would ever find, had a spark of life left. He hung onto that spark through a 12-hour operation. A priest arrived to give last rites at the completion of the surgery. The priest had no idea who he was giving his last rites to and that he was wasting his time.
Ben Hogan spent 16-months in convalescence. The doctor said he would never walk again, never mind play the game he loved so much. He would be lucky if he could get out of a wheelchair. What Hogan knew was that the muscles he had trained so diligently for so long were still intact. They were never touched during the accident. His body parts were weakened and would never come back 100%, especially his lower body where they had tied off lower veins to prevent him dying.
Everyone else in the sporting world had put the Ben Hogan career at an end. 20th Century Fox was doing a film on his life story in 1950. Hogan took the money, why wouldn’t he! He worked hard and had a name. He deserved to get paid. But Hogan knew that they were wasting their time. His life wasn’t over! His career wasn’t over! He just had to learn how to walk again to provide a pedestal for those educated and powerful and long muscles that were ready to hit an iron again. As the movie was being completed, Ben won the 1950 US Open to prove to the world that the movie was a waste of time and he was making his second ascent to the top of the golfing world.
The muscles never forgot. The muscles that he trained served him his whole life.
The Blue Whale Exercise Program 