Arkansas Business

This story is from the archives of ArkansasSports360.com.

We're not sure what's more amazing about Jack Fleck: that he came out of nowhere to shock Ben Hogan (as well as the whole world of golf) by three shots in a playoff to win the 1955 U.S. Open, or that 57 years later, at age 90, he still playing 18 hole rounds of golf back-to-back, with a former president even, and still making it back to his adopted home of Arkansas for a Saturday morning golf outing?

But there he was, 1955 U.S. Open winner Jack Fleck — it says so in black letters right on his white golf bag — sharing his thoughts about the game and that miraculous win over Hogan. On the current state of Tiger Woods, Fleck says he's playing with too many swing thoughts. Fleck's chief swing thought when he played was to keep it simple.

Fleck is the subject of two books appearing this year, and he'll certainly be the focus of feature stories in golf magazines and newspapers in coming weeks as the U.S. Open returns to the Olympic Club in San Francisco, where Fleck outlasted Hogan.

Some golf writers for more than a half-century have deemed Fleck a U.S. Open fluke, right up there with the likes of Andy North winning two Opens and no other PGA titles, or Steve Jones winning the U.S. Open in 1996. But those guys didn't beat Hogan, or Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods in their primes. In winning the '55 Open, Fleck held off the best golfer of his time.

Ben Hogan had significantly cut back his schedule in the 1950s, the result of surviving a near-fatal collision with a Greyhound bus in thick fog on a two-lane West Texas highway in 1949. He would forever have circulation problems in his legs, which had been broken in the wreck. His comeback to win the 1950 U.S. Open in Merion is just part of an amazing story about the human will — Hogan's doctors didn't expect him to walk, much less play golf ever again, and certainly not to the level he was playing on the eve of the accident.

Instead, even with a limited yearly schedule, Hogan played even better than ever, winning consecutive U.S. Opens in 1950-51 and again in 1953, when he also won the Masters and the British Open at Carnoustie in his only visit. He accomplished the Triple Crown of golf (the PGA Championship at that time was 36 holes of match play each day, which Hogan most likely couldn't have handled because of leg problems, and it was also scheduled around the time of the British Open, making a Grand Slam impossible). And Hogan's feat wouldn't be repeated until Tiger Woods won three majors in 2000.

Hogan was two shots ahead late in Saturday's 36-hole U.S. Open final day at Olympic — another obstacle the Texan had to overcome in winning those Opens, after incurring the serious injuries from his wreck, was playing 36 holes on the final day, plus a next-day's playoff of 18 holes in 1950). Television coverage, as limited as it was, indicated to viewers that Hogan was safely on his way to another U.S. Open crown, which would have been his fifth, and signed off.

Can you imagine today, the coverage of a major tournament concluding before the final putt?

Players also weren't grouped the way they are now; they remained in their same pairings and playing order for the third and fourth rounds on Saturday, and the higher-profile players were spread out to draw crowds around the course on the third and final day.

So, little-known Jack Fleck from Davenport, Iowa, was among in the later groups that day, and on the 16th hole, after he had trailed by nine shots in Round 1, he found himself two shots out of the lead held by Hogan. "They said my odds of winning were 800,000 to 1," Fleck noted.

Fleck proceeded to birdie two of the last three holes to force a tie, however. Golf fans around the country, without the benefit of a 24-hour national sports channel or the Internet, woke up the next morning stunned to see in Sunday's sports sections that Hogan would be in an 18-hole playoff with this fellow named Fleck.

Last Saturday, at a media event to show off the revamping of one of Hot Springs Village's older and maybe prettiest of courses, Cortez, Fleck was asked by one of the guests when he knew he had won the playoff with Hogan. He didn't answer it directly, but Fleck did say, "They way I played during my last nine holes and throughout the playoff, I knew I could beat anyone."