Grim echoes

Ben Hogan is who you thought of, when you saw that silver SUV lying at the bottom of a ravine with its front end gnawed off. You thought of 1949 and a different car and a Greyhound bus coming head-on, and a different transcendent golfer flinging himself across the front seat at the last moment to shield his wife from the impact.

That collision cost Ben Hogan a year on the golf course, and left him with a permanent limp.

This one?

Who knows, as we absorb the single-car crash that left Tiger Woods' lower right leg essentially ground to dust. The injuries are horrific: Multiple open fractures -- i.e., bones protruding from the skin -- shattered bones in the ankle and foot, the entirety now held together by pins and metal rods after an hours-long surgery.

And so Ben Hogan, popping into the head of anyone who knows anything about golf.

Me?

I thought of Hogan, sure. But then I thought of A.J. Foyt.

Who turned his feet to dust up in Elkhart Lake, Wis., one afternoon in 1990, when his brakes failed coming into a hard right-hander and his car became an unguided missile, taking flight and arrowing into a dirt embankment. The impact basically folded his feet back on themselves; the pain was so bad Foyt, the toughest man who ever strapped into a race car, begged the safety workers to hit him in the head with a hammer and put him out of his misery.

He survived, of course. Even raced again, sort of, although his racing days were pretty much over from that moment. It was a year before he could walk again, and, 30 years later, he feels that afternoon to this day when he sets off with a gait that has been off-kilter since.

One more thing: A.J. Foyt was 55 years old when Elkhart Lake happened, and hadn't been a force on the track for some time.

Tiger Woods is 45, and, except for the blip that was Augusta in 2019, he hasn't really been a consistent force on the golf course for some time.

To be sure, even now, no one moves the needle like Tiger. If he's playing on the weekend, and he's remotely within shouting distance of the lead, the TV numbers are a Saturn V rocket. But if he misses the cut ... well, not so much.

The man can still play this game, because he was the best there ever was at his peak and that doesn't just disappear. But after five back surgeries and knee surgeries and lord knows how many more dents and door-dings, he's a very old 45.

Just as A.J. was a very old 55, when he took flight that day in Wisconsin and destroyed his feet.

As for Hogan, the analogy is the obvious one, but perhaps it's  not as exact. Hogan was 36 the night his car met that Greyhound bus head-on, for one thing. He was at the height of his powers, or at least coming to that height. Like Tiger, his injuries were extensive, too -- there was hardly a bone in his body above the waist he didn't break -- but he was younger, and he was Ben Hogan.

A Texan, like A.J. Tougher than a jailhouse steak, like A.J.

And so he was back on a golf course before a year had passed, and won the U.S, Open not very long after that. He went on to win five more majors and dominate the 1950s, playing always in pain and always with a limp.

It was one of the most remarkable stories in the history of any sport. And if Tiger manages to get back to competitive golf, and actually manages to win again to boot -- two exceedingly dim "ifs" at this point, if we're being honest -- that could well be the most remarkable story in the history of any sport.

That's because he's a decade older, and the damage is to his lower extremities, and it's extensive to say the least. And it's because he was already rehabbing from a fifth back procedure when he went off that winding downhill road early yesterday morning.

I don't know if that means this is the end of him as a professional golfer. But I do know what anyone with a soul is hoping right now.

Which is that Tiger Woods' story, from here on out, unfolds a lot more like Ben Hogan's than A.J. Foyt's.