FORT SMITH, Ark. -- Jack Fleck is 90. His satellite radio is tuned to the 1940s. And the speedometer of his Buick seems stuck at 30 miles per hour.

But listen hard -- above Fleck's anti-Obama rant, above the Big Band sounds from the car radio, above an engine hoping someday to stretch its legs -- and you can hear them rattling gently on the beige backseat.

A 6-iron. A 3-wood. And not just any 6-iron and 3-wood, but two of the clubs Fleck used 57 years ago to beat the great Ben Hogan in a U.S. Open playoff.

It wasn't an upset as much as it was a miracle. It was Ouimet over Vardon and Ray. USA over the USSR in Lake Placid. Douglas over Tyson. Three 6 Mafia over Dolly Parton. The only thing missing that June day in 1955 at the Olympic Club was Al Michaels.

"No. 1: That was not on my mind that way," says Fleck, a grin forming as he slowly shakes his head. "[I'm] not thinking I was gonna win the Open that 1955 when I entered. No. No way."

But he did. And he won with a set of clubs bearing Hogan's signature, made by Hogan's company and provided to Fleck, an absolute unknown, free of charge and with Hogan's blessings. Hogan, who had never met Fleck before Olympic Club, even hand-delivered a pair of wedges the week of the Open.

It was a lovely gesture. A man who had won nine majors befriended an obscure touring pro who had never finished higher than seventh in any tournament. Or as Hall of Fame golf writer Dan Jenkins, who has covered 212 majors, including that 1955 Open, said: "Well, we didn't know who Jack Fleck was until he won. ... It sounded like a name you would make up."

Fleck, the oldest living U.S. Open champion, still has the entire set. The clubs are kept in a very safe and very undisclosed location. Leila Dunbar, an appraiser who does consulting work for the USGA, set the opening auction estimate between $50,000-$75,000 and as much as $100,000 if his Bulls Eye putter was added.

His check for winning the Open: $6,000.

So if Fleck decides to sell them, those clubs could bring six figures. They've already brought him lasting fame. Tragedy, too.

Hogan's clubs helped Fleck pull off one of the greatest upsets in U.S. Open history. He was an absolute nobody who, in four days' time at Olympic Club, became a national somebody. He heard voices. He beat his idol Hogan. He raised a trophy. He met President Dwight Eisenhower.

But it all came at a cost. The Open victory against Hogan, the pre-eminent player of his era, was mocked and dismissed. Fleck, as in fluke.

"Maybe in terms of sports results, it's one of the greatest upsets ever," said Jenkins, who covered the '55 Open for Hogan's hometown newspaper, the Fort Worth Press. "For me, it's one of the greatest unjust results ever because Hogan was so much a better player than Jack Fleck."

Not that week, he wasn't. Fleck's win was unbelievable, unexpected and unexplainable. It was also soaked in weirdness and irony. But the best golfer during those 90 holes (72 regulation, 18 playoff) won the Open.

On the Saturday morning of the Open, when the final two rounds of regulation would be played, Fleck stood in front of the bathroom mirror of his modest El Camino Real Motel room in Daly City, Calif. (Hogan was staying at the luxurious St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco), and began shaving. A Mario Lanza album played on the record player Fleck had brought with him on the cross-country drive from Davenport, Iowa. The car, by the way, was a Buick.

That's when he heard someone else in the room.

"Well, a voice came out of the mirror, and it was loud enough and clear enough, and it just says, 'Jack, you're gonna win the Open,'" Fleck said. "See, he didn't say, U.S. Open. But then after four, five minutes or something, it came again. 'Jack, you're gonna win the Open.' Well, I just had goose pimples and I quivered, and I look around and there's nobody around."

Fleck sank putt after putt -- an "Open coma," Jenkins called it. He mostly stayed out of Olympic's brutal shin-deep rough, which swallowed up errant shots as if they were malt balls. His iron play was, well, Hoganesque. The 33-year-old Fleck was unflappable.

But he still trailed Hogan, winner of four Opens, by 2 shots as he stepped to the No. 15 tee box. So sure was NBC of the outcome that commentator Gene Sarazen signed off by declaring Hogan the champion.

Jenkins was with Hogan in the locker room when a tournament official informed him that Fleck needed to birdie two of the last four holes to force a tie. Said Hogan, fresh from his impressive even-par 70 and 287 total: "I hope he either makes three or one because I don't want a playoff."

Fleck birdied No. 15 and parred Nos. 16 and 17. Jenkins made a beeline for the 18th hole, in time to see Fleck sink a downhill, right-to-left, 7-foot birdie putt for the unthinkable tie and a round of 67.

"And I still didn't give it much thought because a guy named Jack Fleck, who I've never heard of, is not going to beat Ben Hogan in an 18-hole playoff," Jenkins said. "And of course, he did."

He did it by holing every crucial putt, building a 3-stroke lead, withstanding a late charge by Hogan and then calmly parring the 18th, as Hogan flailed out of the rough for an eventual double-bogey. Fleck shot 69 to Hogan's 72. An upset for the ages was complete.

Fifty-seven years later, on a windless, 90-degree day, Fleck stands on the driving range at Hardscrabble Country Club in Fort Smith with two of those Hogan clubs. They are making a rare cameo appearance.

The blade of the 6-iron is clean enough to serve finger sandwiches. Compared to today's metal woods, the clubhead of the persimmon 3-wood is smaller than an infant's clenched fist. The grips are wrapped leather, and the steel shafts are stiffer than he's played in decades.

"A little thin," he said, as his first shot flies long and straight. "But I'll take it."

There is nothing complicated about Fleck's swing. Turn away. Turn back.

"Course, I've been trying for a long, long time, you know," he said.

He plays nine or 18 holes almost every day, usually by himself, and shoots in the mid-to-upper 70s. In late March he recorded a hole-in-one on Hardscrabble's par-3 17th.

Fleck stripes a half-dozen more iron shots and then switches to the 3-wood. He stumbles forward as he stands over the ball.

"See?" he said. "That's my balance."

And then he settles himself and hits a Sofia Vergara-gorgeous draw.

Ask him whether during those solitary rounds at Hardscrabble he ever thinks about the '55 Open, and Fleck doesn't hesitate.

"Nope," he said, "that was back then."

The memories are wonderful. The memories are painful.

Fleck is a child of the Depression. His father lost the family farm. There was no money...