By: Lorne Rubenstein
Surely no golfer has ever won the same PGA Tour event in four different decades, but that's exactly what Slammin' Sammy Snead did in winning the Greater Greensboro Open eight times. Count 'em, eight: 1938, 1946, 1949, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1960 and 1965. His last win came at the tender age of 52 years, 10 months and eight days, making him the oldest player to win a PGA Tour event. More than 30 years later, that impressive record still stands, and so, of course, does the player who will always be known as one of the sweetest swingers in the game.
Sweet is underestimating the man's tempo, as I found out not that long ago when I played with Snead at the Cascades course near his home in Hot Springs, Virginia. He loves the course, as he does the surrounding area where he grew up and to which he still returns from Florida when spring comes. It's almost impossible to think of Snead, who turns 85 on May 27, without conjuring images of the hills of Virginia and West Virginia. If I had ever been more excited about the prospect of a round of golf, I can't think when that would have been.
Snead was full of beans when we played, because age has not tempered his ability to give somebody the business. I'd gotten lost on the way to the course, having told my wife to take a wrong turn. Finally we pulled into the parking lot of the beautiful old course, and found Snead waiting on a cart with his dog Meister. He looked at who was driving and said, "serves you right, letting the little lady drive." Luckily, my wife Nell has a good sense of humor herself, and anyway, Snead winked at us. The fellow likes a good time, and a good joke, even if it's on somebody else.
Down the first fairway we went, after I had made the mistake of telling Snead that I'd rather play for fun and not for money. "I'd rather watch the squirrels in the forest," he said to that, looking at the woods. And winking. I then figured, okay, so I'll play him for a hundred bucks, lose and chalk it up to experience. But Snead said he was just kidding, and was happy to tell stories all the way round and not bother with a wager.
I wasn't interested only in his stories. I wanted to watch Snead hit the ball, work his way around the course despite his obvious physical problems. His eyesight was going bad, his feet hurt, he didn't have the flexibility that gave him the languid swing that was his trademark. But he still looked "oily" to me, to use a word he used to employ to describe the feeling he wanted while swinging.
Snead cussed every time he missed a shot, and took great delight in the shots that came off nicely. He still sets up to the ball so gracefully, and though his hands quivered momentarily at address, he was all smoothness and grace once he took the club back. After his muscles loosened, he still was able to hit some long drives and irons that were right on the money.
Although he missed the first four greens, Snead saved par on three of the holes. He also watched me carefully, and gave me some advice after I pulled a tee shot at the sixth. I'd been hitting the ball solidly, but was pulling most of my shots.
"I'm gonna tell you something that'll help you stop hitting left, stop you from coming over the top," Snead said. "Hit that ball with the club coming in at the same angle you set it at address. You can get it if you keep your right elbow tucked in to your side."
What the heck, this was a legend talking, and I was sure going to listen. And what do you know, from the seventh through the 16th I was under par. Then I succumbed to the golfer's disease of thinking about the good score I was definitely going to make, and in Sam Snead's presence. I doubled the par-five 17th and then didn't take enough club on the long par-three closing hole, and double-bogeyed there as well. Snead noticed my indecision over the ball about what club to use, watching me hit a wild hook, and then hit me with some more of his wisdom.
"Son, if you're standing over the ball thinking you have the wrong club, you do," he said. This sharp statement remains one of the wisest observations I have ever heard about golf.
Of course, after I finished the round, still quite pleased about shooting in the mid-70s, Snead had to say, chuckling all the way, "Listen, I wouldn't have given you the tip if we were playing for money. But stick with the advice."
Aside from the instruction, there were the Snead stories. He has a million.
Snead spoke of the comment one often hears that Ben Hogan was so accurate that during a 36-hole day he had to play his shots in the afternoon round from his divots in the morning round.
"I told people that if Hogan was so good he could have put his ball a little right or a little left of the divot," Snead said.
After our round, Snead invited my wife and me to his home high on a hill overlooking Chestnut Rail Farm. He drove the Jeep he had then at a fast clip to the 200-acre farm, then took us down to his trophy room. There was every manner of animal there--a Kodiak bear, a zebra rug, elephant tusks, a stuffed snake. Snead was one serious hunter.
He could also be a serious talker. He spoke fondly of his wife Audrey, who had died in January of 1990, and of his sons, one who was retarded since birth and who lived in a home in Pennsylvania except for visits to the family household every year for a few weeks. But the overriding feeling was of a man who was content with his life, and what he had accomplished.
"I thought if I was on I could beat anybody in the game," Snead told me. "You got to think you can kill the cats. If you don't think that, you can't do it."
Our visit soon ended. Snead walked past the Masters commemorative plates in a dining room cabinet before showing us to our car.
"Nice view here, isn't it?" he asked, rhetorically. "You look down into the valley and up to the mountains when the leaves turn, there's no place prettier. My dad and his dad were born here, in a log cabin."
Driving away, I felt I had spent a day with a man who was comfortable in his own skin. Slammin' Sammy Snead had won everything in golf--everything, that is, but the U.S. Open--but he was still a man who thrived on being in the countryside he loved best. It was good to see him there, and to think of a time long ago when a young Sam Snead carved a golf club out of a branch and whacked shots to and fro. Golf's sweet swinger still loved the simply joys that come from playing the game. That, above all, was apparent, and is worth remembering as we come upon another GGO, the tournament that Snead owned and that he won so often over such a long period.
Lorne Rubenstein is a nationally known golf writer from Ontario. He is a regular columnist for Links magazine and GolfWeb on the Internet. He has four books to his credit, the newest, The Swing: Mastering the Principles of the Game which he wrote with Nick Price, has just been published by Knopf.
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