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SAM SNEAD ON GOLF
BY
SAM SNEAD
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
PREFACETHE MAN CALLED SLAMMIN SAM
by Oscar Fraley
Samuel Jackson Snead, the man they call Slammin Sam, is a living legend in the world of golf.
He has been called the greatest natural golfer in the history of the game.
Perennial idol of the galleries as well as the players player, Sam has won more tournaments than any player in the annals of competitive golf. As this is being written, he has captured more than 100 championships.
The man with the sweetest swing in golf has been a sensation ever since he came striding out of the Virginia hills in 1936 to hurtle to the top of the heap.
He has won three P.G.A. championships. Three times he has captured the coveted Masters. His long list of triumphs include the British Open Championship and just about everything else you can nameexcept the U.S. Open.
Four times he has been second in that one, and yet even those tragic failures have helped Sam captivate the galleries in a manner no other golfer ever could. They proved he was human and swept him into the hearts of the worlds hackers and low handicap players alike.
Another time he blew the Open with a horrendous eight which still reverberates throughout the world of golf, and probably always will. That was at Philadelphias Spring Mill Course in 1939, the day of my first association with him.
I have heard literally thousands of people of describe how they saw Sam chop out that big eight. Actually, there was only a comparative handful spectators around the young hillbilly when he teed off on the 72 nd and final hole at Spring Mill that afternoon needing a par five to win the Open and a bogey six to tie.
You will get a kick out of his own description of that eight, just as I did, as he recounts it in his chapter on the psychological side of golf and how to blue-print your game. Had Sam blue-printed his final hole that day, I am certain that, as he claims, he well might have won four or five Open championships.
But my most vivid memory of that day is the pressurized moment when a seething Sam, sitting disgustedly in front of his locker, was asked by a brash reporter:
Sam, just what happened to make you take that eight?
The sportswriter well could have worn a sand wedge, buried in his cranium, for the remainder of his days.
But Sams inherent humor saved the day. He gasped back the bitterness and then, with a rueful smile, replied in a slow drawl:
I dont know. But I sure would like to play that hole over again.
Sam has been almost a hobby with me ever since that moment.
He has that indefinable something called color. Just as baseball players stop in their warm-up tasks to watch Ted Williams take his licks at the batting cage, so do Sams fellow professionals halt their own practice to watch him hit his tune-up shots. And Sams own tolerance of the galleries is a rarity in these days of jittery-nerved competitors who glare angrily at the first sign of a cough or sneeze from the sidelines.
They tell more stories about the colorful Sam than they do about any other golfer. One of the earliest concerned his first major victory, in the 1937 Oakland Open. The next day, Fred Corcoran, at that time the P.G.A. tournament director, took Sam an air mail copy of the New York Times which contained an account of Sneads first win and also carried Sams picture.
Now how did they ever get my picture? wondered the wide-eyed Sam, Why, I aint never been to New York in my whole life.
There still is much of that navet in Samuel Jackson Snead, which probably is much of his appeal. And he never has lost that taste for triumph.
His record, in addition to his tournament victories, is amazing. Four times he has won the Vardon Trophy, which goes annually to the golfer with the low scoring average over the entire year. Capturing it in 1950, he set a record scoring average of 69.23 strokes per round. He has been on eight Ryder Cup teams and in 1949 was named the Professional Golfer of the Year.
Despite his casual nonchalance on the course, Sam still manages the extreme concentration which turns other golfers into grim-faced automatons. But the smile is usually there, even if he doesnt hear what youre saying.
Such as the time during a tournament round when Corcoran approached and told Sam that Bing Crosby, one of Sneads long-time golfing pals, had won the Academy Award.
Thats nice, Sam replied absent-mindedly, was it match or medal?
And nothing to me better typifies his competitive spirit than the occasion when he broke his wrist in 1946 sliding into second base during a soft ball game with a group of caddies at his Greenbrier Club in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
A friend, referring to the shock of sustaining the fracture, asked solicitously whether Sam had lost consciousness.
Were you out? he asked.
Out? Sam snorted. Hell, no, I wasnt out. I was safe!
Sam is a natural athlete. He is an ardent fisherman and hunter. As a schoolboy he was a track, basketball and football star who attracted a number of college scholarship offers. As a pitcher he struck out 18 men in one game and he was also something of a boxer.
But Sam decided after high school that he would make golf his career and the loss to those other sports has been golfs gain. For, as the immortal Bobby Jones said:
Sam has the best swing Ive ever seen.
Millions of others saw it, and agreed, as the Slammer made a one-man parade of televisions 1958 All-Star golf show, winning thirteen matches in a row and setting a record $28,000 in winnings as he turned back the worlds best.
In this book, Slammin Sam blueprints that sweetest swing as well as all the other know-how he has gathered over the years so that you, too, can be a winner.
SAM SNEADS TOURNAMENT VICTORIES
Golfer of the year (1949)
All-time leading money winner.
Vardon Trophy Winner (1938-1949-1950-1955)
Ryder Cup Team (1937-1947-1949-1951-1953-1955)
British Open (1946)
Masters (1949-1952-1954)
P.G.A. (1942-1949-1951)
All-American Open (1952)
World Championship (1946)
Argentine Open (1942)
Canadian Open (1938-1940-1941)
Panama Open (1954)
Western Open (1949-1950)
Anthracite Open (1940)
Baton Rouge Open (1953)
Bayshore Individual (1955)
Bing Crosby Tournament (1937-1938-1941)
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