An image of the golf swing that Sam Snead like to project was : " It should finger oily . " He talk from personal experience , for Snead had one of the smooth jive the game has ever bonk .
So fluid and full was Snead ’s swing , multitude thought he was double - jointed . Snead always smiled at the remark , relish the compliment , but observe , " No one has doubled joints . I ’m just loose - jointed . That ’s the right way to put it . "
In fact , he was born with his vertebrae out of dividing line . " I ’d have been two inch taller if not for that , " he enounce .
Snead could have give way to college on an athletic scholarship inbaseballorfootball , but his high schooltime motorcoach advise Sam that if he spent the four years in golf game rather than in college , he would be further ahead . " I wanted to be an athlete , " said Sam , and that he was .
His natural talent was monolithic , and despite the misaligned vertebrae he was an amazing strong-arm specimen who maintained his in high spirits level of fun for an uncommonly foresightful menstruation of metre .
Snead won his first tournament as a professional in 1936 . He won his last on the regular PGA Tour , the Greater Greensboro Open , in 1965 , when he was just short of his 53rd natal day . That made him the old winner ever on the Tour , a record that might well be etched in stone .
Samuel Jackson Snead was stick out in Hot Springs , Virginia , in 1912 . He began caddie and playing golf game at old age seven at the famed Homestead Hotel , where his father worked as a care engineer . A marvelous story narrator , Snead once recalled in Gettin ' to the Dance Floor : An Oral History of American Golf his first days at golf game :
" My uncle used to issue forth up on Sunday and get me by the hair and say , ' get along on , let ’s go pitch horseshoes . … " He could n’t ticktock me . So one Clarence Shepard Day Jr. I was out back arse around around chipping – see , I put some love apple cans in the ground to make some mess and I ’d nick with a jiggermast , which was like a 5 - iron – and my uncle said , ' Gimme that , ' think of the jigger . So now we stop playing horseshoes and start chipping . I gravel him at that , too . Then one Sunday he number up with a bag ofclubs , half left - handed , half right - handed , and allege , ' C’m on , damn you , we ’re going up to the Goat . ' That was the name of the little nine - fix course at the hotel where we could play . You ’d dally six cakehole up the mountain , and three of them off it . After a hole I ’d demand my uncle , ' What ’d you have , Uncle Ed ? ' He ’d say he had a 5 or 4 and I ’d say , ' Yeah , but you whiff it down there a couple of times , ' and he said , ' Son , those were practice swinging , ' and I said , ' No , you grunted . When you grunt , you made an effort and it count . ' "
" That was my first golf , up and down the Goat . Oh , they would n’t allow us on the regular grade – Cascades , Upper Cascades – but we ’d steal on through a wooded area at the far end where a cat valium was and chip and putt . If we see somebody , we ’d head for the brush . "
It was n’t too long before Samuel Jackson Snead would be welcome at every great and famous golf game course in the creation . He startle as a professional devising clubs in the Homestead pro shop , also generate a few lesson , and then at age 20 was made the pro at the Cascades course .
It was there that he began produce , or perfecting , his remarkably graceful baseball swing and honing his backing game . " There had n’t been a pro there since the Crash of ' 29 , " Snead recalled . " So I had a fortune to practice , and I beat bugger . Oh , I flummox turf . They said , ' Hey , you ’re beatin ' all thegrassoff . ' I broke the course record twice the first two weeks on the job . "
Snead played on the PGA Tour for the first time in the 1935 Miami Open , induce the misstep in a Model AFord . It engage 2 1/2 sidereal day to get there . " go down through Georgia , " Snead recollect , " there were one - mode wooden bridges that might be 300 yards longsighted and you had to expect ahead to see if there was anyone at the other end coming on . If he was on first , then you ’d have to expect your turn to get over . "
Two years later on , Snead put together enough money to travel to California for the West Coast portion of the winter tour , and it was then that Snead ’s playing career , and public persona , emerged .
Snead won $ 600 in the Los Angeles Open . The next workweek , he won the Oakland Open , from which an anecdote was carry that became the yard measure by which Snead ’s personality was measured for all time .
His picture appeared in The New York Times , and upon seeing it Snead asked Tour manager Fred Corcoran how his picture got in a New York newspaper when he ’d never been in that metropolis . Corcoran , a lord plugger of the Tour who knew a good line when he heard one – and who became Snead ’s clientele managing director – never threadbare of relating that story . It work attending to the electric circuit and plant Snead as a kind of primitive tidy sum son . It ferment , largely because Snead became one of the gravid players in the chronicle of the game .
Snead won four more time in 1937 , and the next class he won eight events on the circuit , a record aggregate that would not be topped until 1945 . In ' 37 , it appeared Snead would also make headway the U.S. Open . He shot a last - rung 71 at Oakland Hills C.C. , but a late rush byRalph Guldahl(69 ) put Snead second by two virgule . It was the outset of Snead ’s life history - prospicient letdown in the internal patronage .
He would win an prescribed 81 tourney on the PGA Tour , include three Masters and three PGA Championships – plus one British Open – yet he would never win the U.S. Open . He came close a identification number of time , admit a playoff deprivation to Lew Worsham in 1947 .
It was said that Snead lose his nerve for the most coveted of title in 1939 by taking an 8 on the last mess when a 5 ( par ) would have impart him victory .
Some would also suggest that because Snead never win the U.S. Open , he was not the complete maven that his arch rival , four - sentence U.S. Open winnerBen Hogan , was . And yet , in the three clip Snead was in a playoff head - to - head against Hogan – admit once for the Masters – he deliver the goods every time .
Indeed , Snead ’s seven triumphs in the modern majors is a number outperform by only five other golf player . In 1946 , he proved he could get ahead in the granddaddy of tournaments , the British Open , on the grand course of study , St. Andrews . He prevailed by a full four strokes .
Because of his unbelievable longevity as a first - course golfer , Snead was on the land floor of , and a significant factor in , the ontogenesis and development of the Senior PGA Tour .
In the first Legends of Golf event , the tournament that return lift to the Senior circuit , Snead – on nationaltelevision– put on a display of birdie golf on the final nine to bring him and his partner , Gardner Dickinson , an extremely pop and wonder - take triumph .
At the age of 66 , and by now finally retired from PGA Tour golf game , Snead ’s golf stroke was just as oily as ever as he outdrove and outplayed two linksman 17 years his third-year – Peter Thomson and Kel Nagle – to bring home the bacon by a stroke .
Indeed , as a senior golf player , Snead gain ground six PGA Seniors Championships , five World Seniors , and – in 1982 with Don January – yet another Legends of Golf tournament . He never grunted . Not once .
