Still Suited to a Tee

By Tom Callahan

At 70, Sam Sneadputts sidesaddle, but what the heck

Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Samuel Jackson Snead all will hit 70 this year, a pretty good score when you consider the course. Almost 40 years since he was able to win eleven golf tournaments in a row, Nelson is in Texas being venerable and staying available to Tom Watson whenever the kid needs a lesson. Hogan is in Texas being difficult and hanging up on Gary Player when the South African calls for advice. ("Mr. Player, are you affiliated with a club manufacturer?" "Dunlop." "Call Dunlop." Click.) Snead last week was in Ohio being Snead and so was playing in a golf tournament.

Not a seniors event, like the Legends he won last month in cahoots with young Don January, 52. Sam is not done with the juniors yet. Last Thursday, on his 70th birthday, he teed it up in the first round of the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village near Columbus, on an exquisite golf course built by Jack Nicklaus that will one day be for Nicklaus what Augusta National is for Bobby Jones: something close to a monument.

Sam gives no thought to such things. "They memorialize folks up there at Muirfield," he said before leaving Hot Springs, Va., his boyhood home. (Since his boyhood is not over, he still lives there.) "But you have to be retired or dead to be memorialized. Since it doesn't look like I'm going to do either one, they decided to throw me a birthday party instead." So a 70-year-old athlete was competing last week at the highest level of his sport.

He shot 61 at age 24, 59 at age 47 and 67 at age 68--in tournaments. "What the heck, I've won 165 tournaments or so," he said, including a record 84 on the American tour. Starting in 1936, he has been winning for "six decades or so." How in Sam Hill has he done it? "What the heck, never having golf lessons helped some." As Nelson says with envy but without resentment, "Hogan and I worked hard to perfect our swings. Sam was born with his." Even the best golfers' swipes show the strain of their various checkpoints, but Snead still makes his velvet swing seem the most natural thing for a man to do. Over the decades, only Sam has noticed much change. "Some rusty spots," he said. "I'm not as strong as I was when I was 60."

On the green, it is another story. An old story, a horror story. Golfers all lose their game, and usually their dignity, on the green. Nicklaus, who is in the throes of it at 42, won for the first time in two years last month with the steadying aid of his 19-year-old son Steve, who caddied and read his putts. Hogan got to the chilling point where he could scarcely draw the putter blade back. "I've seen Ben smoke a whole cigarette over a 6-ft. putt," said Snead with a shiver. "Once you get the 'yips,' you never lose them." For almost ten years now Sam has been putting "sidesaddle." Literally and figuratively, he is the only great player who ever faced up to the yips. As unseemly as it is to be putting like a gondolier, Snead said, "it was either do that or quit." And, to Sam, anything beat quitting. "Most players are too proud to try it. What the heck, I look at it like fishing. It's not how you get the fish on the line."

Snead may not be as free with lessons as Nelson, but he is not as tight with advice as Hogan. "Everyone should try keeping his hand in, whatever he does," he said. "If I stopped golfing for a month, I probably couldn't break 90."

A capacity for enjoyment is helpful too. "There are more golfers today, but they aren't any better than we were, and they aren't near as much fun. What the heck, they don't seem to sing as many songs any more, or tell as many jokes any more. They make more money." And how much would Sam Snead have made if his prime were now? "What the heck, $10 million or SO." --By Tom Callahan

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