Snead, 76, Still Plays Well but Talks Better Than Ever

WASHINGTON —  “I just told a couple guys here that I’d give ‘em three shots a hole, but you gotta beat me at every hole for 18 holes.”

That’s Sam Snead talking. He’d just sat down, put his straw hat under the chair and smoothed the top of his tanned, freckled head as if it had some hair. He was talking golf, about putting some 4-iron shot over the top of some sugar-maple tree one day a long time ao.

At 77 (come May 27), Snead plays golf almost as well as he used to and talks golf better than ever.

“ ‘Well, what is it? Where we goin’? How much we makin’?’ ”

That’s Snead talking about his frind and business manager who’d arranged “Slammin’ Sam’s” latest trip from his home in Hot Springs, Va. He’d come this week to Tantallon Country Club in Maryland, where Monday the Mark Vogel Companies Sam Snead Golf Classic pro-am will be held, with numerous seniors stars competig for the benefit of the Hospice of Prince George’s County (Md.), the Dole Foundation and United Cerebral Palsy. Snead had come for charity, but if anyone issued a challenge. ...

“He never gambles on a golf course,” said Stan Abrams, Snead’s Boston business friend who may have been paraphrasing Bob Hope, “because he takes no risks.”

“I understand we’re going to play a couple holes today,” said Snead. He was eager, even if he fell in his raspberry patch a few years ago, tripping over a little wire he’d strung around to hold up the vines and tumbling onto his riht elblow as he cradled a bowl of berries he’d picked. Still can’t straighten up his arm all the way, but you can’t tell by looking at his swing.

“We’re waiting for it to warm up a little,” said Abrams, noting a morning chill.

“This friend of mine came up from Florida and we were going to play golf yesterday afternoon,” said Snead, “and I had on two sweaters. ... “

It reminded him of 1946 when he won the British Open. One of his stories often reminds him of another.

He was traveling from Edinburgh by train, passing “this golf course and the fence was all torn down and the bunkers didn’t look like they ever saw a rake and the grass was up high, and I said to the fellow sitting next to me, ‘What disbanded golf course is that?’

“He said, ‘I’ll have you know that’s St. Andrews.’ I said, ‘You mean they’re playing the British championship there?’ He said, ‘The Open, sir, The Open.’ ”

He wore so many clothes for the last round of The Open, that’s what Tuesday at home in Hot Springs reminded him of. “I had my drawers, my pajamas, and heavy wool pants, and a rainsuit over that. I had so many sweaters on I looked like a stuffed toad.” That didn’t stop him.

“The last round, the wind was blowin’ like hell and I hit this ball that went into Hell Bunker. That’s on the 14th hole.” It’s a par 5 with 10 bunkers that’s destroyed many a round.

“Hell Bunker is as high as this ceiling. I hit a 3-iron out of there and the wind caught that ball and it looked just like a kite. My ball ended up in a bush, on a limb, and that limb was going about two feet back and forth with the wind, and I’m trying to time it. I hit a 6-iron and it went right into another bunker.

“I went into that bunker -- it was almost as high as my head. I just can’t stand to go backward; I’ve got to hit forward no matter what. I took a 9-iron and overcocked a little bit and ... it came down and just touched the grass and went over onto the green and I made 6. That was the greatest 6 I ever made. That was the turning point right there.

“I don’t think I ever drove the ball better than I did over there. Got a great prize there for winning, $600.”

Sam Snead live in the past? No, sir. Even with 84 lifetime victories on the pro golf tour. Three Masters titles, three PGAs, the British Open. Four times U.S. Open runner-up. Winner at Greensboro at age 53. First to shoot a 59. Talk about the past, talk about last Saturday. In the Senior PGA Tour’s Legends of Golf (“legendary champions division”) in Austin, Texas, he birdied 16, 17 and 18-playing as if it were 1946.

“Bob Goalby said, ‘OK, Sam, you’re on TV.’ ” TV! Just give Sam Snead an audience.

“I knocked one in from about 15 feet on 16, then holed it out of the bunker on 17 and made another nice one for a birdie on 18.” His blue eyes sparkled as he talked. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“I always thought I was a good competitor. My best friend, when we get on the first tee and the game’s on, I want to kill him. I have no mercy on ‘em when it comes to golf.”

Sometimes, Snead has had to resort to what he calls “gamesmanship.”

“I’m playing with Bobby Cole--he won the British Amateur.” They’ve got a little bet and they’re going to 13 at Augusta, said Snead, “and things get a little tight. I said, Bobby, when I was your age I used to take it across these trees and I’d have a short iron to the hole, par-5. He was pumped up. He hit and the thing got about halfway up those trees and fell down into the creek. He said, ‘I can’t hit it over those trees.’ ‘Bobby,’ I said, ‘when I was your age those trees were about 15 feet high.’ ”

Snead feels his age (one of his grandmothers lived to be 106). “If I shut my left eye I couldn’t tell who you are. I never dreamt that my eyes would be finally the end of it. I thought it’d be my back.”

So, if he’s at the “end,” what does he shoot?

“Well, I’m averaging par. Sometimes I shoot 68.”

As Snead signed an autograph for a 2-handicap player, he looked at the young man and said, “You golf for money?”

Finally, he guffawed and said, “Naw, I want one of those old guys.”

Then he put his straw hat back on, and went out to play.