Not long ago, the nation's most prominent amateur golfer and one of the game's leading professionals played a friendly round at Washington's Burning Tree Club. Professional Sam Snead was awed into unaccustomed silence by all the folderol that accompanied the game ("All them cops, and you know what they got in their golf bags? Tommy guns!"). Although he noted some bad kinks in his partner's performance, he offered no advice. Coming up to the 18th tee, though, Snead could no longer keep silent. "Mind if I tell you one thing?" he asked. His partner said no, not at all. "Stick your fanny out, Mr. President," said Snead. The President of the U.S. obeyed, and cracked out a drive 230 yards down the middle of the fairway.
Another President of the U.S., Ulysses S. Grant, once observed that the game of golf looked like good exercise, but he asked, "What's the little white ball for?" Dwight Eisenhower, Sam Snead and about 4,000,000 other American golfers could have told him. To the casual eye, golf can seem deceptively undramatic. Golfers do not run or jump or kick or pounce or pound or shoot off firearms. Their play seems unhurried, gentlemanly, almost oldfashioned. Yet, in the pursuit of the little white ball, men find an extraordinary challenge to muscle and mind, the test of skill, and the thrill of chance-taking. They also find camaraderie and relaxation. To some, golf may merely mean the smell of freshly mown grass and the sight of the sudden, wind-blown hill. To some, it may just be a pleasing setting to sell insurance.
To some, it is a soothing therapy for the peptic ulcer; to others, especially those who make their living at it, it is a good way to acquire one.
This year Americans will pursue 33 million rounds of golf. For the privilege, they will spend something like a third of a billion dollars on everything from wood en tees to gin & tonics on the 18th Hole.
After a marked drop of popularity in the '30s, golf today is more than ever a na tional American sport.
What brought the ancient sport back to popularity? Among the reasons: 1) the increase in leisure time and the five-day week; 2) a growing trend away from private country-club golf toward public golf (construction of military and company courses has been a major factor); 3) improvement in equipment and in courses; 4) diligent promotional gilding of the golfing lily and, more than anything else, 5) the appearance of an exciting generation of durable (and now middleaged) champion golfers. Of the great stars, no one has done as much to bring about the revival of the game as Samuel Jackson Snead, a brawny, balding Virginian of 42, with the drawl of a mountaineer and perhaps the most graceful, powerful swing ever seen on a course.
Why He Is Great. By the book, Snead is by no means the greatest golfer around.
The Professional Golfers Association lists him fourth among the top professionals of the half-century, after Ben Hogan, Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen. Sam Snead's golf glory lies in the fact that, more than any other player, he has made the game seem dramatic and human.