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titles. He has been acclaimed Golfer of the Year twice; he has picked up titles in Panama, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina. He has played for bus fare in local Chamber of Commerce matches and for five figures in the big, well-promoted, postwar tournaments (e.g., the Tarn O'Shanter, the Palm Beach Round Robin).
He has won more tournaments of all kinds than any other golfer, living or dead. He has come tantalizingly close to winning the Open, too—and (in 1938) he has also fallen as low as a tie for 38th place.
The Open War. In 1937, on his first start, he blazed over the Oakland Hills Course at Detroit with a record-breaking 283. "Laddie," said Tommy Armour, "you've just won yourself a championship." But another youngster, Ralph Guldahl, finished with an even more sensational 281. In 1947 Snead tied with Lew Worsham to win the Open, then lost the play-off by the length of a 30 1/2-inch putt.
In 1949 he missed a tie with Winner Gary Middlecoff by a single stroke. Last year, at Oakmont, Pa., he was runner-up to his longtime rival, Ben Hogan.
Snead's most disastrous performance was undoubtedly the famed 18th hole at Spring Mill near Philadelphia in the Open of 1939. It has become a classic of a kind. His first shot hooked into the rough and left him with a sandy lie. Instead of playing a cautious game, Sam took a custom-made 2½ wood from his bag and aimed a daring shot right at the pin. He flubbed it; the ball landed in a fairway bunker. Trying desperately for the green, he slashed an iron shot that landed on an overhanging lip above a sandtrap, rolled back toward the sand and hung precariously in long grass. On his fourth shot, with one foot in the trap and one out, Snead overshot the green and fell into another bunker. Then someone told him he had to get down in two to tie Byron Nelson. He snapped: "Why didn't somebody tell me this before?" He was so rattled that his game collapsed. He made the green on his fifth stroke, holed out in three putts that would have appalled a Sunday duffer, and pushed his way through the silent crowd muttering, "Ah threw it away. Ah threw it away." Why He Goes Wrong. Some experts attribute Snead's blowups to lack of intelligent planning. "If Walter Hagen could caddy for him [and call his shots for him]," Gene Sarazen once said, "he could win the Open and everything else." Sam is inclined to agree. But in many a critical match Snead has clubbed his way out of seemingly certain defeat with a shrewd shot. Other 19th-Hole critics attribute his failures to erratic putting, but Snead at his best is as handy a putter as any topflight golfer. Some say that Snead's temperament (a "smoldering volcano," according to the New York Times's Arthur Daley) is not tough enough to withstand the grind of the Open. While it is true that Snead sometimes gives way to the sulks or the "yipes" (jitters), he has played some of his most sensational shots when the tension was greatest.
At the Greenbrier Open in 1951, he had a tremendous moment on the 12th hole, a wicked, 535-yard par five. Sam's drive faded into the rough, but left him with a fair lie. He asked Curtis Griffith, his regular caddy, what club he recommended.