Sam Snead

Sam Snead was a professional golfer and a golf course architect, born on May 27, 1912 at Ashwood in Virginia. His full name was Samuel Jackson Snead. At the age of seven he began caddying at The Homestead, the resort in nearby Hot Springs, and at seventeen he became its assistant professional. He turned professional in 1934 and played the PGA Tour from 1936. His majors were the Masters in 1949, 1952 and 1954, the PGA Championship in 1942, 1949 and 1951, and the Open Championship in 1946 at St Andrews, seven in all. Only the U.S. Open escaped him: he finished second there four times and never won it. His 82 PGA Tour wins are a record he shares with Tiger Woods.

In 1965, at 52 years and 10 months, he won the Greater Greensboro Open and became the oldest winner in PGA Tour history. It was his eighth victory in that tournament, itself a record for wins in a single event. He took the Vardon Trophy, awarded for the year’s lowest scoring average, four times, and in 1949 he was named PGA Player of the Year. He played seven Ryder Cups for the United States and was playing captain in 1951 and in 1959. He was known as the Slammer and as Slammin’ Sammy, for a driver that carried a long way and for a swing that many players took as their model. From 1944 he was the professional at The Greenbrier in West Virginia, and he kept his ties with his home town of Hot Springs all his life.

As a designer his name is on Slammer & Squire at World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida, which opened in 1998. According to the club’s site the course is the work of three men, the architect Bobby Weed together with Snead, known as the Slammer, and Gene Sarazen, known as the Squire, and the name of the course comes from the two nicknames. The other course at World Golf Village, King & Bear, is a joint design by Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

His link with Asia came in 1957, when he played for the United States in the Canada Cup, now the World Cup, held at Kasumigaseki Country Club in Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974, and late in life he served as an honorary starter at the Masters. He died on May 23, 2002 at Hot Springs in Virginia. GoGolf does not at present list any course designed by Sam Snead.

See the other golf course architects here.