Word: sam
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Sam did not even own a full set of clubs. He had a couple of battered woods, no irons, and a bag with a hole in it. He took his $10 salary (for two weeks' work) and made a down payment on a cheap set of irons. At the Cascades he had few customers, plenty of time to practice. Within two weeks Snead could beat both Homestead professionals. In 1935 Freddy Martin, golf manager at the rival Greenbrier. spotted Snead. For $45 a month, room & board, he lured Sam across the mountains to the Greenbrier. (With the exception...
...Hero. In the summer of 1936, with Martin's blessing and $50 in his pocket, Snead took the day coach to Pennsylvania for the Hershey Open and his nervous tee-off in big-time tournament golf. His first two drives landed in a stream, but Sam pulled himself together and finished in sixth place. That autumn he went to Florida. At the Miami Open he won $108 and signed a contract to endorse Dunlop golfing equipment for $500 and his clubs and balls. "Ah had $300 and ah was $800 rich," he recalls, rolling his eyes...
...Sam and Johnny Bulla, another young hopeful, headed for the West Coast in Bulk's Ford jalopy. Snead, who had grave misgivings about his own skill, suggested to Bulla that they split their winnings...
...said nothing doing, you're not good enough," Bulla recalls. "I think by the end of the year I had won about $500 and Sam had knocked down $10,000." Snead became the overnight sensation of golf. He took sixth place in the Los Angeles Open, then won the Oakland Open and the Bing Crosby tournament over the full field of America's top professionals. Sportswriters dubbed him "Slamming Sammy." In Los Angeles one day, on a practice tee, Snead tried out a decrepit driver belonging to Henry Picard...
With his blazing game Snead helped to drive the nation's golf scores down from the low 705 to the low 60s. (Improved equipment-notably the steel shaft and the larger ball, and such gadgets as the power mower and the fairway sprinkler systems-helped.) Sam Snead, with his own particular style and corn-pone personality, was something new in combat golf. For years the game had been dominated by English styles. With the great American hitters-including Snead-golf had got out of its Oxford bags...