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Tracking Snead's final days Posted: Friday May 24, 2002 3:20 PM
There were times over the last few days when I thought I was the only one in Hot Springs, Va., who knew that Sam Snead was dying. The waiters and waitresses at Sam Snead's Tavern cheerily delivered salads and steaks to vacationers and joked about the cold snap that was frosting spring flowers. The staff at the Homestead resort, where Snead got his start as a $20-a-month golf-shop assistant, seemed equally oblivious. You couldn't learn anything by driving by the Snead farm, which nestles between Highway 220 and a wooded ridge a mile or so south of the Cascades Golf Club. The houses of Snead and his son, Sam Jr., sat peacefully in a green meadow, set off by wood rail fences and a dense stand of trees. "We're not commenting on my dad's condition at this time," a subdued Sam Jr. said over the phone. I hadn't seen Snead Sr. since the Masters in April, where he hit a ceremonial tee shot into the gallery, injuring a spectator. Since then, according to reliable sources, a series of strokes had flipped the switch on Snead's normally ebullient nature. He was resting comfortably at home, but he wasn't eating, couldn't relate and was no longer the man of sports legend and mountain myth. The prognosis: Sam wouldn't get a chance to celebrate his 90th birthday on May 27. I was in California when I got the news last Friday. My editors urged me to fly to Virginia on the weekend. That way, I would be in place to write an obituary if Snead died before Monday night, when Sports Illustrated went to press. What a bizarre, poignant assignment. To a man of my generation -- I'm 55 -- Sam Snead was the essence of golf. If he was not demonstrably the greatest player of his era, his seven major championships and 81 PGA Tour victories at least put him on the same level as Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. More important, Snead projected the joy of golf. His swing was fluid and effortless. His gift for gab was loose and easy. He told jokes, he played trumpet, and he made fedoras and coconut-straw hats the epitome of stylish sportswear. In a sense, I was on a stakeout. I'd swing by the Snead farm every hour or so to see if there were emergency vehicles in the driveway. I conducted a few interviews, too, but nothing that would raise alarm about Snead's condition or touch off a media deathwatch. On Tuesday I made the hour's drive to the Greenbriar resort in nearby White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. Snead was head pro at the Greenbriar for 38 years, and he had served as the club's "professional emeritus" since the early '90s. "This golf club is Sam Snead," Greenbriar's golf director, Robert Harris , told me. "He gave lessons, he played with people, he owned the pro shop and the golf carts. I think he owned the rights to the balls people hit in the streams." In recent years, Harris said, Snead had always driven up from Georgia after hitting his ceremonial tee shot at the Masters. He'd spend Thursday night at the Greenbriar, telling stories and watching the tournament highlights on TV, his face a couple of feet from the screen due to his failing eyesight. "Did he come this year?" I asked. Harris shook his head. "I haven't seen him since he had our staff out to his house for a party last October," Harris said. Back in Hot Springs, I talked to John Hoover, historian at the Homestead. "There was no television or Internet when Sam was a boy," Hoover said, "but the Homestead gave him great golf courses to play and the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. And when you met Sam, you just loved him." Hoover summed up: "Sam Snead made playing golf look effortless, the way Fred Astaire made dancing look effortless." It wasn't until I had driven past the Snead farm a dozen times that I noticed a little cemetery across the highway, next to an empty, clapboard church. Thinking that Snead's father and mother might be buried there, I pulled over at dusk and wandered through the tombstones and markers. Working my way uphill, I finally found a Snead headstone. It was polished granite, over a double plot. On the right side of the stone, under some artificial flowers, was engraved "Audrey K., June 15, 1914-Jan. 31, 1990." That was Sam's wife. On the other side of the stone was engraved, "Sam J., May 27, 1912." That was Sam. I stood there for a few minutes, staring at the stone. And then I left. It was getting dark. Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity covers golf for the magazine's Golf Plus section and writes the Mats Only column on CNNSI.com.
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