Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303280019
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RANDY KING
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Count Snead himself among the doubters.
"It does make you think," Snead said. "Can you still win? Can you still make the clutch shot when you have to?"
The lingering doubts of Snead and others, however, were erased in San Antonio two Sundays ago when the Hot Springs native won his first Senior PGA Tour title.
Forget the Alamo. J.C. Snead hopes to forever remember San Antonio as his Senior Tour coming-out party.
"I thought I would have won out here a long time ago," Snead said. "It wasn't as easy out here as everybody thought it would be for me."
The victory ended two-plus years of frustration for Snead on the over-50 tour. Before the San Antonio tournament, Snead had held or been near the lead entering the final round in nine tournaments and failed to win. He had lost twice in playoffs.
Snead's frustrations reached a boiling point last June in Dearborn, Mich., when he made a double bogey on the 72nd hole of the Players Championship and squandered a two-shot lead, handing Dave Stockton a gift-wrapped win.
"I had never experienced anything like that before," Snead said. "It was like standing at the free-throw line needing one point to win and shooting two air balls."
After working with well-known swing doctor David Leadbetter over the winter, Snead straightened out his erratic driver and started 1993 with three top-10 finishes in four starts. In San Antonio, Snead remained hot while the rest of the tour chilled out in 20-degree temperatures.
"In that kind of weather, people have a tendency to come back to you," said Snead, who entered the final round two shots back of Bob Murphy and Bobby Nichols. "I just wanted to be patient and not make any mistakes."
In one of the highest-scoring tournaments in Senior Tour history, Snead kept his cool, playing a bogey-free final round. This time, it was the others who faded.
Still, Snead made the final hole more nerve-wracking for himself than it should have been when he misread the scoreboard, mistakenly reading Gary Player's 3-under-par total for the day as 3 under for the tournament.
"I was 2 under for the tournament, and I thought I was one behind Player," Snead said. "I actually thought he was 3 under. I thought, `Well, I haven't won out here and I have a chance. I've been in this position and I've screwed it up every time.' "
Thinking he needed a birdie to tie, Snead pulled out a 3-wood for his second shot to the 545-yard par-5th 18th hole at Dominion Club.
"I have probably never hit a better 3-wood in my life," said Snead, whose second shot landed just off the green.
Snead's playing partner and close friend, Gibby Gilbert, couldn't believe what he saw.
"Gibby says, `What in the hell are you thinking about?' `Well,' I said, `Player is 3 under. I'm not going to lay up. I've got a chance to tie him.' Gibby says, `Hell, he's not 3 under, he's 1 under and you're leading the tournament.' I said, `I wish you hadn't told me that. I'll choke on this next shot now.' "
The $97,500 winner's check couldn't have come at a better time for Snead. While he was in Texas, a tree fell on the roof of his house in Ponte Vedra, Fla.
"My wife [Sue] said play hard, we need the money to fix the house," Snead said. "I think we got enough to fix it."
\ SAM SNEAD SUIT: J.C. Snead's uncle, Sam Snead, has settled a lawsuit stemming from an auto accident last April that left Roy Jeffers of Waynesboro, Ga., paralyzed. En route to the Masters, where he was to be a honorary starter, Snead ran a stop sign and struck Jeffers' car. Jeffers, 30, reportedly will receive at least $2 million in a settlement to be paid by Snead's insurance company.
\ GGO ON GO: Once a tournament filled with also-rans, the Kmart Greater Greensboro Open has fast become one of the most popular stops on the PGA Tour.
Early commitments for the April 22-25 tournament include such big-timers as defending champion Davis Love, Fred Couples, John Daly, Curtis Strange, Paul Azinger, Hale Irwin, Mark O'Meara, Sandy Lyle, Lanny Wadkins and Craig Stadler.
The tournament, which attracted few big names when scheduled the week before the Masters, also is drawing players with a familiar lure - green, lots of green. The GGO has bumped its purse to $1.5 million this year, tying it with the U.S. Open for the fifth highest-paying stop on tour this season. And who ever said Kmart was cheap?
\ SO MUCH FOR STRATEGY: Former U.S. Amateur champion Bob Gardner was playing in an alternate-shot, husband-wife tournament recently when his wife was faced with a difficult carry across a deep ravine. She asked her husband what club to use. "Whiff it," he replied. She walked off the course.
\ SAND BLASTS: Boosted by the win in San Antonio, J.C. Snead is third on the Senior money list with $172,995. . . . Vinny Giles of Richmond has been chosen captain of the United States team that will compete for the 1993 Walker Cup, to be played Aug. 18-19 at Edina, Minn. . . . Lynchburg's Donna Andrews is one of the LPGA Tour's best par-busters. Andrews finished fifth on the tour in percentage of rounds played under par with 43 sub-par scores in 85 rounds. She began 1993 in similar fashion, breaking par in six of her first 10 rounds. . . . Long-hitter John Daly's swing speed was clocked at 132.8 mph by a radar gun during a recent driving exhibition.
by CNB