J.C. Snead, Golfing Nephew of His Uncle Sam, Dies at 84

JC Snead, who knew that he could never match the success of the golf of his famous Uncle Sam Snead, but that Oleilehing won a combined 12 tournament in the PGA Tour and Senior Tour, died on April 25 at his home in Hot Springs, Va. He was 84 years old.

Suzie (Bryant) Snead, his caregiver and ex -wife, said the cause was prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.

When Snead joined the PGA tour in 1968 at age 27, he understood that he would always play in the shadow of his uncle Sam, nicknamed Slamamin ‘Sammy Snead, whose 82 wins on the PGA tour were a record until Tiger Woods tied him in 2019.

“There was no way that he was up to his reputation,” JC Snead told the New York Times in 1988. “With the late beginning I had, I did a prayer to be what Sam was. I was trying to be.”

JC Snead won for the first time at Tucson Open in February 1971. He followed that victory with another two weeks later in the Open Doral-Eastern, in Miami. Duration The final round in doral, while Snead was preparing his approach to his hole 18, someone in the gallery shouted: “Signs!”

“I am filming for $ 30,000, and some kind shouts that I lose it,” he said later. “It was hot, and I told Myelf:” I’m going to show you. “(Uncle Sam, after 58 years, ended in place 51 and the house of Tok $ 214.29).

After Snead, five more tournaments until 1981, his last victory of PGA Tour occurred in the manufacturers Hanover Westchester Classic in 1987, in Harrison, New York.

Snead was in a blow when Seve Ballesteros forced a playoff with a Birdie in hole 18 to finish the final round. Snead won the trophy in the first playoff hole, winning $ 108,000, its largest payment day until then.

Snead said fans were supporting him despite the popular Ballesteros, a charismatic Spanish.

“I am from the south,” Snead told journalists, “but I’m still an American.”

Snead never won an important tournament. He finished second, for a stroke, with Tommy Aaron in the Masters in 1973; In a tie for third place in the 1973 PGA Championship, in Canterbury Golf Club, outside Cleveland; And in a tie per second at the 1978 United States Open, in Cherry Hills Country Club, outside Denver.

Snead also played in the consecutive teams of the United States Ryder Cup in 1971, 1973 and 1975. The first victory was about Great Britain squads, the following two on a combined team of Great Britain-Irland. In 1971, Snead was the only American player to win all his games, including the decisive factor.

Jesse Carlyle Snead was born on October 14, 1940 at Hot Springs. His father, Jesse, was the engineer of the house at Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, and his mother, Sylvia (Schooler) Snead, supervised the house.

I thought anywhere as famous as their uncle Sam, the brothers of JC, Homer and Pete, they were also golf professionals, but JC’s initial preference was baseball. After practicing several sports at high school, he played baseball at the East Tennessee State University for approximately a year before signing with the Washington senators organization. He played in the garden in the minor leagues, from 1961 to 1963, before leaving baseball to chase golf.

Snead had played golf for fun before that, but built his game at the Century Country Club, in Puris, New York, where he was hired in 1964. A year spent cleaning clubs, storing bags and doing repair work before being appointed professional assistant, a work that kept until 1967. Some members of Century formed a union to sponsor it in the PGA Tour.

Snead almost $ 2.2 million on the tour, then joined Senior PGA Tour (now called PGA Tour Champions) after turning 50. He won four tournaments, but none was more satisfactory than the champions of the Senior Ford players, in the playoff of the Poros Champions Championship, the 5-Conde of SNead of 182 yards about four feet from the Birdie well for a Birdie for a Birdie post for a victory by Jack Nickla.

“I have lost to him as everyone else, several times,” said Snead. “And it always seemed that every time I would reach my game in my career in my career, he would also be reaching his maximum point, and his peak was much better than mine.”

Snead won a total of $ 7.4 million in PGA Tour champions.

His son, Jason; Two grandchildren; Two sisters, Mary Holmes and Helen Walton; And a brother, Wayne.

Duration The Greater Greensboro Open (now the Wyndham Championship) in North Carolina in 1971, Sam Snead invited JC to live with him in a Bungalow, where Sam practiced to put with his conventional blows.

Sam still losing his goal, a table leg, and JC recommended that the wrists be blocked. It worked. Sam hit his leg, point dead, again and again.

“But you know Sam,” JC told Sports Illustrated in 1971. “It’s so stubborn that he won only to place his wrists.

“But I think he would solve all his problems if his wrists were closed. His left hand couldn’t tremble so much, and that is really his problem.”