J.C. Snead, who knew he could never match the golfing success of his celebrated uncle Sam Snead but who nevertheless won a combined 12 tournaments on the PGA Tour and senior tour, died on April 25 at his home in Hot Springs, Va. He was 84.
Suzie (Bryant) Snead, his caregiver and former 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 Slammin’ Sammy Snead, whose 82 victories on the PGA Tour were a record until Tiger Woods tied him in 2019.
“There was no way I was going to live up to his reputation,” J.C. Snead told The New York Times in 1988. “With the late start I had, I didn’t have a prayer to be what Sam was. I wasn’t trying to be.”
J.C. Snead won for the first time at the Tucson Open in February 1971. He followed that victory with another two weeks later at the Doral-Eastern Open, in Miami. During the final round at Doral, as Snead was preparing his approach shot to the 18th hole, someone in the gallery shouted, “Miss it!”
“I’m shooting for $30,000, and some guy is yelling for me to miss it,” he said afterward. “It made me hot, and I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna show you.’” He hit the shot within 12 feet of the hole and missed his birdie putt, but par was enough for the win. (Uncle Sam, then 58, finished in 51st place and took home $214.29.)
After Snead won five more tournaments through 1981, his final PGA Tour victory came at the Manufacturers Hanover Westchester Classic in 1987, in Harrison, N.Y.
Snead was up by one stroke when Seve Ballesteros forced a playoff with a birdie on the 18th hole to finish the final round. Snead won the trophy on the first playoff hole, earning $108,000, his biggest payday until then.
Snead said fans were rooting for him despite the popularity of Ballesteros, a charismatic Spaniard.
“I’m from the South,” Snead told reporters, “but I’m still an American.”
Snead never won a major tournament. He finished second, by a stroke, to Tommy Aaron at the Masters in 1973; in a tie for third at the 1973 P.G.A. Championship, at Canterbury Golf Club, outside Cleveland; and in a tie for second at the 1978 United States Open, at Cherry Hills Country Club, outside Denver.
Snead also played on consecutive winning United States Ryder Cup teams in 1971, 1973 and 1975. The first victory was over squads from Britain, the next two over a combined Britain-Ireland team. In 1971, Snead was the only U.S. player to win all of his matches, including the clincher.
Jesse Carlyle Snead was born on Oct. 14, 1940, in Hot Springs. His father, Jesse, was the house engineer at the Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, and his mother, Sylvia (Schooler) Snead, oversaw the home.
Though nowhere as famous as their Uncle Sam, J.C.’s brothers, Homer and Pete, were also golf pros, but J.C.’s initial preference was baseball. After playing several sports in high school, he played baseball at East Tennessee State University for about a year before signing with the Washington Senators organization. He played outfield in the lower minor leagues, from 1961 to 1963, before leaving baseball to pursue golf.
Snead had played golf for fun before then, but he built his game at the Century Country Club, in Purchase, N.Y., where he was hired in 1964. He spent a year cleaning clubs, storing bags and doing repair work before he was named an assistant pro, a job he kept until 1967. Some Century members formed a syndicate to sponsor him on the PGA Tour.
Snead won nearly $2.2 million on the tour, then joined the Senior PGA Tour (now called PGA Tour Champions) after turning 50. He won four tournaments, but none were more satisfying than the Ford Senior Players Championship in 1995, in Dearborn, Mich., where, in a sudden-death playoff, Snead’s 5-iron shot from 182 yards to about four feet from the hole led to a birdie putt for a victory over Jack Nicklaus.
“I’ve lost to him like everyone else, several times,” Snead said. “And it always seemed like every time I would peak with my game in my career, he would be peaking, too, and his peak was way better than mine.”
Snead won a total of $7.4 million on PGA Tour Champions.
He is survived by his son, Jason; two grandsons; two sisters, Mary Holmes and Helen Walton; and a brother, Wayne.
During the Greater Greensboro Open (now the Wyndham Championship) in North Carolina in 1971, Sam Snead invited J.C. to live with him in a bungalow, where Sam practiced putting with his conventional strokes.
Sam kept missing his target — a table leg — and J.C. recommended that he lock his wrists. It worked. Sam hit the leg, dead center, over and over.
“But you know Sam,” J.C. told Sports Illustrated in 1971. “He’s so stubborn that out there on the course he won’t even try to putt with his wrists locked. He just doesn’t think it’s right — or something.
“But I think he would solve all his troubles if he locked his wrists. His left hand couldn’t shake so much, and that’s really his whole problem.”