Boo Weekly’s earthy anatomical reference with respect to playing in difficult windy conditions is still in regular rotation at my sports talk station, so on behalf of perspective, never more in vogue than at a place like Oakmont during the transaction of such important national business, that I pass along a reflection from the late Sam Snead.
It’s included in the delightful collection of tales, rude and glorious, cobbled together by Robert Sommers. Golf Anecdotes is published by Oxford Paperbacks (1995).
In it, the Slammer is asked how tight he’d been, this after being just a stroke off the lead starting the final round and finishing with 76, six shots back to Ben Hogan, in 1953.
“Tight?” Snead tells Merrell Whittlesey from the Washington Evening Star. “I was so tight you couldn’t a drove flax seed up my ass with a knot maul!”
A native may still win our national championship but could it be that the homogenization promulgated by the PGA Tour with regards to green speeds, rough, bunker sand put us at something of a cultural disadvantage when it comes to tougher conditions? I know you don’t like hearing it any more than the late Grace Marr, mother of the 1965 PGA Champion, and my good friend Jack, liked stomaching foreign winners of OUR championship, but there you have it.
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