ARMCHAIR GOLF Roundtable: Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson

(Editor’s note: In honor of Sam Snead, whose longtime golf home was The Greenbrier, site of this week’s Greenbrier Classic, I bring you the following from the ARMCHAIR GOLF archives.)

These are real quotes and comments. The questions are made up. Welcome to the ARMCHAIR GOLF roundtable.

At the roundtable:
Sam Snead – 82 PGA Tour wins, 7 majors
Ben Hogan – 64 PGA Tour wins, 9 majors
Byron Nelson – 52 PGA Tour wins, 5 majors

Q: Gentlemen, welcome. Ben, let’s start with you. After all the rounds and practice sessions, tell us something you have learned about this game.

BEN HOGAN: Golf is not a game of good shots. It’s a game of bad shots.

Q: Byron, how about you? What about the game comes to mind?

BYRON NELSON: Golf is a lot like life. When you make a decision, stick with it.

Q: Sam?

SAM SNEAD: Playing golf is like eating.

Q: Eating?

SAM SNEAD: It’s something that has to come naturally.

Q: Ben, it didn’t come naturally for you. You constantly worked at your game.

BEN HOGAN: Very few times in my life I laid off two to three days. It seemed like it took me a month to three months to get back those three days when I took a rest. It’s a tough situation. I had to practice all the time.

Q: Byron, were you a natural like Sam or did you have to work hard on your swing?

SAM SNEAD: When I swing at a golf ball right, my mind is blank and my body is loose as a goose.

Q: Uh, thanks, Sam. Byron, any swing secret?

BYRON NELSON: Swing the club as though you were driving 60 miles an hour on the freeway. Not too fast, but not deathly slow. Once in a while, if the risk isn’t great, you can push your swing to 70, but never go faster than that.

Q: Ben, it’s well known that putting was not your favorite part of the game.

BEN HOGAN: There shouldn’t be any cups, just flagsticks. And then the man who hit the most fairways and greens and got the closest to the pins would be the tournament winner.

Q: Sam, are you with Ben on this?

SAM SNEAD: I shot a wild elephant in Africa thirty yards from me, and it didn’t hit the ground until it was right at my feet. I wasn’t a bit scared. But a four-foot putt scares me to death.

Q: How about you, Byron?

BYRON NELSON: Putting affects the nerves more than anything. I would actually get nauseated over three-footers.

Q: You all had humble beginnings. Talk about that.

SAM SNEAD: People think growing up in the hills was a handicap I had to overcome. In a lot of ways it gave me an advantage that has lasted me to this day. Just like with that stick, I’d have to overcompensate for just about everything.

Q: Anybody else?

LEE TREVINO: My family was so poor they couldn’t afford any kids. The lady next door had me.

Q: Lee? I didn’t see you come in. Any final thoughts, gentlemen?

SAM SNEAD: The only reason I ever played golf in the first place was so I could afford to hunt and fish.

BYRON NELSON: I tried to give my best to golf.

BEN HOGAN: Don’t ever get old.

LEE TREVINO: The older I get, the better I used to be!

Q: Thanks to all of you.

−The Armchair Golfer

(Source: The Gigantic Book of Golf Quotations, published by Skyhorse Publishing.)

U.S. Senior Open: Cochran to Attempt Langer Double

ONE LEFTY FINISHED SECOND at the British Open. That would be Phil Mickelson, whose final-round charge fizzled on the back nine. But the following week a lesser-known lefty won the senior British. The Champions Tour’s Russ Cochran claimed his first professional major at Walton Heath in England last Sunday.

Can Cochran win consecutive majors by capturing the U.S. Senior Open title at Inverness this week? Bernhard Langer performed the remarkable feat a year ago.

(Russ Cochran)

PGATour.com contributor Vartan Kupelian thinks Cochran can do it. Kupelian ranks the veteran lefty No. 1 in his U.S. Senior Open Power Rankings.

“Now that he’s [Cochran] back and fit again after a wrist injury,” Kupelian writes, “a back-to-back isn’t out of the question. Consider that Cochran’s first two Champions Tour victories, in 2010, came in successive tournaments last September in Korea and North Carolina.”

Cochran, a journeyman who won just once in 26 years on the PGA Tour, is flourishing on the second-chance tour. The 52-year-old Kentucky native has three victories since joining the Champions Tour in February 2009.

Cochran will face tough competition at Inverness. Other players have been knocking at the major door, including John Cook and Mark Calcavecchia. Calc perhaps only needs a good putting week to kick the door in. Troubled by a thumb injury this season, defending champion Langer might be rounding into form after last week’s T12 at the Senior British Open that included a pair of 69s on the weekend.

As Kupelian reports, there are five players in the U.S. Senior Open field who have won at Inverness dating back to 1973: Craig Stadler, Hale Irwin, Bob Tway, Paul Azinger (update: Azinger has withdrawn) and Bruce Lietzke. Inverness has hosted four U.S. Opens, two U.S. Senior Opens, two PGA Championships and one U.S. Amateur.

ESPN and NBC have the TV coverage.

−The Armchair Golfer

Heartbroken Pettersen Plays on at Women’s British Open

SUZANN PETTERSEN IS IN CARNOUSTIE, Scotland, this week for the $2.5 million Ricoh Women’s British Open, but her heart is in her native Norway where 95 people died in a terror attack by Anders Behring Breivik, who has reportedly confessed to the atrocities.

Pettersen wore a black armband during the third and fourth rounds at last week’s Evian Masters in Paris to show respect for the fallen Norwegians. Everyone would have understood if she had withdrawn from the tournament and flown home to Norway, where all sporting events were canceled through the weekend. Instead, the seven-time LPGA winner chose to keep playing.

“I think everyone at home would feel like you should go out there and play for us,” Pettersen told Golfweek’s Alistair Tait. “You go out there and you fight for your heart and you fight for your friends and fellow Norwegians at home.”

Pettersen has carried the burden of her homeland’s tragedy to Carnoustie, one of the world’s most demanding links courses. The Women’s British Open is an important championship, the season’s final major, but Pettersen has a different perspective on golf at the moment in light of the events back home.

“It’s still heartbreaking …. What’s amazing through all this is how we all stick together. We stay strong together.”

The Women’s British Open field includes 22 of the world’s top 23 golfers, including world No. 1 and defending champion Yani Tseng. Tseng’s 11-under total at Royal Birkdale last year edged Katherine Hull by a stroke.

−The Armchair Golfer

(Photo credit: ktan.kh, Flickr, Creative Commons license)