Sam: The One and Only Sam Snead

I haven't finished this - I'm still reading it - but Sam Snead seems to have been shuffled off to oblivion - and he's the very top-winning golfer of all time on the PGA Tour!Sam was a good old country boy with a ton of talent - he could knock a golf ball a country mile, and from there, he went on to learn all about the game, and whipped just about anybody and everybody that came along.He was just naturally a very strong, agile, gifted athlete, who no doubt would have excelled at any sport he attempted.He probably played up the country bumpkin aspect, for his own purposes - since everybody wanted to believe he was a buffoon in the first place, but he was crazy like a fox.He was driving the ball well over the green - more than 300-plus yards - when nobody wanted to believe it, even when it was right there in front of their eyes.And this was long before the advent of the modern high-tech balls and clubs, which have made supermen out of ordinary mortals.Sam Snead was the bona-fide real McCoy, back before the miracle clubs and balls appeared on the scene.He just had a natural swing, the likes of which nobody had ever seen before, and his swing is still touted, even today, as being the smoothest swing in golf history.Add to that the fact that - they say - he was deceptively strong, being a good old country boy, and a strong swing, coupled with a correct swing, means that he could knock the ball a country mile.

Good book for those of us who like to read about the old timers.

This is a fantastic read on one of the greatest golfers of all time and is a must for any true lover of the game and its history.It presents a great insight into the man, his roots, the impact of his parents work ethic and their commitment to their children. It encompasses Sam's career from the time he was a local caddy, through his teenage years and then into his life as a pro. It covers his great victories, his great disappointments and exposes many incidents that I was not aware of, incidents with officialdom and also with fellow competitors. My only regret was when I came to the end of the book, I didn't want the story to end.

I ordered this book hoping it would be to Sam Snead what "Ben Hogan: An American Life" was to Ben Hogan and "Grand Slam" was to Bobby Jones. Unfortunately, it's clearly not in the same flight as those two exceptional biographies. While there are some spectacular photos that capture the brilliance of Snead's wondrous swing, the quality of the writing and scholarship does not quite make the cut.

Wonderful photos of Sam, many I had never seen before. Barkow is a great writer and if you haven't already, read everything he has written about golf. You can't go wrong. This book offered insights into Sam's personal life - his marriage and the tragic circumstance of his developmentally disabled son Terrance - that were a revelation to me, and I have been reading golf biographies and histories for 30 years. A great book. You will learn more about Sam than you had known before, which is something you can't say about many books.

Good story format. Lots of info on Sam that is not well known. Good book for golf enthusiast .easy read.

Just loved the book. For a big golf plan and player I would recommend it. Lots of interesting research about Sam and his life with a good history of his exploits and some good rationale for his outstanding successes. Even has a few interesting, what I would call golf swing expose` that I would think to be interesting to one working on their swings.

learned the most from Sam Sneads writing on golf than all books by golfers combined. Brilliant golferindeed Sam had a great swing, he also was a very technical golfer who witness a great change in the lay of course designs to-date.

Interesting subject, but was a little flat and told from the "outside".

If you are going to read one Snead book, this is it. Al Barkow is an excellent writer ... has peeled back the many layers of thegreat Slammer. He obviously admired and respected Snead but this is no fluff biography. Warts and all, Barkow gives us thedefinitive Snead biography . Excellent read. Highly recommended.

Despite looking forward to getting this book for sometime and being a massive Snead fan, I could not get through this book. It has a self indulgent tone with wooden and stilted anecdotes that do nothing to reveal Snead's true character, more lists of events with regular brown nosing from the author and a total lack of style or flow. How the author has made such an interesting subject so unreadable is difficult to understand.