Sam Snead was a playing captain at the 1951 Ryder Cup in Pinehurst. It was...something

By Alex Podlogar

For many weeks, U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Keegan Bradley’s potential to also play for the team he would lead was a topic of hot debate.

We didn’t have an opinion one way or the other – we happily let the pundits, X/Twitter and everyone else weigh in, as they already have and will likely continue to do with bated breath. But we do have some history with a playing captain at a Ryder Cup.

You could say it went well. Or you could say it went horribly.

Both answers might be correct.

Enter Sam Snead and the 1951 Ryder Cup at Pinehurst No. 2.

OK, let’s get the obvious out of the way. The time – and the Ryder Cup – were each very different almost 75 years ago. You know the scenes of today. Massive galleries. Huge interest. A guy not wearing a cap becomes an international incident. Pinehurst and the Old Course at St Andrews have a wager every year.

At Pinehurst in 1951, Sunday’s gallery may have approached about 6,000 people. Total. It was played in November. It wasn’t Team Europe then, only players from the U.K. and Ireland. Even while the competition was ongoing, duffers played Course Nos. 1 and 3 and the first nine holes of No. 4.

Snead was the playing captain for the U.S. team. While Ben Hogan had been a non-playing captain in 1947 and 47-year-old Arthur Lacey had been appointed by U.K./Ireland as a non-playing captain in ’51, it wasn’t unusual for the captain to also play in the Ryder Cup in those days. As we’ve heard countless times in the last few weeks, Arnold Palmer was the last playing captain in 1963.

At Pinehurst, the 1951 Ryder Cup had only two days of competitions – Friday’s foursome matches and Sunday’s singles matches. On Saturday, the teams were guests at the college football game between Tennessee and North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The Ryder Cup paused for a day as top-ranked Tennessee won 27-0.

Repeat: the 1951 Ryder Cup paused for a day because of a UNC football game.

Only three of the American golfers attended the game. Snead wasn’t one of them. The captain decided to head south to Florence, South Carolina, for a golf exhibition on the off day.

Things would only get weirder.

The 1951 Ryder Cup was a rout. Led by Snead, Hogan and Jimmy Demaret, who were each 2-0 on the weekend, the United States won 9 ½-2 ½. There wasn’t much for the six U.K. media correspondents to write home about.

And then, chaos.

The PGA Tour’s North & South Open in Pinehurst was the week following the Ryder Cup. Played since 1902, the North & South Open had long been considered one of the weightier PGA Tour events. Legendary golf writer Dan Jenkins famously wrote, “The North and South had an immediate atmosphere of class and elegance. Dress for dinner, veranda stuff. In fact, the North and South was the Masters before there was a Masters and for many years before the Masters finally out-Southerned the North and South.”

The North & South Open was a big deal. Walter Hagen had won the North & South Open. Byron Nelson won the North & South Open. Hogan finally got his first PGA Tour victory at the North & South Open after seven fledging years as a journeyman pro.

Sam Snead won the North & South Open three times, including in 1949 and 1950.

But a storm was brewing in the North Carolina Sandhills these chilly November weeks.

Author Lee Pace, in his wonderful 1951 Ryder Cup essay here, explains it succinctly:

A rift had existed between Pinehurst management and the tour pros ever since the PGA Tournament Committee established a minimum purse of $10,000 for each event (this long before the club pros and touring pros split into individual organizations). (Pinehurst owner Richard) Tufts considered the resort’s largesse of complimentary and/or steep discounts on room and board for the pros as part of their compensation and refused to boost the North and South purse to the $10,000 level.

While the British team stayed to play the North & South Open following the Ryder Cup, four U.S. players took off before the event. Things were icy and they stayed that way. U.S. team member Skip Alexander played the first round, but left without turning in his scorecard. Teammate Clayton Heafner 5-putted the 18^th green in his first round and withdrew.

And then there was Snead.

Pace lays it out in his piece:

Snead made it through one round but had had enough as round two wore on. He was playing badly and being shown up by Dick Chapman, a Pinehurst winter resident and a top amateur of the mid-20th century. Chapman was on his way to shooting a 68 and Snead a 78, and Snead couldn’t get to the clubhouse soon enough. Chapman had the honor on the 18th tee, but Snead usurped him and hit first. When the threesome that also included the Brit Max Faulkner got to the green, it was Faulkner’s turn to putt, but Snead lagged up, tapped in and walked off. That left (Henry) Ransom as the only Yank left (from the Ryder Cup team).

Tommy Bolt won that North and South Open, and the following spring, Tufts announced the event was being discontinued.

A month later, in the first week of December, Snead won the Miami Open to close the 1951 season. In 1959, he captained the Ryder Cup again and played, finishing 1-0-1 in the United States’ 8 ½-3 ½ victory. He captained again in 1969 and at 57 years old, did not play in the famed Ryder Cup tie that ended with Jack Nicklaus’ concession to Tony Jacklin, a moment that began to set the stage for what the Ryder Cup would ultimately become.

Two years later – and 20 since the Ryder Cup – Snead would return to Pinehurst to play in the PGA Professional Championship at the Country Club of North Carolina.

He won.