Desire Is Key Thing, Snead Says

Gary Player and Sam Snead were swapping stories at a corporate outing in St. Louis, where Player won the U.S. Open at Bellerive Country Club in 1965.

“The only thing I remember was playing with Jack Nicklaus,” Snead told Tom Wheatley of the St. Louis Dispatch. “He holed out three 40-footers to get into the tournament. Then, he was all over the course. Shoot, he didn’t know what safe is.

“He was just going at it, into the trees, over the fairways. He’d want to eat the balls, eat the clubs, eat the holes. He was like a horse that has a lot of spirit. You break his spirit, you’ve got nothing.

“People come up to you and say, ‘My kid is going to be a good golfer. He’s real calm and has a lot of patience.’ Well, I’ll tell you, you give me the guy who wants to break the club and wants to eat the ball.

“You get him calmed down, and now you’ve got someone. Bobby Jones, you know, threw clubs when he first started playing.”

Add Snead: Recalling a round he played at Augusta National with Bobby Cole, who had just won the British Amateur, he said: “He was a good player and could hit it a long way. We came up to this par-5 hole. I said, ‘Bobby, when I was younger, I used to hit it over those pine trees.’ You know, they have those giant pines there. Well, he figured if I could hit one over those trees, he could, too.

“So he hit one, and it hit about halfway up into the trees. He said, ‘I thought you said you hit one over those trees.’

“I said, ‘Bobby, when I was your age, those trees were 12 feet high.’ ”

Greg Garber of the Hartford Courant, on Boris Becker: “Today, he is arguably the hottest commodity in the world of sport. His endorsement contracts with Puma, Coca-Cola, Deutsche and Philips electronics may be history’s most lucrative. Each day, Becker huddles with a writer from the West German newspaper Bild for an exclusive minute or two. For this, he receives one million marks a year, or more than $500,000.”

Triva Time: Babe Ruth, Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle, playing their home games in Yankee Stadium, all hit 50 or more home runs in a season. What three players, in what other stadium, did likewise? (Answer below.)

Howie Long of the Raiders, on Bo Jackson making the transition to football: “One thing he won’t be is physically beat up, because baseball is 99% a non-contact sport--unless Eric Show is on the mound.”

Wait a Minute: Said Cleveland Indians knuckleballer Tom Candiotti: “Sometimes you have to take two steps backward to take a step forward.”

Better think that one over, Tom.

Trivia Answer: Babe Ruth, Johnny Mize and Willie Mays in the Polo Grounds. Ruth hit 54 homers in 1920 and 59 in 1921 when the Yankees played in the Polo Grounds. Mize, in 1947, and Mays, in 1955, both hit 51 for the Giants.

Quotebook

Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Statistics can be used to support anything, including statisticians.”