Langer, Woods and Snead

The PNC Championship made it easy to think of a past great

As Tiger and Charlie Woods were battling Bernhard and Jason Langer at the PNC Championship on Sunday, in the final pairing and with some of the most entertaining golf of 2024, a duel ultimately decided by Bernhard’s 18-foot eagle putt on the first playoff hole, Sam Snead came to mind.

Tiger, of course, is atop the PGA Tour with 82 career titles, tied with Snead. Advocates for those titans can argue, with some cause, about the accounting particulars by which each happens to be credited with four score and two wins apiece.

But sports history is by its nature imprecise when one great drove blue highways and the other flew a private jet to tournaments, when one sometimes had to hit off fairways of clover and the other always plays on turf as smooth as carpet. The mower, among other things, is not what is used to be. Eighty-two apiece, whatever the questions, seems more just than many things in this world.

When Woods got to that number, in 2019, at something called the ZOZO Championship, it seemed that No. 83 was more likely than not. Now, after Woods crashed a car in 2021, devastating his right leg, and has had yet another surgical procedure on his lower back, surpassing Snead has the odds of a fellow taking on Everest with a daypack, a water bottle, and a couple of energy bars. But when Woods emerges from an operation and months of recovery and rehab looking good and swinging freely, as he did over the weekend at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Fla., he evokes hope. That Woods and son came so close to winning the 36-hole family event heightens the optimism. Seventy-two holes in a real tournament—walking hills and not having a talented 15-year-old making a hole-in-one and a bunch of putts for the scorecard in your pocket—will reveal the reality. For now, for those rooting for Woods to enjoy the kind of health that will allow him to build a modest measure of competitive mettle absent for a handful of years, there is again some hope, that 28 under in a two-day scramble with Charlie, isn’t merely another mirage that will disappear.

Langer’s link to Snead is less calculable but, in its way, more interesting. Who is the better golfer after his 60^th birthday, Bernard or Sam?

By burying an 18-foot eagle putt to win the playoff against the Woodses, Bernard, 67, helped his case. The victory, his sixth overall in the PNC event (four with Jason, two with son Stefan), came 42 days after he won his 47^th PGA Tour Champions event at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, months after he suffered a torn Achilles tendon. His total now eclipses by two wins Hale Irwin’s senior haul, a number that looked Nelsonian (Byron’s 11 straight regular tour wins in 1945) in its security until Langer kept plugging away with unprecedented success in his 60s—14 Champions Tour titles, including two senior majors.

There are multiple reasons that the question is much less apples-to-apples than the Tiger-Sam victory debate. For starters, PGA Tour Champions didn’t launch until 1980, at that a soft opening featuring just four events. In May of that inaugural season, Snead turned 68, a year older than Langer is now. Although he played the senior tour in its early years, it basically came along too late for him, especially since golf equipment wasn’t nearly as friendly to older players at that time.

What Snead did after turning 60 on May 27, 1972, though, with smaller-headed persimmon woods, wound balls, heavier shafts and no hybrids, was phenomenal.

Snead’s finest hours as a sexagenarian came in the PGA Championship. He tied for fourth at Oakland Hills in 1972 when he was 60, tied for ninth at Canterbury in 1973 at 61, and tied for third at Tanglewood in 1974 at 62. Over the same span, he had top-30 finishes in the U.S. Open.

In early ’74, when Snead was 61, he very nearly became the first golfer in his 60s to win on the PGA Tour, tying for second in the Los Angeles Open, which he’d won in 1945 and 1950. And he wasn’t done. In 1979, at 67, he made the cut at Westchester and the PGA Championship, and shot his age twice at Quad Cities. As he approached 70, tour pros half a century younger, if they were smart, took time to watch Sam on the practice range in hopes of absorbing some of his buttery, beautiful swing, one of the prettiest and effective actions in any sport, ever.

Langer has enjoyed one top-30 finish in a regular major while in his 60s, a tie for 29^th at the 2020 Masters when he was 62. His golf is regarded for its grit more than its grace, but succeeding in the dramatic way he has in senior golf has an allure of its own.

Byron Nelson once brilliantly summed up to the author Al Barkow, “Winners are different. They’re a different breed of cat.”

That would be Langer. That would be Woods. That would be Snead.

As they competed alongside their children at the PNC, savoring the family time, Langer and Woods also reminded us of their competitive essence and, by extension, of Snead’s. The numbers, gaudy though they may be, tell only part of the story.