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While Brandt Snedeker usually rolls with his foot to the pedal and the speedometer at 100 mph, lately he’s been floating on a cloud looking down on cloud nine with a huge grin on his freckled face.
The nine-time PGA Tour winner and 2012 FedExCup champion who swings fast, plays fast and talks fast is reveling in his little man’s first hole-in-one that came earlier this week.
While holding the golf bag, Snedeker was witness as his son, Austin, 7, with a pitching wedge in hand, aced the ninth hole on the Little Course in Franklin, Tennessee. It was a bolt of welcomed lightning in the storm the COVID-19 global pandemic has delivered.
“Our household is pretty jacked up right now,” Snedeker said in a chat with Golfweek. “Absolutely flushed it, right at it, and it went right in the hole. It’s got those little foam things right now because of the COVID-19 stuff, but as a professional golfer, I can attest it would have gone in anywhere. He has me beat. I haven’t had a hole-in-one since he’s been born so he’s 1 up on me right now.”
But there was one slight problem. As is customary, little Austin couldn’t buy drinks to celebrate.
“He was worried about it because he didn’t have any cash on him,” Snedeker said. “I said I’d spot him this time and the next time you’re on your own.”
Snedeker, 39, is gearing up for golf’s scheduled return June 8 at the Charles Schwab Challenge. He is planning to play the first two events of the restart.
“We’re all wondering what it’s going to look like,” Snedeker said, ranked No. 48 in the world. “I think it’s time for us to try. The Tour has done a great job with a plan that it thinks will work. I’m excited about it. The Tour has done everything possible to get us ready to go.”
Snedeker touched on a lot of subjects with Golfweek, including what it’s like to make a putt for $10 million – which he did to win the 2012 FedExCup; how this time away from the game has allowed his oft-injured body to heal; and how impressed he is with teachers.
“I think I can speak for a lot of Americans who have found a new appreciation for teachers in this country and what they do on a daily basis,” he said. “I am not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination but it was a tough couple of months for me being a home-schooling dad. Those teachers put up with a lot of stuff I don’t have the patience for.”
And Snedeker talked at length about Tiger Woods.
“I tell all the young guys all the time, they say they want to see Tiger at his best, and I tell them they don’t,” he said. “You couldn’t beat him. I didn’t see Tiger in 2000, 2001, when he was just beating everybody by 20 shots. I saw him in ’07, ’08 and ’09 when he was beating all of us by 10.”