ATLANTA – When Brandt Snedeker won his first tournament in 2006 on what is now known as the Korn Ferry Tour, he confessed to a rare moment of indiscretion.
Snedeker, who won the U.S. Amateur Public Links in 2003 and earned an invite to the Masters the following year, stole a white robe from Augusta National, which he kept hung in his closet.
“Everybody who goes to Augusta steals a bathrobe,” Snedeker said after he beat former U.S. Amateur champion Jeff Quinney with a birdie on the second playoff hole.
That purloined robe didn’t stop Snedeker from being named the 2024 recipient of the PGA Tour’s Payne Stewart Award presented by Southern Company, which was to be presented on Tuesday night. The award is presented annually to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart’s steadfast values of character, charity and sportsmanship.
“It’s something I kind of early on in my career, I kind of circled as something I’d like to accomplish out here,” he said. “I went to it every year I played the Tour Championship and just saw these heroes, icons of mine kind of breaking down on stage and going through what they’ve given back in their communities and kind of reinforce what the Tour’s all about.”
And let’s not kid ourselves: Stewart probably had a Masters robe in his closet too. But Snedeker always conducted himself the right way, including during his rookie year when he played his way into the final group of the Australian Open and had a chance to win.
“I was in the rough on the 16th hole and the ball moved. I knew it moved, my caddie saw it move. I remember telling my caddie, I said, ‘Did you see that?’ He goes, ‘No, I did not see that.’ I was like, ‘No, it moved.’ He was like, ‘Dang it.’ I called it, ended up losing by a shot, called a penalty on myself,” Snedeker recalled. “I’m a big believer in karma. I don’t want any bad karma on my side, so I’ve always tried to play by the rules and do stuff the right way and try to help people understand that’s the way we play golf out here.”
“If Payne Stewart was still alive, he and Brandt would’ve gotten along,” Billy Horschel said. “People like to be around Sneds and to play with Sneds. They’re both competitors and grinders and give it all they’ve got.”
Behind a brilliant short game and deadly putting stroke, Snedeker, a 43-year-old nine-time PGA Tour winner, claimed the 2012 FedEx Cup so it is fitting that he would receive the Payne Stewart Award here 12 years later. Winning the season-long competition set him up for life and gave him the means to give back to the game that has been so good to him. Snedeker, who grew up playing Shelby Golf Course and McCabe GC, public courses in Nashville, chose to support junior golf in his native state of Tennessee, and the tour he grew up on was renamed the Sneds Tour.
“I really thought I could help it grow,” Snedeker said. “It’s about giving people access, making sure the game is available.”
For several years, Snedeker had the oversized cardboard check from his victory at the Scholarship America Showdown, his first win in the minors for $99,000, framed on a wall in his bedroom, a symbol that he had made it.
“Lost it in a move along the way but it meant everything to me at the time,” he said. “It was the first positive reinforcement and validation that I can do this. I’d look at that check and think I’m a winner and I want to win again.”
Snedeker blossomed into a Ryder Cupper and climbed to a career-best of fourth in the world. There’s a lot about Snedeker’s career that stacks up favorably with that of Stewart, who was his childhood idol.
“I don’t have his personality or charisma. I’d like to think I tried to carry myself similarly, treat people similarly, do things the right way and give back to my community,” Snedeker said. “I didn’t quite have the major resume of Payne.”
Stewart had the nickname of Avis for all his runner-up finishes before he finally found his winning formula and won three majors in a Hall of Fame career before his untimely death in a plane crash in 1999. Snedeker played in the final group alongside eventual winner Trevor Immelman at the 2008 Masters, stumbling home in 77 and finishing T-3. That day, Snedeker shook Immelman’s hand on the walk up 18 and told him he’d played like a champ. A few weeks later, when they saw each other again for the first time, Immelman thanked him for losing with considerable grace. During his post-round press conference, Snedeker let the rush of emotions pour out and he cried the tears of a person who had come within a whisker of living out his dream only to watch it slip out of reach.
“At the time, I couldn’t separate me the person from me the player,” he said all these years later. “That’s why it hit so hard.”
But it also was relatable to viewers at home and abroad to see that it was OK to cry, and refreshing to see someone who cared as much as he did. More than 500 strangers, including soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq told him so via the mail in the first three weeks.
“I kept all those letters and put them in a binder,” Snedeker said.
Will there be tears during his acceptance speech on Tuesday night in a roomful of friends, family and his peers? “I hope not. I intentionally put some stuff late in the speech that may cause me to get emotional so I at least can make it through the majority of it,” he said. “I’m hoping to show the young guys in the room what the award means and how important this award is and hopefully it will do what it did for me 16 years ago. It gave me something to shoot for.”