Brandt Snedeker has nine PGA Tour victories, but the last came in 2018.
Since then, his two children have grown up to be teenagers, only a few years younger than some of his competitors in this week’s $4 million ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic.
Snedeker, now 45, is intent on showing his children, and the youth on the PGA Tour, what made him one of the top players in the world for several years.
“My kids have got older now where they want to see me do well,” Snedeker said. “I want to show them that I’m still capable of playing out here and beating some of these guys. There are lots of great things going on in my life right now, so I’m excited about the opportunities in front of me.”
One of those opportunities is this weekend at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club.
Snedeker shot a 5-under-par 66 in Friday’s second round and sits just one shot behind leader Aaron Rai heading into the final two rounds.
Rai, the highest ranked player in the field at No. 42 in the Official World Golf Ranking, shot a 67 and holds the one-stroke lead over both Snedeker and Mark Hubbard.
Kevin Roy and Christian Bezuidenhout of South Africa are both two shots off the lead. Five-time major champion Brooks Koepka shot a 1-under 70 with birdies on two of his final five holes and is five shots back in a tie for 22nd, and Ryan Ruffels, who won The Q Myrtle Beach qualifier for golf creators and influencers, is tied for 15th at 6 under.
Tee times begin at 6:40 a.m. Saturday and the final twosome of Snedeker and Rai goes off at 1:10 p.m.
Snedeker’sgolf resume is deep.
He captured the season-long FedExCup points championship in 2012, when he won twice including the Tour Championship. He won two more times in 2013.
In his last win at the 2018 Wyndham Championship, he shot a 59 to record one of 15 sub-60 rounds in the history of the PGA Tour.
He is a two-time U.S. Ryder Cup Team member and a 2013 U.S. President’s Cup team member.
He has shown flashes this year as well, as he was in contention in the Valspar Championship in March before shooting a 76 in the final round to tie for 18th.
Snedeker missed the cut in his first four tournaments this season but has finished in the top 40 of the three since.
“It feels good. That’s why I do all the work at home and why I still love being out here on tour and getting in these kind of positions,” Snedeker said. “It’s nice to be here, especially on a golf course I really like. I got to play here the last couple of years, and this golf course sets up for me. So I’m excited to be here with a chance on the weekend. This is what you work for, so kind of turn the brain off [Saturday] and go have some fun.”
The winning drought in Snedeker’s career coincided with a rare sternum injury that developed.
In December 2022, he underwent an experimental surgery to fix an injury that caused sternum instability. The procedure involved taking a piece of bone from his hip and using a bone graft to stabilize the joint, effectively rebuilding the sternum.
“It’s doing great,” Snedeker said. “I don’t hardly have any arthritic pain, any pain in there at all anymore. I dealt with it probably five or six years of just kind of living in pain every day. To have that gone has been a huge relief. So it’s been fun to be able to go out and practice and do what I want to do without any pain. That’s been great. The body feels really good. To feel this good at 45 is a blessing.”
Snedeker played bogey-free Friday, and he birdied four of seven holes from the ninth through the 15th.
“On the ninth hole I hit a great 5-iron in there to about 8 feet, and that was my second birdie of the day,” he said. “Once I made that putt, I was, like, okay, I got some momentum going. . . . The back nine I kind of just kept riding the momentum. Hit a bunch of good shots, gave myself a bunch of birdie putts, and was able to take advantage of it for sure.”
He missed the cut in both of his previous Myrtle Beach Classic appearances.
Snedeker said the 2 1/2-inch rough isn’t necessarily penalizing but can be tricky to hit out of, and he wasn’t driving the ball particularly well over the past two Myrtle Beach Classics and missed a lot of fairways.
This week, Snedeker has hit 21 of 28 fairways through two rounds and has averaged 26 putts per round with a total of 188 feet of putts holed over 36 holes.
“It’s all about hitting fairways here,” Snedeker said. “It is fun to be able to go out there and kind of play a golf course like this where not necessarily how far you hit it is important. It’s about where you hit it and kind of where you leave it and playing smart golf. So this course rewards that for sure.”
He finds the greens to have subtle breaks that can be difficult to read, but he’s getting more comfortable with them.
“It’s taken me a while to get used to and to feel comfortable on them and to realize you’re going to misread some. That’s just the way they are,” he said. “I’m a lot more patient this year than I was the last couple of years.”
It’s a unique and special year for Snedeker, as he’s the captain of the U.S Presidents Cup Team that is competing Sept. 22-27 at Medinah Country Club in Illinois.
The job entails him building a relationship with the prospective team players, many of which are much younger. He said the ramp up will begin in earnest following the final major of the year, the British Open from July 15-19.
“It has kind of made me get out of my shell a little bit and spend some time with some guys and get to know these young guys a lot better and forced me to do things I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise, and it forces me to get out there and play well,” Snedeker said.
