For Snedeker, familiarity breeds attempt to win Augusta

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- He plays fast. "But I think slow," said Brandt Snedeker. Whatever the speed, he has to be thinking of winning the Masters.

He knows the course, played it dozens of times in college. He knows himself.

Snedeker has played Augusta '40 or 50 times.' (Getty Images)

The kid is sharp, no question. A communications graduate from Vanderbilt, where you have to go to class as well as the driving range. Or the football field. Or basketball court. It's not an athletic factory, it's a university.

Brandt Snedeker is a talent. PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 2007. National Public Links champion in 2003. And three days into the 2008 Masters, two shots out of the lead.

"He's got a motor," said Brandt's pal Zach Johnson, who, of course, won the Masters last year. "I don't think quick is the right word. ... I think it's just more high energy. But it's efficient."

Efficient and effective. He won a tournament and more than $2.8 million his first year on Tour.

"His routines," said Johnson, having another good Masters, "are, to the second, spot-on."

Snedeker on Saturday shot one of the more amazing subpar rounds in Masters memory. He got into the lead at 9-under, bogeyed 11, 12 and 13, and then when it was assumed he had come apart, birdied 14, 15 and 18. There he was with a 2-under 70 and a total of 9-under 207, two behind Trevor Immelman.

There he was with that mop of blond hair and oversized visor, looking as if he had wandered in from the backwoods and not stepped out of the back door of Augusta National.

Of any player here, Snedeker comes the closest to being an Augusta member without actually being an Augusta member. As a college student in Nashville, Brandt was allowed to play the course at every opportunity.

"I'd say I played here 40 or 50 times," he said. "It was 5½ hours down from Nashville, and I would come down on the weekends, come down Thursday night, play 36. Be first out Friday morning, play another in the afternoon.

"What better scenario could you have than to come play this course as many times as you wanted?"

Here's a better scenario: playing it to win the Masters. Which he might do.

"It's a completely different course for the Masters," he reminded. "But there's a familiarity that comes from playing the golf course, where you can miss it, what's not a good spot to miss it. ... Despite my experience, I still missed it on 11, 12 and 13, still missed it where I wasn't supposed to."

Snedeker's grandmother ran a golf course in Missouri, and he played there during summers. His father, a former city attorney in Nashville, belonged to a country club, but Brandt said playing on hardscrabble muni courses against the hustlers was a golfing education.

As a Masters qualifier in '04 because of the Publinx win, Snedeker birdied Amen Corner. Saturday, he bogeyed the same three holes. So much for experience.

"I realized why you're supposed to bogey those holes," he said. "Because you're not supposed to be aggressive. It wasn't like I played bad. I hit a bad shot on 11 and probably deserved a bogey. But 12 wasn't really a bad shot, and on 13 I just missed it where you can't. I was trying to make birdie, and you can't fault that."

Snedeker knows who's in front of him, Immelman, the South African, and no less important who's behind him, in fifth place, at 211, Tiger Woods.

Someone wondered how Brandt could forget about Tiger.

"When I figure out how to do that," he said, then laughed, "I think I'll be able to charge some guys out here and get them to pay me. What I mean is, I don't know how.

"If he gets off to as great start tomorrow, it's going to be in everybody's head. As long as we acknowledge it and realize, hey, he's not going to be a factor on the next shot I hit, you've got a chance of overcoming it."

Snedeker, Immelman and the two players immediately behind them and immediately ahead of Tiger -- Steve Flesch and Paul Casey -- never have previously contended on the final day of a major.

"Should make for some pretty exciting golf," Snedeker said. "We haven't contended, so shoot at the pins and try to do everything we've been doing and not back our way into this thing. When you have that many guys around the lead and the No. 1 player in the world right there, too, you've got to know how to make birdies down the stretch."

Brandt Snedeker knows how. He's done it as an amateur. He did it Saturday. It's just that he's never had the chance in the final round of the Masters.