GOLF: Sam Snead, one of the game's indisputably great players, has died at the age of 89.

He was known throughout golf as "Slammin' Sam", a tag he always disliked, feeling, correctly, that "Swinging Sam" would have been far more appropriate. Indeed, a contemporary once said of Snead that "he just walked up to the ball and poured honey all over it"; an apt description of a swing that for sheer ease and grace has never been bettered.

Yesterday the tributes poured in, with Phil Mickelson saying: "There has never been a swing as aesthetically pleasing", while the renowned coach David Leadbetter added: "Sam had the best rhythm ever. Prior to Tiger Woods he was the finest athlete who ever played the game."

Jack Nicklaus agreed, saying: "The game has lost one of its great champions and most charismatic players." Snead won hundreds of tournaments of varying degrees of importance but even into old age could be sharp with those who persisted in asking about the one he failed to win, the 1939 US Open at the Philadelphia Country Club.

Famously, he thought he needed a birdie at the last hole, actually needed only a par, and took eight. He won seven major championships, but by not winning that one never could join the career Grand Slammers, those who had won all four majors.

He once said, somewhat bitterly, that if he had taken 69 in the last round of all the US Opens in which he played, he would have won nine of them.

Unlike many great players, Snead would enjoy social golf, providing there was an "interest". He was not averse to a little gamesmanship either, often enough taking, say, a three wood and apparently smashing the living daylights out of it.

His opponent would then take the same club, or more, and finish up out of bounds. Snead had pulled his punch while seeming to go flat out.

Snead barely drank, didn't smoke and his idea of a good time was either playing the trumpet or just sitting around telling stories. The American phrase for the tenor of these stories is "off colour", but the fact is that they were often resoundingly dirty.

At the age of 67 he equalled his age in the second round of the PGA Tour event, the Quad Cities Open, and he continued to play and practice right up to his death.

On his 85th birthday he had a 78 at The Greenbrier, the luxury resort in West Virginia where he was the professional for most of his life.

In April he hit the opening shot at the US Masters, where he was the honorary starter. He will be missed there, as he will in all golf.