Sam Snead, who used golf's smoothest swing to win a record 81 PGA Tour events and about 70 other tournaments, died yesterday at his home in Hot Springs, Va. He was 89.

Snead had a series of small strokes during the past two months, his daughter-in-law Ann Snead said.

In the major tournaments, Snead won three Masters, three Professional Golfers Association Championships and one British Open, but never the United States Open, losing it once with a disastrous triple-bogey 8 on the final hole that left him two strokes back. It was the only blemish in an enduring career that awed other touring pros, past and present.

''Whenever I needed to remind myself how to swing a golf club,'' said Tom Watson, the five-time British Open champion, ''I'd look at Sam's swing.''

In a career that spanned nearly five decades, Snead became famous for his talent, his straw hat and a backwoods philosophy honed during the Depression. Sturdy but supple at 5 feet 11 inches and 190 pounds, the golfer known as Slammin' Sam was double-jointed, which enabled him to kick the top of a doorjamb well into his 70's. He suggested gripping a golf club as if ''you were holding a bird in your hand'' and his explanation of his envied swing was equally simple.

''The only thing I thought about,'' he once said, ''was to keep the arc of my swing as wide as possible. I want that clubhead as far from my body as my arms will allow at every stage of the swing. Keeping them out and away from my body gives them a uniform arc.''

Samuel Jackson Snead, the youngest of six children, was born on May 27, 1912, in Ashwood, Va., near Hot Springs. He learned to swing a golf club barefoot, using limbs or sticks for clubs and playing mostly in a cow pasture, and developed a natural, unhurried yet powerful swing.

''I just watched my brother Homer, he could always hit it farther than me,'' he once said. ''I practiced in the back pasture. We never wore shoes until it snowed.''

Perhaps because of his humble upbringing, Snead was famous for his thriftiness. He chafed when his expenses for competing in the 1946 British Open -- which he won -- totaled more than his $600 paycheck, and he did not return to that tournament for almost two decades.

With his folksy, homespun humor, Snead loved nothing more than sitting around sharing stories of golf. Snead once engaged in a friendly debate with his friend and business partner Ted Williams, as to whether baseball or golf was the more difficult game. When Williams insisted that hitting a speeding, curving baseball required more skill than hitting a stationary golf ball, Snead replied, ''Yeah, but you don't have to hit your foul balls.''

His swing and his love of playing golf, especially when a ''little something'' was being wagered, enabled him to remain both competitive and compelling longer than any other golf pro.

On his 85th birthday in 1997, he shot 78 at the Greenbrier's Old White course in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. ''The other day,'' he explained after that 78, ''I had the best practice session I've had in a long time.''

At age 71 in 1983, with depth-perception problems, he shot a 12-under-par round of 60 at the Lower Cascades course at the Homestead in Hot Springs.

''Twelve birdies, six pars,'' he said later. ''We were playin' for a little loot, but in a period of 11 holes, I had 9 birdies and they got to pullin' for me.''

At 67, he was the youngest golfer to shoot his age in PGA Tour history, in the second round of the 1979 Quad Cities Open. In the final round, he shot 66.

At 62, he was third in the 1974 P.G.A. Championship at Tanglewood in Clemmons, N.C., shooting one-under-par 279, only three strokes behind the winner, Lee Trevino.

At 52, he was the oldest golfer to win a PGA Tour event -- the 1965 Greater Greensboro Open, an event he won eight times, beginning in 1938, the year after he joined the Tour. That is the PGA Tour record for most victories in an event.

As a Tour rookie, he won five times, including his second start, in the Oakland Open in California. Told the next day that a news agency photo of him had appeared in The New York Times, he said: ''How'd they get my picture? I've never been in New York in my life.'' It was a line that fostered his hillbilly image.

''Keep close count of your nickels and dimes, stay away from whiskey,'' he often said, ''and never concede a putt.''

In his third season on the Tour, Snead appeared about to win the 1939 United States Open at the Philadelphia Country Club's Spring Mill course. He needed only two pars for 70 and 282, two strokes better than Byron Nelson, who had already finished. Even after a bogey 5 at the 17th, Snead could have won with a par 5 on the 18th.

''But there were no leader boards out on the course then like there are now,'' he said. ''I thought I needed a birdie to win.''

After hooking his drive into the rough, he topped a 2-wood into a fairway bunker about 110 yards from the green. Hoping to clear the steep-faced bunker, he chose an 8-iron, but his ball jammed above the bunker into freshly laid sod.

His explosive shot bounced into another bunker 40 yards short of the green. On the green in 5, but 40 feet from the cup, he three-putted for an 8, a 74 and 286, finishing fourth.

Byron Nelson, who was tied for the lead at 284 with Craig Wood and Denny Shute, won in a playoff.

Snead was haunted by losing both that Open and the 1947 Open in a playoff with Lew Worsham at the St. Louis Country Club, when he missed a 3-foot putt on the final hole. Worsham had asked for a measurement to determine which golfer should putt first. Snead was away, and missed. Worsham made his putt.

''If I'd shot 69 in the last round of my Opens,'' Snead often said, ''I'd have won nine of 'em.''

His most personally satisfying victory occurred in the 1954 Masters, when he defeated Ben Hogan, 70-71, in an 18-hole playoff, the year after Hogan's sweep of the Masters, the United States Open and the British Open. In later years, Snead could recite his and Hogan's every shot and putt in that playoff.

''The sun doesn't shine on the same dog's tail all the time,'' Snead said that day.

Snead, a member of seven Ryder Cup teams and its captain three times, was the leading money-winner on the PGA Tour three times, but in those years, when the total purse for a weekly event sometimes was only $5,000, his career earnings were only $620,126. Even though he was 68 when the Senior PGA Tour began, he collected another $100,000 in official prize money.

Snead's biggest season came in 1950, when he captured 11 events. Since then, the closest anyone has come was Tiger Woods, who had nine victories in 2000. The record for victories in a year is 18, by Nelson in 1945. Snead's dominance is evident in that he had 81 Tour victories, 11 more than No. 2 Jack Nicklaus.

He helped launch the Senior Tour by winning its inaugural Legends of Golf in 1978, with Gardner Dickinson.

He was named the fourth recipient of the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in November 1998.

Over the years he earned millions from his golf-equipment contracts, exhibitions and other golf-related income -- money he supposedly buried in tin cans in his backyard.

''Jimmy Demaret started that story,'' he once said, referring to the three-time Masters champion. ''After it got in the papers a few times, I came home one night to find a man with a hoe, a rake and a lantern in my backyard.''

Snead is survived by two sons, Sam Jr., of Hot Springs, and Terry, of Mountain Grove, Va.; a brother, Pete, of Pittsburgh; and two grandchildren. His wife, Audrey, died in 1990.

Last month, an ailing Snead rode in a cart to the first tee at the Masters at Augusta National as the honorary starter. But his tee shot drifted to the right and struck a man in the nose. It was the first time he served alone in the honorary role since the Masters began the ceremony in 1963. Beginning in 1984, the duties had been shared by Snead, Nelson and Gene Sarazen. Sarazen died in 1999 and Nelson had his last turn in the honorary role last year.

Finales were at hand for other great names. Nicklaus withdrew from the 2002 Masters with a bad back, and Arnold Palmer announced he was competing for the final time.

Snead didn't drink much and disliked cigarette smoke anywhere near him. For him, a good time was telling risqué stories, playing his trumpet in a jam session and, more than anything else, playing golf.

''What am I going to do when I stop playing golf?'' he once said. ''I get cold chills.''

Samuel J Snead