From Booklist
Dan Jenkins has covered 197 of golf’s major championships over the last 60 years—a record that is likely to stand as long as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. This collection brings together 94 of Jenkins’ pieces on the majors, written mostly for Sports Illustrated and Golf Digest; strung together, Jenkins says in his introduction, “they would make the longest par five in the history of journalism.” Not only the longest, but one of the most entertaining. Jenkins is known for his raucous humor—the defining quality in his best-selling novels, including Semi-Tough—and that signature wit is everywhere evident in his golf journalism as well. But it’s easy to forget just how good a writer Jenki [Read More...]
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June 13th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
This book is a collection of short articles about the golf majors during Jenkins’ career that spanned the 50s through the 00s (and is still going by the way). As such, it makes perfect bed-time reading. Three or four of the 94 “episodes” is just about right before turning out the light.
Jenkins is a prime example of the “old-fashioned” sportswriter, wrting in his humorous yet insightful down-home Texas style.
I have just two complaints: First, that Jenkins repeatedly includes the U.S. Amateur when counting major wins for Nicklaus, Woods, et al. The Amateur was a major when Bobby Jones won it. It had lost that status by the time Nicklaus won two in the late 50s. And it had LONG AGO lost that status when Woods won his in the 90s.
Second, Jenkins accepts Ben Hogan’s claim that he (Hogan) won 5 U.S. Opens — with Hogan, Jenkins, and pretty much nobody else counting the 1942 Hale American Open as a “war-time Open”. Sorry, it was not the Open and not a major. Just as the Players Championship is not a major today.
June 13th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
If you’re even a semi-serious golf history fan, you’ll enjoy “Jenkins at the Majors”, and if you’ve read Jenkins’ golf fiction (and you should…) you’ll recognize some tastes of actual events that he incorporated into the lives of his fictional golfer characters Kenny Lee Puckett and Bobby Joe Grooves.
There will be some who get their backs up at his Hogan-centric views of professional golf, but he comes by his prejudices honestly, as they say, as he is a fellow Fort Worth native, and covered Mr Hogan’s career since he was a college journalist. As a Texan once-removed myself, and a golfer who was introduced to the sport nearly a quarter-century ago (pre-Tiger) by the writings of Mr Jenkins, I share his reverence for Mr Hogan, and the opportunity to read his coverage of the major tourneys which occurred before I came to the sport (and many before I was born…) was a real treat.