Jenkins Tribute

The USGA hosted a salute to Dan Jenkins on the eve of his 200th major. Well attended, festive and fun (uh, were SI guys barred?), they handed out his latest book and DJ bobbleheads courtesy of Golf Digest.

Jerry Tarde saluted Dan and only slipped in twice that we were in the presence of a future Hall of Famer. Of course, what they're waiting for, no one knows!

David Fay thanked Dan for his service and shrewdly pointed out that this is Dan's 201st major, if you count the 1942 Hale America Open. You may recall Dan has lobbied for that 1942 playing of the Open to count, not because his boy Hogan won but because it was the rebranded U.S. Open in a war year.

Dan finally took the microphone atop the interview room podium, and proceeded to take us through his round in tour drone fashion. "Hit in the left rough on one." Press room joke. Had to be there.

My favorite was a Dave Marr story. Dave was asked what were the top three things Bruce Crampton did wrong. "He was born. He came to America. He stayed in America."

Q&A With Dan Jenkins, Vol. 2

Today marks the release of Jenkins At The Majors, a collection of Dan's best write-ups from those four events not called The Players. You may recall that Jenkins answered questions last year upon the release of The Franchise Babe, and he kindly talks to us about his second golf anthology. The book includes an Introduction to the essays and a commentary on golf journalism, along with an Epilogue where Dan lists his "all-time golf team, driver through the putter and the interview room."

GS: So you've got a new book out of your major championship essays. Is this all of them or a selection of favorites as picked out by you or some really bright book editor?

DJ: My original title of the new book was "Deadline at the Majors." I still like this better than "Jenkins at the Majors." Nevertheless...I chose 94 pieces from newspapers and magazines as being representative of the 198 majors I've covered since 1951. From Hogan to Tiger, as it happens, or from the Fort Worth Press to Golf Digest, with the Dallas Times Herald and Sports Illustrated in between.

All of the pieces had to be shortened, of course, and some of them I've tweaked, and there is a bit of fresh material included, but basically it's stuff I wrote on deadline. I hope it presents a pretty good picture of pro golf as it unfolded before my very eyes over nearly 60 years.


GS: Some writers would rather go see a Celine Dion concert than revisit their past rants. How do you handle reading your old stuff?

DJ: I don't enjoy looking back at my old stuff, other than to enjoy the historical value of it. Sometimes I'm amazed at how less than regurgitating it was, and quite often I'm left to wonder who that stranger was that sneaked into my office and wrote that embarrassing tirade.


GS: The Players Championship is this week. You lived down there for a while. Do you miss Ponte Vedra much?

DJ: I enjoyed my time in Ponte Vedra---it got me back on the golf course after all those years in Manhattan when the major sports were smoking, drinking, typing and hanging out. But it was finally time to go home to Texas. You CAN go home again and be happy. I'm living proof. I haven't been back to Ponte Vedra in 10 years. I'm sure it's changed a lot in some respects but stayed the same in others.


GS: The U.S. Open returns to Bethpage and close to another place you used to live. Are you hanging out in the city for old time's sake or staying out on boring old Long Island?

DJ: The Bethpage Open will be my 200th major and I'll be at the press hotel again in a part of Long Island I never knew existed, an hour from the course or anywhere to eat.


GS: Any deep thoughts heading into Bethpage?

DJ: I'm not a big fan of the course. There's no hole you want to take away with you, which is true of most places other than Pine Valley, Cypress Point, or Augusta National. There's a terrible sameness to Bethpage, but it plays tough, and the old-fashioned round greens look like unidentified flying objects have landed there.


GS: Seen any good movies or read any good books lately?

DJ: Good movies are harder and harder to find. But plenty of good books are out there if you like some of my favorite authors---Daniel Silva, Michael Connelly, James W. Hall, Alan Furst, and John Sandford, to name a few.


GS: Interspersed throughout your literature has been the line about "nothing that a good old depression wouldn't fix." Well we could be there. Is it at least righting some of the wrongs?

DJ: Yeah, I used to say a good old Depression could fix a lot of things---meaning greed. But it hasn't fixed the PGA Tour yet. I do love the game, but what has prompted that statement is purely my own frustration with the fact that I can work two years on a book, and some guy I've never heard of, who didn't graduate from college, and never went to class when he was IN college, and doesn't know how to do anything but hit a golf ball, can make more money in one week than my book will by finishing 5th in a regular tournament I don't give a shit about , and it's not even achieving anything. It's not WINNING or even accomplishing anything.

There's something wrong with that picture. It's why in my declining years I have arrived at the point where I don't give a damn about anything but the four majors and the Ryder Cup. They are important. The regular tour sucks.

I should mention that the regular tour didn't used to suck. It used to be quite glamorous, when the LA Open was always first, when the Crosby was the Crosby, when the players wore snappy clothes and movie stars hung around them, when the Florida swing had its own charm, same for Texas, and so on. But mainly when every winner was SOMEBODY.

I live in the past. It was a better world.

"In the American golf imagination, the nine-holer is maligned as a Velcro-patched pitch 'n' putt, the lesser-dressed cousin of miniature golf."

I loved Tom Coyne's SI Golf Plus My Shot piece on Irish golf and the beauty of the 9-hole round. He nails it. If there was some way we could de-stigmatize the 9-hole round, I'd sure love to hear it. (I still say a match play event with 9-hole matches in pool play would help.)

As for Coyne's book, I just received it and haven't had a chance to look at it yet. But freelancer and avid book reader Tom Mackin says this about it and John Garrity's latest:

If you're not going to Ireland soon -- despite one Euro being worth $1.30 American, the best rate in a long while -- two new books will get you there in spirit. Tom Coyne's "A Course Called Ireland" (Gotham Books) chronicles his walk -- yes, walk -- around the entire island while playing almost 60 links courses. John Garrity investigates his own Irish heritage, at a more leisurely pace, in "Ancestral Links" (New American Library). Two different perspectives on the game and the country with a shared favorite: Carne Golf Links in County Mayo.

"Tom Morris of St Andrews" Wins 2008 USGA Award

Here's the story on USGA.org.

R.I.P John Updike

Nice work by the USGA communications staff for posting the lone golf-driven obituary of the legendary writer, with a quote from David Fay and text of his 1994 address at the USGA Centennial dinner.

At USGAMuseum.com they've posted a list of his contributions to various anthologies and Updike's USGA centennial essay "The Spirit of the Game."

Q&A With Bob Smiley

Bob Smiley is a television writer moonlighting in the world of golf literature, producing an entertaining new book on his pursuit to watch every hole Tiger Woods played in 2008.

Released today by HarperCollins, Follow The Roar is a fresh and decidedly novel approach to the genre of golf books where an author takes us inside the ropes for a year. Smiley was mostly outside the ropes and media centers (explaining his clear eyes and thin physique), yet he captures so many entertaining moments in Tiger's epic half-season.

The impressively produced book features end sheets with all of Bob's tickets along with a lavish photo insert that includes several indelible images taken by some of the best in the business.

Bob hosts his own blog here, and kindly answered a few questions about the book.

GEOFF: The idea for Follow The Roar really started with an email from an ESPN.com reader?

BOB: It really did.  During the 2nd round of last year's Target (now Chevron) World Challenge, I decided to dive into Tiger's mob for the day and write about the experience.  I'd seen Tiger play at Riviera a couple times, but never from start to finish.  I stuck with him from the second he stepped out of his beige Buick Enclave until he signed his card for a tournament-record 62.  The piece triggered a wave of response from golf fans who had braved crowds to see Tiger and loved reliving the experience or those who had never seen him in person and wished they'd been there.  Buried in the emails was a woman who asked me whether I would be following Tiger the whole year.  It was a ridiculous idea.  Until I realized it was a brilliant idea.
 

GEOFF: And when did the book deal come into play?

BOB:  Twenty-four hours before Tiger began his season.  I was up early and starting to pack for the trip to the Buick Invitational in January when the news came through that HarperCollins had made an offer on my book proposal to help me do this.  I would have gone to San Diego with or without a deal and chronicled the tournament.  But the following week Tiger would be in Dubai, and that would have been a little tough without some outside help.
 

GEOFF: An accountant friend had you not making it past July without going broke. I take it you were the one person grateful for Tiger's knee needing major surgery? Or would you rather have continued on?

BOB:  Well my mom thought my airfare budget was way off since, in her mind, Tiger would be letting me travel with him for free on his jet by the end of the year.  But no, I would always have loved to have seen more.  I'd love to know how Tiger would have navigated the wind and rain during the first two rounds of the British Open.  That said, he went out with such a finish at the U.S. Open that it's hard to imagine that even he could top it.  
 

GEOFF: In most instances you were covering him without the aid of a press credential?

BOB: The only press pass I ever received was in Dubai of all places.  And only then because I was surfing around the tournament's website, found an online application for a credential and hit send.  But I'm not a reporter by anyone's definition.  From the beginning, Follow The Roar was always intended to be an everyman's adventure with Tiger and his world.  I wanted every reader to start pick up the book and think, "this could be me."  
 

GEOFF: Do you think it made your quest more uniquely informed because you were viewing him outside the ropes and without the pleasure of free food accompanied by depressing lunch room discussions about the demise of newspapers?

BOB: Inside the ropes or out, most reporters aren't walking 18 holes with any one group.  It's just not a good use of their time.  What that meant for me was there were shots Tiger hit and things he said throughout the season that I know no other writer witnessed or wrote about but I. Being on the outside also meant being free from any journalistic pressure to be impartial and civil.  My feelings about Tiger over the course of the year ran the gamut from disdain to adoration and back again.  
 

GEOFF: Was there a favorite character you encountered along the way?

BOB: In Tucson, I had an extra ticket and put it on Craigslist for free, the one rule being that whoever took it had to follow Tiger and Tiger only with me for the day. No complaining, no long beer lines, no bathroom breaks.  It ended up going to a tough Tucson taxi driver who gave me a free ride to the tourney and broke the ice by showing me the gun he had hidden away in his glove compartment.  
 

GEOFF: Any brushes with Stevie?

BOB:  Nothing a little facial constructive surgery didn't heal.  
 

GEOFF: Have you sent a copy to Tiger? 

BOB: The supremely naive part of me would like to believe that Tiger will bounce out of bed one morning this week, drive to the bookstore and buy it.  The realistic part of me knows that Tiger Woods is so powerful that he probably saw a finished copy before I did. 
 

GEOFF:  Anything you'd like to ask the big guy?

BOB: Plenty. But my guess is that given the opportunity to spend time with the greatest golfer ever, our conversation would quickly devolve into me making swings with an imaginary club and asking him what in the world I'm doing wrong.  

Dodson On Drum

Jim Dodson recalls the role Bob Drum played in creating the modern grand slam and also offers this, which got me thinking...

Bob Drum continued being, well, Bob Drum -- literally the loudest, largest, hardest-drinking character in the press caravan bumping along the Tour Trail and various by-waters of the game for the next two decades -- until a CBS producer had the crazy idea of making Big Bob Drum the color man on a celebrated broadcast crew that included the likes of Jack Whittaker and Ken Venturi.

Legendary CBS golf producer Frank Chirkinian later told Drum's wife, "M.J., this could be the best idea I've ever done -- or the worst."

Almost overnight, at age 68, however, six-foot-three, 290-pound Bob Drum became a large-than-life TV star -- a mountainous, rumpled, oddly comforting presence who spoke the language of the everyday golf fan. For eight years on a two-minute segment called "The Drummer's Beat," Drum's gruff and salty Everyman commentaries on the vagaries of golf and life in general -- most of which sprang from his oversized head only minutes before airtime and were recorded in one take -- comprised some of the most entertaining moments in golf broadcasting. He was eventually nominated for an Emmy.

Wouldn't it be fun of CBS posted some of these online or even put a DVD together of the best of Bob Drum?

Q&A With Dan Jenkins

Today marks the launch of The Franchise Babe, the 18th book by Dan Jenkins.

Published by Doubleday, the novel features a new "Sports Magazine" writer so bored with the PGA Tour he heads for the LPGA Tour where life is a lot more exciting. There's no shortage of smoking, drinking, wise-cracking and commentary (the politics lean hard right). Gary Van Sickle noted in this golf.com review, "it’s great to see that Jenkins still has his fastball. He ranks with the best and most influential sportswriters of the 20th century."

Before leaving to cover next week's U.S. Open for Golf Digest, Dan answered a few questions via email.

GS: The Sports Magazine's Jack Brannon is the main dude in The Franchise Babe. He's twice divorced and smokes more than the Universal Studios back lot. So what's happened to the great Jim Tom Pinch of You Gotta Play Hurt and your last two golf novels?

DJ: Jim Tom was Jack's guru and idol. He mentions it. I needed a young guy for this one. Jim Tom's getting up there.
 
GS: The opening quote from Bryan Forbes and some early comments give the impression you aren't going to go easy on the media in this one. Your take on the state of golf coverage?

DJ: I'm not real fond of golf coverage, or the current state of the media. Nobody ever asks the right follow-up question anymore, nobody has a sense of history, nobody wants to "caretake" a sport, young people think golf started with Tiger Woods, for Christ sake. "Babe" hits on some of this.

GS: Do you really prefer watching the LPGA over the PGA Tour these days?

DJ: I don't much like to watch golf anywhere any longer, except in the majors. I do follow the LPGA closer than the PGA Tour on the net, and watch it occasionally, because they've turned cute on us, there's some hot babes out there who also play golf, they aren't too spoiled yet. Yeah, they lack for quotes, but so do the guys. The men's tour sucks. Everybody drives it 340 and shoots 63. I've never heard of half their names, and don't care to know them until they get back to me with two majors. My fee for talking to Tiger Woods is going up every day. I've tried for 10 years to get a one-on-one with him---and can't. Why? Because Mark Steinberg says, "We have nothing to gain."

Can you imagine what the men's tour would look like if Tiger and Phil both suffered career-ending injuries? I'll tell you. It would look like what it looks like today when they aren't in the field. It would increase interest in polo.
 
GS: In skipping a few pages ahead I saw that the commissioner is someone named Marsha Wilson who has a thing for businesspeak. What do you make of all the real LPGA Commish and her branding obsession?

DJ: The real LPGA commish did a few stupid things at first, but she seems to have survived. I've never met her, so the fiction commish is exactly that. Fiction. But obviously inspired by the real one.
 
GS: Besides Feherty, anyone else you like listening to on a televised golf tournament?

DJ: I rarely listen to golf on TV. I still think Miller is good. I like what he does because the pros hate it. Feherty is a very funny guy in person, but I don't hear him enough on the air to have a comment.

GS: Who makes you want to heave one of your old typewriters at the screen?

DJ: I would need hundreds of typewriters to throw at the screen if I watch golf regularly. Every time some slug said that was a great shot when it was ordinary and that somebody was a great player when he hasn't won shit, and every time somebody said what a great golf course it was when the Tour has ruined it and set it up to be a pushover.
 
GS: It's about time for a Tiger-Phil showdown at a major. Maybe Torrey Pines?

DJ: The best thing about the majors is that they're important no matter what. Of course they make more sense when Jack Fleck doesn't win, but they're still historic and important. I don't give a shit whether Tiger recovers form his knee or not, frankly. You'd think he was the only guy who ever had a knee, a baby, or a dead father. Which, I suppose, is another comment on today's media.
 
GS: Are you excited about visiting California, where we treat smokers like lepers?

DJ: I would be more excited about going to California if I was 20 years younger and sitting in the Polo Lounge.

GS: Does the Masters still start on the back nine Sunday?

DJ: The Masters will always start on the back nine Sunday because I said so.

"To me Darwin was to journalism what Arnold Palmer was to golf on television"

John Hopkins profiles David Normoyle, who has just finished a Cambridge thesis on Bernard Darwin and discusses Darwin's impact.

I asked Normoyle to explain Darwin's continued appeal. "I think it lies in his influence," he replied. "What Herb [Wind] said at the end of his profile in The New Yorker was that he thought Darwin knew more about golf than just about anyone, that he was able to get to the soul of the game that golfers experienced, to identify things that people will take for granted about the game. Peter Ryde [Darwin's successor on The Times] said Darwin's thoughts were held to the glare of daily journalism because he wrote for 50 years and he had to come up with a topic other than how to make three-foot putts. I think Darwin's appeal was a little of both.

"To me Darwin was to journalism what Arnold Palmer was to golf on television," Normoyle continued. "He was the right person in the right place at the right time. In The Times and in Country Life he had educated, interested and sophisticated readers who were willing to take the time to read a Darwin essay. They would understand the cultural references and literary allusions to Sam Weller and Pickwick and Holmes.....and if you knew all these things and you saw them applied to a game of golf then you had a connection to that game that you never had before.

"I think the internet would have been good for him. On the internet you are not confined by space and if he wanted to be indulgent then he could be. If he wanted to create a following of people who wanted long, florid essays full of wit and reverence, he could find the space.

"Darwin would hate modern golf because it is all professional. He would deal with the pseudo amateurs of today who are just training ground professionals. I think he would still enjoy the Walker Cup. I think he would be appalled by the standard of golf at the University matches, including my own. I don't think he saw himself as a writer. I think he saw himself as a member of the golf fraternity who happened to write about golf for a living. He was not an ink-stained wretch. He took a great deal of pride in not understanding the ongoings of Fleet Street and the workings of Printing House Square [where The Times was printed]. But were he around today then I think he would take comfort in the fact that in the world of golf there are still places where fireplaces are welcome and where tea is on the menu."

Robert Hunter On Book TV

CSPAN Book TV Programming note for fans of Robert Hunter, co-architect of Cypress Point and Valley Club and author of The Links:

Speaking Out for America's Poor: A Millionaire Socialist in the Progressive Era
      
Author: Edward Allan Brawley
Upcoming Schedule
Saturday, March 22, at 3:00 PM
Sunday, March 23, at 4:45 AM