gOlf Digest ResOuRcecenteR
Butkus, all fullbacks would
soon be three feet tall and sing
soprano.”
Dan’s inaugural and eternal
hero (along with Texas foot-
ballers Doak Walker and Bobby
Layne) was Ben Hogan, his
local assignment on the golf
beat. They played some 40 rounds
together, often just the two
of them. “I’d be watching him
practice,” Jenkins said, “and
he’d say, ‘Let’s go.’
“In 1956, Ben called me up and
said, ‘I want you in a foursome
for an exhibition at Colonial
benefiting the Olympic Games.’
I said, ‘OK, I guess, but there
must be somebody better than me.’
‘No, I want you,’ he said. I
worked half a day at the paper,
came out, didn’t even have a
golf shirt, wore a dress shirt,
rolled up the sleeves, changed
my shoes, didn’t hit a practice
ball, got to the first tee,
and 5,000 people were waiting.
Now, what do you do? Somehow I
got off a decent drive into the
fairway, and proceeded to top a
3-wood 50 yards--it was a par 5--
then topped another 3-wood, then
topped a 5-iron. All I wanted to
do was dig a hole and bury myself
in the ground forever. As I was
walking to the next shot, still
100 yards from the green, Hogan
came up beside me and said, ‘You
could probably swing faster if
you tried hard enough.’ I slowed
it down, got calm, and shot 76.
He shot his usual 67. That’s the
Hogan I knew.”
Ben gave him other tips, some
of them incomprehensible, like
“always over-club downwind.”
Famously, Hogan was said to
harbor a “secret,” but Jenkins
reckoned the real secret was
just practice. Dan was an
uncommonly fine putter, and
Hogan volunteered to tutor him
for six months in the rest of
the shots if he wanted to take a
crack at the U.S. Amateur. When
Jenkins told Ben he was already
doing what he always wanted
to do, Hogan didn’t really
understand. But the gruff nod
of trust he tossed Dan that day
never left Dan’s heart.
So when a slightly younger
writer and friend would say,
“Yeah, that Hogan must have
been awfully good; some weeks
he beat both Jay Hebert and
Lionel Hebert,” Dan would just
smile tolerantly, secure in hisTHE JENKINS DICTIONARY
conviction that he knew more
than anybody else about golf.
Dan never threw over Hogan,
but he moved over to Arnold
Palmer with ease, cued by
gentleman Marine Jay Hebert
(pronounced A-Bear), whom Dan
asked one morning, “What are on
the list of qualities helping
Ken Venturi become the next great
golfer?”
Hebert answered, “Venturi’s not
the next great golfer. Arnold
Palmer is.”
Arnold Palmer? Dan thought.
The guy who can’t keep his
shirttail in? The guy who thinks
he can drive a ball through a
tree trunk? “Why him?”
“Because he’s longer than
most of us,” Hebert said, “and
he makes six birdies a round.Jenkins chronicled Ben Hogan’s
feats and treasured the many
rounds they played together.
--------------------------------Fairway: An unexplored region. Foursome: Any group
of seven or more players directly in front of you
on Sundays and holidays. Geezers: A legendary group
of sports columnists including Jenkins, Blackie
Sherrod, Jim Murray, Furman Bisher, Edwin Pope
and others. Once a year they would meet somewhere,
Gary Cartwright wrote, “and bitch about how first-
person-singular pronouns are ruining the business.”
Hate mail: “Good hate mail is the kind that reminds
you that you’ve done a decent job of writing about a
golfer, a golf tournament or a golf course, hitting
pretty close to the truth.” Point-misser: Clueless,
ignorant observer. Rally killer: Dull media-center
moderator of interviews. “For instance,” Jenkins
wrote, “if a competitor might happen to say, ‘By
the way, I’m divorcing my wife and marrying a set
of Siamese twins from Calcutta,’ the rally killer
is apt to say, ‘Fine. Question from the gentleman
in the third row?' ” Slice: Optimistically referred
to as a fade. Time bandit: Tedious hanger-on.78 / GD / 5.19