going up any day now,” Garner
replied delightedly, “You’re a
friend of Jenkins.”
Jim claimed to have supplied
Dan the title for his 1981 novel
Baja Oklahoma. Jenkins and pal
Willie Nelson co-wrote a song
for that movie, though they
were never in the same room.
Nelson just took the lyrics out
of Dan’s book and put them to
music. Sitting next to a casting
director as a line of secondary
ingenues streamed past, Dan
said, “I vote for her,” and she
got the part. Julia Roberts.
Jenkins’ 10 Stages of
Drunkenness also came from Baja,
popping up at Runyon’s in New
York and on the walls of grog
shops all across the country
(plus at least one pub in the
U.K.). The last two stages,
nine and 10, “invisible” and
“bulletproof,” were inspired by
a friend of Dan’s who careened
into Clarke’s one evening
accompanied by a lovely-adorable
not his wife or even his
daughter (though she could have
been). He thinks he’s invisible.
No, bulletproof.
Dan’s wife was a TCU homecom-
ing queen, June Jenkins, never
June, always June Jenkins, as
in “June Jenkins says hello.”
Both of them had false starts
in the marriage department, butthen they spent almost 60 years
together getting it absolutely
right. There might have been
a husband somewhere who loved
his wife as much as Dan Jenkins
loved June Jenkins, but it’s
hard to imagine. As you prob-
ably know, there are chasms that
come with money and Hollywood,
and Dan tiptoed up to a few, but
June Jenkins always saved him.
Anyway, according to the
daughter among their three
children, Dan’s early image of
casual depravity and serial
off-handedness had little basis
in fact. Though never seeming
to be working was an essential
illusion in the sportswriting----------------------------------------------------------------
JENKINS THROUGH THE YEARS
2018: Wrote his 23rd book, Sports Makes You Type
Faster. 2017: TCU named its football press box
after Jenkins, a 1953 graduate, who said, “It’s not
easy being a national treasure.” Added his daughter,
Sally, a columnist for the Washington Post and a
best-selling author: “This probably means as much
to him as anything he’s ever won, just because
his heart and soul are in this stadium.”...
Honored by the University of Texas with the
inaugural Dan Jenkins Medals for Excellence in
Sportswriting, going to Wright Thompson and the
late Frank Deford..... Received the Ring
Lardner Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism.
2015: Earned his 10th first-place award from the
Golf Writers Association of America, the most of
any writer, for his column, “My (Fake) Interview
with Tiger.”... Received the Old Tom Morris
Award from the Golf Course Superintendents
Association of America. 2014: Wrote His Ownself:
A Semi-Memoir. 2013: Received the Red Smith Award,
the highest honor from the Associated Press Sports
Editors. 2012: Inducted into the World Golf Hall
of Fame.... Received the PEN/ESPN Lifetime
Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing.
2009: Tweeted for the first time and labeled himself
The Ancient Twitterer (@DanJenkinsGD)....
Wrote Jenkins at the Majors: Sixty Years of the
World’s Best Golf Writing, from Hogan to Tiger.
2005: Received the William D. Richardson Award, given
to an individual who consistently made an outstanding
contribution to golf..... Inducted into the
Texas Sports Hall of Fame.... Named the official
historian of the National Football Foundation.
2001: Received the College Golf Foundation Rolex
Achievement Award. 1996: Inducted into the National
Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame.
1995: Received the PGA Lifetime Achievement in
Journalism Award presented by the PGA of America.
1994: Received the Memorial Tournament Golf Journalism
Award.... Received the 1994 Lincoln Werden Golf
Journalism Award from the Metropolitan Golf Writers
Association.... Wrote Fairways and Greens.
1993: Inducted into the Texas Golf Hall of Fame.
1991: Wrote You Gotta Play Hurt. 1989: Wrote You
Call it Sports, But I Say It’s a Jungle Out There.
1988: Wrote Fast Copy. 1985: Joined Golf Digest under
Editor Jerry Tarde. 1984: Wrote Life Its Ownself.... Jenkins and his wife, June, opened Juanita’s,
a Tex-Mex restaurant on New York’s Upper East
Side named after Juanita Hutchins, the principal
character in Jenkins’ 1981 novel Baja Oklahoma.
1976: Wrote Limo, with Bud Shrake. “It’s the funniest
book either one of us ever wrote,” Jenkins said.
“And it was in that novel that we invented reality
TV, for which very few people have given us credit.”
1974: Wrote Dead Solid Perfect. 1972: Wrote his
first novel, Semi-Tough, which became one of three
of his best-selling novels to be made into a movie,
along with Dead Solid Perfect and Baja Oklahoma.
1970: Wrote The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate.
1965: Wrote the magazine article “The Glory Game at
Goat Hills,” based on the money games and golf chums of
his youth at hardscrabble Worth Hills in Fort Worth.
1962: Hired by Sports Illustrated managing editor
Andre Laguerre. 1957: Won his first award from the
Golf Writers Association of America. 1956: Wrote
his first story for Golf Digest, titled “Handy
Golf Dictionary.” 1955: Finished second in the
Fort Worth city golf championship, a distinction
he shared with Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. 1951:
As a student at TCU and member of the golf team,
Jenkins covered Hogan’s win in the 1951 Masters for
the Fort Worth Press before stays at the Dallas
Times Herald, Sports Illustrated, Playboy and Golf
Digest. 1948: Before graduating from Paschal High,
where he played golf and basketball, Jenkins was
hired by mentor Blackie Sherrod at the Fort Worth
Press. 1941: At 12, attended the 1941 U.S. Open at
Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. 1928: Born on
Dec. 2 in Fort Worth.-Mike O’Malley
5.19 / GD / 81