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game, Sally Jenkins knew her
father to be a man of “deceptive
sobriety,” “veiled attentiveness
to family” and a “sly conscien-
tiousness at his work.”
She was the one who followed
him into the breach, to Sports
Illustrated, then the Washington
Post, where for almost 20 years
she has written a lyrical column
with a Jenkins edge. Under the
email heading Term Themes,
Dan took to shooting her best
columns, meaning just about
all of them, to a colleague
(probably more than one
colleague). “Read Sally Jenkins
today,” he’d say, “and try not
to laugh or cry. I couldn’t.”
Sally, Marty and Danny were
his heroes.
***
Presumably owing to Semi-
Tough’s notoriety as a book,
a Burt Reynolds movie and
nearly a David Merrick Broadway
musical, Sports Illustrated
removed Dan from college
football and relocated him in
the NFL, a colossal blunder.
Like a large slice of pro
football’s audience, Dan needed
an economic interest to suffer
the games. And the more he
bet, the more prominent the
officials, the “Zebras,” became
in his narratives. Inevitably
Dan clashed with a new managing
editor, Gil Rogin, who was not
Andre Laguerre, and in 1985
Jenkins came to Golf Digest.
It was probably just as well.
SI had become heavily populated
with Dan Jenkins impersonators,
some of them 2 and 3 degrees
removed. Curry Kirkpatrick was
trying to do Jenkins. Barry
McDermott was trying to do
Curry Kirkpatrick trying to do
Jenkins. The problem, of course,
was there was only one Jenkins:
“If you want to put golf back
on the front pages again and
you don’t have a Bobby Jones or
a Francis Ouimet handy, here’s
what you do: You send an aging
Jack Nicklaus out in the last
round of the Masters and let
him kill more foreigners than
a general named Eisenhower.”
Dan always rooted for the best
stories, which usually meant the
best players (the real reason he
loved Hogan might have been that
Ben once saved him from having
to write about Masters runner-
up Skee Riegel), though some of
golf’s journeymen, the ones with
wit and perspicacity, like Ed
Sneed, became trusted sources.
Dave Marr, a PGA champion but
not an all-time great, was Dan’s
No. 1 draft choice for dinner.
As truthfully tough as Jenkins
could be in print, he had a
heart. Settling into a steamy
Medinah press tent under a
killer Monday deadline, he had
just begun to bang out the dull
tale of Lou Graham’s playoff
victory over John Mahaffey in
the 1975 Open when, tapped
on the shoulder, Jenkins spun
around to find Graham’s wife,
Patsy. “Be nice, Dan,” she
beseeched him softly. “He’s
really a good guy.” So charmed
was Jenkins, he left out a
voice he had overheard in the
gallery, whispering, “Where does
Lou Graham get all those faded
shirts?”
Tiger Woods didn’t want to
know Jenkins. “We have nothing
to gain,” agent Mark Steinberg
said, the dumbest thing any
agent ever said. During the
2006 Open Championship at
Hoylake, Woods’ second-most-
amazing tour de force, coach
Hank Haney was staying at the
Golf Digest house. Every night,
On friendships: “I like people who like me.”
On being a writer: “It’s all I ever wanted to
do.” On opinions: “Sportswriters needn’t be as
objective as courthouse reporters, by the way,
and the best ones never were, never are.” On
whether he enjoyed being controversial: “No,
I just take pride in being right.” On whether
he ever suffered from writer’s block: “I had
three kids in private schools in Manhattan
at the same time, and then I had them all in
college at the same time. I didn’t have time
for writer’s block.” On writing novels: “I know
how it’s going to start and how it’s going to
end, but I like to surprise myself along the
way.” On covering 68 consecutive Masters and a
total of 232 majors: “I just started going and
kept going.” On the Masters: “I can only tell
you that eggs, country ham, biscuits, a pot of
coffee, a morning paper, a table by the window
overlooking the veranda and putting green,
listening to the idle chitchat of competitors,
authors, wits and philosophers, hasn’t exactly
been a torturous way to begin each day of the
Masters all these years.” On slow play: “A
round of golf should not take more than 3½
hours. Anything longer than that is not a round
of golf, it’s life in Albania.” On pressure:
“It’s playing a college match at Colonial in
Fort Worth with Ben Hogan following you around
in a golf cart.” On receiving an award at 85:
“At this stage in my development, I take it as
a very encouraging sign.”
At home in Fort Worth in 2011
with memories of more than
70 years in the business.
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PRONOUNCEMENTS FROM HIS OWNSELF
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82 / GD / 5.19
