By Sally Jenkins
Editor’s note: In celebration of Golf Digest’s 70th anniversary, we’re revisiting the best literature and journalism we’ve ever published.

There are two sacred days on the annual golf calendar: Masters Sunday, which falls on the second Sunday of April, and Father’s Day, on the same day as the final round of the U.S. Open. Everything is turned upside down this year, with the Masters in November and Father’s Day without the Open. Both golf holidays have been linked in my mind because I spent about 35 years observing them on a barstool next to Dan Jenkins.

So as Father’s Day approaches, it seems appropriate to call on his talented daughter, Washington Post columnist and best-selling author Sally Jenkins to give us a little Dan. In the eulogy at his memorial service in Fort Worth last year, Sally remembered his writing: “It had the effortless vault and jauntiness of the music he loved: classic Texas swing. It’s interesting that our father wrote every bit as well and impressively about music as he did about sports, and so much of that tunefulness slipped into his prose. Here is the beginning of his game story on perhaps the greatest college football game ever played, the 1971 meeting between Nebraska and Oklahoma:

“In the land of the pickup truck and cream gravy for breakfast, down where the wind can blow through the walls of a diner and into the grieving lyrics of a country song on a jukebox—down there in dirt-kicking territory they played a football game on Thanksgiving Day that was mainly for the quarterbacks on the field and for self-styled gridiron intellectuals everywhere.”

Sally concluded her eulogy with as good a line as any father could imagine being said about him by his daughter: “When a man like our father goes, it’s an outsized loss. It’s like 100 men have left the room.”

In May 2005, Sally wrote the following story on the occasion of Dan being honoured by the Golf Writers Association of America as the winner of the William D. Richardson Award for consistently outstanding contributions to golf. Note to Dan: Sally her Ownself was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary, as The Washington Post reported earlier this year, “for the breadth and vigour of her writing, which in 2019 was characteristically fearless and forthright.”

Happy Father’s Day. —Jerry Tarde

* * *

My father is, sadly, a fraud. There is the public account of him, and then there is my private one, and the two don’t agree at all. For instance, there is the Dan Jenkins who pretends he’d sooner burn small children with cigarettes than pat them on the head, and then there is the adoring, lenient father I know. There is the guy whose profane wit can force a sharp intake of breath, and there is the husband who has been devotedly married for more than 40 years. There is the cavalier veranda lounger who never seemed to take a note, and then there is the writer I’ve witnessed at home, who works with unswerving concentration.

My brothers and I might be the only people, apart from my mother, who know him for the suave faker he really is. At some point, your childhood becomes your own property, and you see it for what it was. While you were a child, it belonged to your parents, and they cast it in their terms.

“You’re having a happy childhood,” my father told me.

“I am?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

My father speared another forkful of Raviolios from my plate and ate them. It was a nightly ritual for him to sit with me and my two brothers and share our supper before he and my mother went out for the evening. On Monday nights we ate Raviolios and they went to P.J. Clarke’s. On Tuesday we had fish sticks and they went to Elaine’s. And so on. The phone numbers of the restaurants were pasted on the wall by the phone along with the days of the week.

Once, someone asked my younger brother what it was like to grow up the son of a sportswriter and author, and his imposingly elegant and successful wife. She was always opening critically acclaimed restaurants, and he was always reinventing forms of journalism and writing bestsellers in alarmingly casual-seeming fashion.

My brother considered the question.

“They were out every night, and when they came home they went to Europe,” he said.

Yet somehow my father, despite his globe-circling, and reputation for enjoying the smartening effects of scotch, managed to provide us with a childhood that was, in fact, happy and healthy. How did he accomplish this? One of his methods was a deceptive sobriety, another was a veiled attentiveness to his family, and yet another was a sly conscientiousness at his work.

The dinner hour was always ours. My parents would sit at the kitchen table with their three children, and their three tall glasses of milk. My father would talk to us while he stole bites of our baby food. Alphabet soup. Creamed corn. Franks and beans. Stouffer’s frozen vegetables.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“I learned a joke today.”

“Tell it.”

“What’s green and lives in the sea?”

“What?”

“Moby Pickle.”

He began giggling helplessly at the absurdity of the joke, and couldn’t stop for the next five minutes, while around him, three pajamaed urchins capsized their milk with delight.

The rest of the world has its view of Dan Jenkins, and I have mine. It’s impossible for me to read his life’s work with professional detachment because for every U.S. Open story, there was a family summer. The combined quality and volume of his writing on golf, as well as hundreds of other subjects, is all the more impressive to me in light of the fact that he managed to produce it while also attending school plays, writing checks to orthodontists, mustering private-school tuitions and lifting the family luggage. All of which he made seem effortless. His fathering style, interestingly, was not much different from his writing style, which is to say, excellence disguised as offhandedness.

Some of the stories, of course, represent absences. But not as many as you would think. He managed to be, despite my brother’s joke, a vividly present father. He often took us with him; we scampered with impunity through press rooms, and carried hot coffee to him, and surely must have pestered him, though he never complained about it. Others might have found him acerbic; we only found him gently or hysterically funny. While his readers might be amazed to discover he had children, his children were amazed to discover he had readers.

Look again at the writing of Dan Jenkins, and ask yourself if it could have been as effortless to write as it is to read. Peruse the easy rhythms and the jauntiness of phrasing, and yet the unfailing truthfulness and the nail-on-the-head precision in each description. Consider the fact that, despite the ease with which the sentences pass, he almost never employs a shopworn, overused word, but rather finds the unexpected one, which also happens to be utterly right.

Which is the real Dan Jenkins, and which is a cunning veneer? I’ll step aside and let someone else answer the question.

“Do you understand,” my mother once said, “how hard your father works?”

The answer was no, at the time I didn’t. It’s only as an adult and a colleague that I’ve come to understand. Small things, details, return to me, and make more sense now. The curious fact that, though he was reputed to love his cocktails, I never once saw him drink at home. The steady metallic sound of a Royal typewriter as I went to sleep, and the sound of it again in the morning.

As an adult, I reread the old work and I look at the new work, and what I see in it is this: a constant stripping away of pretence, and of the profligate excesses of feeling that surround sports, to find the real people and truths underneath. An unwavering effort to think about things plainly and thoroughly, the better to describe them. Sound judgments, about what’s funny and not, what’s poignant and not, what’s worthy and what is not. Constant restless experiments with form, and a lifelong refusal to go with the crowd, or to mail one in.

He comes from a generation of writers that adopted a demeanour of perpetual nonchalance, cigarettes dangling. He didn’t talk much about writing. He never said, “Don’t be a writer; you’ll sentence yourself to a life of excruciating self-doubt and criticism.” He never said, “It’s one of the hardest professions in the world.” He never said, “It’s ditch-digging, it’s breaking rocks with a shovel.” Instead, his instructions were his example.

He did say this: “Dad loves his work.”

As a writer, I drew three lessons from him: the absoluteness of his concentration, the contrariness of his thinking, and the depth of his respect for good writing. All of which together can only be called a kind of integrity. “Learn your craft,” he told me. “And don’t ever let a thing go until it’s as good as you can make it.”

So I do something others don’t, when it comes to my father. I take him seriously. God knows, somebody has to.

The post Another side of Dan Jenkins appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

From the archive (December 1994): In celebration of Golf Digest’s 70th anniversary, we’re revisiting the best literature and journalism we’ve ever published.

By Dan Jenkins
Editor’s note: I’m sorry for laughing at this story. I apologise for Dan Jenkins. Forgive me for chuckling at the foibles of family golf. OK, now that it’s established that we should be ashamed of ourselves, sit back and let an old Jenkins column (December 1994) remind you of the Texas legend’s genius for finding humour in all things self-righteous or politically correct. The man who invented the 10 Stages of Drunkenness would have found humour even in a pandemic.

During these times of serious self-quarantining, many golfers have come to appreciate the joy of getting out on the course with family members. Parents pushing baby strollers have been observed following Golfer Dad or Golfer Mom. But there’s also joy in making fun of ourselves, and Dan always had a low handicap for tapping into our funny bone. He left us in 2019 at age 90, having lied about his age throughout adulthood (he said he was a year younger), but his friends thought it was Dan’s last laugh at a good life .—Jerry Tarde

Not long ago I had the unforgettable experience of trying to play 18 holes behind one of those foursomes known as a plague on earth when it is not known as the Family That Golfs Together.

I don’t believe I’ve ever taken vacations that long, frankly.

Upon finishing the round, I limped into the men’s grill and asked the bartender for a pen and notepad. While trying to calm my rage with a few cocktails, I thought it would be therapeutic to make a list of things I would rather do in this lifetime than play another round of golf directly behind such lovers of the game. I decided I would rather:

Eat a veggie burger.

Lift heavy furniture.

Attend a political rally

Drive across country without smoking.

Watch a game show on TV

Listen to accordion music.

Discuss wine.

Read Proust.

Go to a rock concert.

Try to deal with “frozen cursor syndrome” on my word processor.

I play fast, of course. I don’t line up putts from four sides, three sides or even two sides in most cases. I don’t “sweep” the line, figuring that any object the ball might hit along the way will give it a better chance of going in the cup than my putting stroke.

The only time I walk around with a towel is after I’ve showered. I might add that the only time I plumb-bob is when I’m conducting a symphony.

My club selection never causes any delays. I know what I’m going to hit before I get to my ball because I’ve been there many times before, or in a location just like it.

What’s more, I can hit two mulligans while my companions are improving their lies.

I am among those who firmly believe that a round of golf should not take more than 31/2 hours, four at the most. Anything longer than that is not a round of golf, it’s life in Albania.

So now I’m out there behind the Family That Golfs Together, all of whom are wearing shorts and anklets, naturally.

Macho Dad has a five-piece swing that strongly suggests he can’t possibly play below a 22-handicap, but he insists on hitting from the tips, from so far back his takeaway runs a serious risk of getting caught in the crape myrtle.

Never-ready Mom wears a wide-brimmed straw hat, and her golf glove features a handy little wrist compartment for her tee.

Idiot Teenage Son has his baseball cap on backward and grips the driver as he would a sledgehammer. He is here at gunpoint. He wanted to be at the beach today with his pals, drinking beer, doing drugs and falling madly in love with the third runner-up in the Miss Cerebral contest.

Sullen Teenage Daughter is also here at gunpoint. She would rather be locked in her room at home, chain-smoking cigarettes and listening to gangster rap.

I will describe only one hole.

Macho Dad stripes it down the middle, about 167, bringing it in from left to right. He struts to the cart, puts the big furry-animal headcover back on his driver.

From the blues, Idiot Teenage Son swings for the centerfield fence but hits a trickling 30-yard bunt. He trots after the ball, brings it back, tees it up again. Macho Dad goes over to give him a lesson. He points the V’s, firms up the left side, adjusts the stance. This time, Idiot Teenage Son swings for the right-field wall but hits a toe-job pop-up shot that barely clears the ball washer. He’s not happy to learn he’ll have to play that one.

Sullen Teenage Daughter goes first at the reds. After four whiffs and a yard of turf plowed up, she hits one 10 yards, although the club sails 15 yards. She retires to the cart with a shrug. Never-ready Mom takes six tedious practice swings, then smother-tops it into the rough, where they all enjoy an Easter-egg hunt.

After what seems like an hour later, the Family That Golfs Together is finally on the green, where Never-ready Mom stands over a one-foot putt, forever. Members of my group are now hollering such things as, “Pull the trigger, Mom!”

Myself, I’m playing Scarlett O’Hara, except I’m holding a golf ball instead of a turnip. But my fist is raised to the sky, and I’m saying, “As God is my witness, I’ll never play golf on Sunday again!”

The post Dan Jenkins: Why I hate family golf appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Brittany Romano
The golf world lost some prominent figures in 2019, individuals who made lasting contributions to the game and its community. From tour pros to business leaders and international golf ambassadors, each could boast a unique and important impact on the sport.

Arguably, the one with the closest personal connection to the largest number of golf fans wasn’t someone who played the game for a living, but who wrote about those who did. The entire sports landscape mourned Dan Jenkins when he died in March of natural causes at age 90. Jenkins documented sports with his award-winning prose, keeping athletes in check and charming fans for more than 60 years. For 34 of them, he appeared on Golf Digest’s masthead, often leaving our readers laughing, sometimes crying, and always thinking with each story.

If Jenkins was among the more familiar names to pass away, the loss of a few behind-the-scenes individuals in the industry serves as a reminder of how many selfless figures surround the game. Think of Alice Dye, who partnered with her husband, Pete, to modernize golf course architecture. She rarely took credit for leading projects, or editing her counterpart’s designs. And there was Nick DePaul, who might not be recognizable to the general golf public but was a skilled caddie and qazi-psychologist for prominent golfers such as Seve Ballesteros, Gary Player and Greg Norman. Like the rest mentioned below, they will be long remembered and forever missed.

Other deaths of notable golf figures in 2019 include:

Nick DePaul, 78, Jan. 1:
Career caddie on the bag for Seve Ballesteros’ 1983 Masters and 1984 British Open wins. Also looped for Gary Player, Greg Norman, David Frost and George Archer.

Alice Dye, 91, Feb. 1:
A successful competitive golfer, champion of the women’s game and pioneer in modern golf-course architecture with her husband and business partner, Pete Dye.

Rosemary Thompson, 76, Feb. 1:
An accomplished amateur golfer who won the 1992 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur. According to the Albuquerque Journal, she broke 18 course records from 1972-1997.

Gene Littler, 88, Feb. 16:
Known for an ultra-smooth swing, Littler won 29 times on the PGA Tour, including the 1961 U.S. Open. Nicknamed “Gene the Machine,” he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1990.

Gene Littler holding another trophy
Bettmann

Dan Jenkins, 90, March 19:
An iconic sportswriter, World Golf Hall of Fame journalist, best-selling novelist and Golf Digest Writer-at-Large. Jenkins wrote honest and entertaining prose infused with energy and wit, covering 68 Masters, 63 U.S. Opens, 56 PGAs and 45 Open Championships in his career spanning six decades.

Arie Irawan, 28, April 7:
A rising star on the PGA Tour China circuit. The Malaysian golfer won two events on the Asian Development Tour and two on the Professional Golf of Malaysia Tour.

Marilynn Smith, 89, April 9:
One of the 13 founders of the LPGA, Smith won 21 times on the tour she helped build and was the first female commentator to work on a men’s golf telecast.

Hy Peskin Archive

Alan Murray, 78, May 24:
Australian professional golfer who co-founded the Singapore Professional Golfers Association (SPGA) in 1973. He won a French Open and Australian PGA Championship before relocating to Singapore.

Keith Kleven, 76, May 30:
Physical therapist for Tiger Woods in the early 2000s. He was an avid golfer who worked with tour pros Mark O’Meara and Jonathan Byrd, the UNLV golf teams and boxers Mike Tyson and Larry Holmes.

Mark Parsinen, 70, June 3:
Worked with Gil Hanse on the design of Castle Stuart Golf Links in Scotland and was managing director at Kingsbarn Golf Links (St. Andrews).

Peter Toogood, 89, June 5:
Australian who was a member of his country’s winning team at the inaugural World Amateur Team Championship at St. Andrews in 1958.

Mario Gonzalez, 96, July 29:
Known as the Father of Golf in Brazil, Gonzalez won the country’s Open eight times. A successful amateur, he defeated Billy Casper in a made-for-television event in 1961 and played Bobby Jones to a draw in a 1941 exhibition match.

Mario Gonzalez
Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Gordon Brand Jr., 60, July 31:
An eight-time European Tour winner and two-time Ryder Cup player, the Scottish golfer contributed 1½ points when Europe won the Ryder Cup for the first time in the United States in 1987.

Jack Whitaker, 95, Aug. 18:
A Hall-of-Fame broadcaster who covered several majors in golf and bought poetic-like prose to commentating.

Brian Barnes, 74, Sept. 9:
A two-time Great Britain & Ireland Ryder Cup player remembered for defeating Jack Nicklaus twice in one day at Laurel Valley in 1975. Barnes won 20 times as a professional, including two Senior British Opens.

Brian Barnes
Stan Badz/PGA Tour

Kathy Stachura, 56, Oct. 2:
Golf Digest’s esteemed fact-checker and an integral part of the staff for almost 35 years. Stachura worked behind the scenes to ensure every word published was honest and factual, catching errors without judgement and becoming every writer’s warmhearted secret weapon.

Dave Bennett, 84, Oct. 2:
Renowned course architect and one-time partner of Lee Trevino. Bennett was known for working on the Prestonwood Country Club (The Hills Course) in Plano, Tex.; Cimarron Country Club in Mission, Tex., and Desert Hills Country Club in Green Valley, Ariz.

Barry Frank, 87, Oct. 29:
Sports agent and network executive who developed shows like “The Skins Game” where top golfers—including Tiger Woods—competed in big-money matches. He also managed top sportscasters like Bob Costas, Jim Nantz, Robin Roberts and Mike Tirico.

Terry Galvin, 79, Nov. 3:
Former Golf World editor from 1989-2000 who oversaw the weekly magazine after three decades of skillfully running sports departments at various newspapers across the country.

Patricia O’Sullivan Lucey, 93, Nov. 6:
One of five women to win an LPGA Tour event as an amateur with her victory at the 1951 Titleholders. She was a member of the 1952 U.S. Curtis Cup team and won three North & South Women’s Amateur Championships.

Minoru Yoneyama, 95, Nov. 11:
Founder and former president of Japanese sporting-goods manufacturer Yonex. The company was an early innovator in using graphite shafts for golf clubs after using the material in its tennis and badminton racquets.

Hilary Watson, 63, Nov. 27:
Wife of eight-time major winner Tom Watson. She was passionate about horses and continued competing in horse-cutting competitions through her two-year fight with pancreatic cancer.

Jo Ann Washam, 69, Dec. 6:
A three-time winner on the LPGA Tour, the Auburn, Ala., native is remembered for making two holes-in-one during the Women’s Kemper Open in 1979.

Focus On Sport

The post Paying tribute to those golf lost in 2019 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Jenkins, who died at age 90 in his native Fort Worth, Texas, was a newspaperman when newspapers were at their peak, stood at the centre of the golden age of magazine journalism, and was a surprising early adapter to Twitter, often shaping the conversation about the game during the biggest weeks of the year. It was Jenkins who helped turn the likes of Palmer and Nicklaus into stars and also clarified why stars in golf mattered so much in the first place. Those were the players who earned the cover of Sports Illustrated back when Jenkins was covering majors for the magazine in the ‘60s and ‘70s, whereas the anonymous tour pro who snuck into contention was derided as “low nightmare.”

By the time Jenkins arrived at Golf Digest in 1985, he had already revolutionized the vocabulary of golf, and in his tenure here, no one worked closer with him than executive editor Mike O’Malley. O’Malley was the editor of Jenkins’ magazine features from 1996 right through his final piece for the magazine on Golf Digest’s Greatest of All Time Invitational published this month. And he was also Jenkins’ “co-conspirator on Twitter,” assisting the technologically-averse Jenkins to navigate the platform while also ensuring the veteran scribe’s biting wit didn’t venture too far offline.

On this week’s Golf Digest Podcast, O’Malley discusses the incredible mark Jenkins made on the craft of sportswriting, what it was like to edit a living legend, and how the generous Jenkins differed from his ornery public persona.

https://soundcloud.com/user-96678684/remembering-the-great-dan-jenkins-francesco-molinaris-latest-triumph

The post Recalling Dan Jenkins’ indelible mark on golf, Golf Digest, and Twitter appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Tom Callahan
Dan Jenkins, the Hall of Fame golf writer and Golf Digest Writer-at-Large, died Thursday night, March 7, at 90. His longtime colleague, Golf Digest Contributing Editor Tom Callahan, writes this tribute.

When his grandmother found an old typewriter in the attic, only child Dan Jenkins of Texas became a writer.

Word for word, he typed the war dispatches and sports columns from the Fort Worth papers, pretending to be a newspaperman. But, eventually, he changed the words, giving them an edge, his own edge.

An aunt named Inez owned a drugstore, a repository of dreams. Luxuriating in the store’s delicious aromas, Dan set up camp at the out-of-town newspapers stack. For a while, his favourite lead was by Damon Runyon from an account of Chicago mobster Al Capone’s tax-evasion trial: “Al Capone was quietly dressed when he arrived at the courthouse this morning except for a hat of pearly white, emblematic, no doubt, of purity.”

Jenkins also admired James Thurber’s take on one of Ohio State’s athletic stars, Chic Harley: “If you never saw Harley run with a football, words cannot describe. It wasn’t like [Red] Grange or [Tom] Harmon or anybody else. It was kind of a cross between music and cannon fire, and it brought your heart up under your ears.”

But in time Jenkins switched his allegiance to this opener from John Lardner: “Stanley Ketchel [the middleweight boxing champion] was 24 years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.”

“That, in a sentence,” Dan always said, “is the great American novel.” And it had to be “lady.”

Jenkins was a solid player in his own right.

His father was a scratch golfer, but it was Aunt Inez who presented Jenkins his original set of clubs, ladies’ clubs: 2-, 5-, 7- and 9-irons, a spoon (3-wood) and a putter. At age 12, he reached the first of 232 major championships, the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial Country Club. It was magical. Dan had never beheld bentgrass greens before. They looked like Ireland (or at least what he thought Ireland should look like). His home course, nine-hole Katy Lake, didn’t even have sand greens. They were made of dark-brown cottonseed hulls, oiled down or they’d blow away, requiring raking before putting.

There’s a black-and-white photograph from a practice round at the ’41 Open. It features Byron Nelson, Gene Sarazen, Tommy Armour and defending champion Lawson Little (once “the best amateur golfer who wasn’t Bobby Jones”) walking a fairway in the foreground. In the background, wearing a striped polo shirt and white duck trousers with a ticket lashed to his belt, Boy Jenkins is trailing them. (This is the only documented proof that he was ever actually on the golf course during a major, where he would spend most of his time raconteuring on the verandas and out-writing everybody in the press rooms.)

A mischievous caption, ballooning from Sarazen’s lips, says, “If that little kid behind us grows up to be a golf writer, this game is in big trouble.”

• • •

For the Paschal (High) Pantherette, he wrote a parody of the local sportswriters. Someone sent it to Blackie Sherrod, the nut-brown, task-mastering, Cherokee-blooded sports editor of the Fort Worth Press, who would paint the battlefield at Little Bighorn in red splashes of horrible realism but with the Goodyear blimp floating overhead. Blackie hired Jenkins while he was still in high school and sent him on to Texas Christian University (to letter in golf) with a byline.

Blackie’s Boys—all of whom became eminences—included Gary Cartwright, Jerre R. Todd and Bud Shrake, who like Dan was destined for Sports Illustrated, best-seller lists and screenwriting credits. Bud and Dan joined in occasional collaborations and were inseparable friends.

Sherrod pointed his young staff to the files of stylish writers, such as Red Smith, and once again Jenkins broke in as an imitator. Henry McLemore, covering the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, wrote, “It is now Thursday. The Olympic marathon was run on Tuesday, and I am still waiting for the Americans to finish.” So Dan kicked off a high school football story this way: “It is now Monday. Birdville played Handley on Friday night, and I’m still waiting for Bubba Dean Stanley to complete a pass.”

Jenkins admiration for Hogan started when he first covered the local golfer for the Fort Worth newspaper and lasted a lifetime.

But pretty soon, just like before, he found his own words, his own voice. It was a blend of prairie-twang and ranch-hand nasalness softened by and cultivated with a surprising lilt of sophistication. He was willing to be funny, but only if it was true.

“Missouri’s Dan Devine looked like a man who just learned that his disease was incurable. He was leaning against a table in the silent gloom of his locker room, a towel around his neck, a paper cup of water in his hand, whip-dog tired, and his large brown eyes fixed vacantly on a lot of things that could have happened.”

Sherrod called Jenkins “a news dog” and “the most effortless writer I’ve ever known. The most confident, too. Most writers, they’re insecure to the point of hiding under the bed. Dan always had the attitude of a competent athlete—and he was a good athlete. Golf. Basketball. Pool. I think he could’ve roped buffaloes. Nothing in the world spooked Dan except snakes. Just a picture of a reptile would crater him. We spent a lot of time rolling snake photos into his typewriter. He’d come sailing in, smoking his 19th cigarette of the morning and drinking his 12th Coke. When he rolled his typewriter carriage, out would jump this hideous rattler. And Dan would beat and thresh and fall down in wastebaskets. Then he’d sigh and sit down and, once he quit trembling, write you the best 800 newspaper words you ever read.

“If every college football team had a linebacker like Dick Butkus, all fullbacks would soon be three feet tall and sing soprano.”

Dan’s inaugural and eternal hero (along with Texas footballers 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 harbour 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 his 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. He also makes six bogeys, but one of these days he’s going to eliminate the bogeys.”

“He did,” Jenkins said, “and the sports world became a more exciting place.”

Along with his loud, lovable friend, Bob Drum of the Pittsburgh Press—right to Palmer’s face between the third and fourth rounds of the 1960 Open—Jenkins belittled anyone’s chances of coming from seven strokes and 14 players behind. But when Palmer drove the par-4 first green at Cherry Hills and went out in 30, here came Drum and Jenkins on the dead run to the 10th tee. Relieving Jenkins of a Coca-Cola and a pack of Winstons, Arnie said, “Fancy meeting you guys here.”

Jenkins could say things pretty quickly, too, if he wanted. (“I don’t suppose anybody’s ever enjoyed being who they are more than Arnold enjoyed being Arnold Palmer.”) But Dan caught Palmer best at the close of his exquisitely titled book, The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate when he wrote: “This is true, I think. He is the most immeasurable of all golf champions. But this is not entirely because of all that he has won, or because of that mysterious fury with which he has managed to rally himself. It is partly because of the nobility he has brought to losing. And more than anything, it is true because of the pure, unmixed joy he has brought to trying. He has been, after all, the doggedest victim of us all.”

• • •

Like every Texan, Dan loved college football as well, though his first novel, 1972 wildfire Semi-Tough, was set in the National Football League. (“I always knew,” Jenkins said, “that someday I was going to write a book called Semi-Tough.”) Dandy Don Meredith, the ex-Cowboy quarterback who made a foil of Howard Cosell on “Monday Night Football,” appeared to have memorized every passage, sprinkling Billy Clyde Puckett references throughout his conversation (confusing Cosell).

“What I love about Jenkins,” Meredith said, “is he takes himself funny but the games serious.”

Jenkins held the classified combination to all the sainted college coaches, like Darrell Royal of the University of Texas and Paul (Bear) Bryant of Alabama, mainly because Dan was preternaturally resistant to soft soap and had a nose that twitched automatically at any odour of the bull. “You see that helmet over there?” Bryant told him in the Bear’s office at Tuscaloosa. “That’s Lee Roy Jordan’s helmet. He was the greatest hitter I ever had. You look at that helmet real close, you’ll see on there the colour of every team we played. A little orange for Tennessee, a little maroon for Mississippi State …”

“C’mon, Bear,” Dan interrupted, “who’s the artist who painted it? I know you all wash the helmets after every game.”

“Goddammit,” Bryant exclaimed, “it works on recruits!”

Dan Jenkins inside the new press centre at the Masters during the final round of the 2017 tournament in Augusta, Ga. (Dom Furore)

Texas Christian head coach Gary Patterson said, “Dan can be my biggest critic, but that’s all right because he loves TCU. There might be somebody out there who knows a lot of football, but I don’t think there’s anybody out there who knows as much about the history, not only of TCU but of all college football, as what Dan Jenkins does.” After the Horned Frogs won the 2011 Rose Bowl to complete a perfect season, Dan was shocked to receive a championship ring engraved Jenkins. The press box at TCU’s Amon G. Carter stadium also bears his name.

Old Baltimore Colts special teamer Alex Hawkins, known as Captain Who? (“Gentlemen, this is Captain Unitas, Captain Marchetti and … ”) had mounted on his living-room wall framed photographs of Johnny Unitas, Gino Marchetti, Alan Ameche, Lenny Moore, Art Donovan … and Jenkins, smoking a cigarette in front of P.J. Clarke’s in New York. “What’s Jenkins doing there?” a visitor asked with a chuckle. “I don’t know,” Hawkins said. “I guess because just looking at him makes me happy.”

After his transfer to Sports Illustrated (and, in the normal course of prosperity, Park Avenue, don’t you know), Dan threw much of his Scotch-and-water trade to Elaine’s (directions to the bathroom: take a right at Michael Caine) and Toots Shor’s (“the joint is quieter without the proprietor”), but Clarke’s was his home field. It was in Clarke’s where Howard Da Silva poured drinks for Ray Milland in the movie “The Lost Weekend,” and where, according to legend, with a publishing windfall, Jenkins bought a house in Maui over the telephone. “That’s not exactly true,” Bud Shrake said, “but it’s not completely false, either.”

Shrake and Jenkins had the same refined sense of mischief. “We’ve hired a new ringside photographer [for a championship fight at the Garden],” they told fabled SI managing editor Andre Laguerre. “Who?” Laguerre asked. “Frank Sinatra!”

Bud and Dan co-wrote a screenplay for Eddie Murphy’s “Beverly Hills Cop II” but were fired because it was too funny. “You know,” Jenkins told the producer, “that’s kind of what we were shooting for.” “You don’t have to be funny,” the man said. “Eddie be funny.” For the next 20 years, the co-conspirators looked across rooms at each other, pronounced “Eddie be funny” and howled.

Just behind golf and college football, Jenkins loved the movies (he was practically first in line to worship Meryl Streep). The film he prized the most, even above “Casablanca,” was “The Americanization of Emily,” which would be more surprising if everyone associated with that picture, from writer Paddy Chayefsky to actors James Garner, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas and James Coburn, didn’t consider it their proudest work.

Throughout “Emily,” people keep telling Garner’s character, “The balloon’s going up any day now,” referring to D-Day. “What balloon?” he always answers absently. But when a sportswriter came upon Garner in the Bel-Air Country Club grill, and said to him, “The balloon’s going up any day now,” Garner replied delightedly, “You’re a friend of Jenkins.”

Garner 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 ingénues 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 homecoming queen, June Jenkins, never June, always June Jenkins, as in “June Jenkins says hello.” Both of them had false starts in the marriage department, but then 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 probably 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 game, Sally Jenkins knew her father to be a man of “deceptive sobriety,” “veiled attentiveness to family” and a “sly conscientiousness at his work.”

She was the one who followed him into the breach, to Sports Illustrated, then the Washington Post, where for 18 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.

Dan with his children Sally and Marty. Dom Furore

• • •

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 ageing 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, after hitting balls post-round, Tiger dropped Haney off and never came in. Perhaps just that squandered opportunity of a beer with Jenkins, or at least the astonishing cluelessness it represented, was the real first cough by Ali MacGraw in “Love Story” (as it preceded Tiger’s come-from-ahead loss to Y.E. Yang in the 2009 PGA). At Woods’ peak, Jenkins wrote, “Only two things can stop him: injury or a bad marriage.” Birdie, and birdie.

Presidents of the United States did want to know Jenkins, particularly George Herbert Walker Bush, Dan’s sometime golfing partner. Whenever the presidential helicopter overflew a course, Bush telephoned Jenkins for a rundown. George and “Bar,” June Jenkins and Dan, stayed in each others’ homes. Dan called Camp David “my favourite hotel.” Driving Jenkins around in a golf cart there one daybreak, “41” (as Bush signed his letters to Dan) said, “See that porch bench in front of Holly Cabin? You might want to sit on it for a minute. That’s where Roosevelt and Churchill planned the D-Day invasion.”

When Jenkins sent Bush a friend’s book, the president wrote the author a note of thanks that began, “Any friend of Dan Jenkins … has to be investigated by the Secret Service.”

Dan’s final tally of majors would be 63 U.S. Opens, 45 Open Championships, 56 PGAs and 68 Masters, which, as he said, “is a lot of peach cobbler no matter how you slice it.” In his 80s, he reinvented himself as “The Ancient Twitterer,” which made sense. Dan was always faster on the draw than 140 characters. Thirty years apart, he thought Greg Norman looked “like the guy they always send after James Bond,” and Danny Willett looked “like a guy who could have driven the getaway car for Bonnie and Clyde.”

Giving up essays for tweets left him more time to talk writing with the young writers who queued up at his desk in the press rooms, saying stumbling things like “I’ve always wanted to be like you.” To which he might reply, “Hungover?” But then he’d answer seriously and at whatever length they preferred:

Dom Furore

“My advice doesn’t change with electricity,” he said. “Be accurate first, then entertain if it comes naturally. Never sell out a fact for a gag. Your job is to inform above all else. Know what to leave out. Don’t try to force-feed an anecdote if it doesn’t fit your piece, no matter how much it amuses you. Save it for another time. Have a conviction about what you cover. Read all the good writers that came before you and made the profession worth being part of—Lardner, Smith, Runyon, etc. Don’t just cover a beat, care-take it. Keep in mind you know more about the subject than your readers or editors. You’re close to it, they aren’t. I think I can say in all honesty that I’ve never written a sentence I didn’t believe, even if it happened to be funny.”

In 2012, Jenkins became the first living sportswriter of three (Bernard Darwin of The Times of London and Herbert Warren Wind of The New Yorker the others) to be stuffed and mounted at the World Golf Hall of Fame. “I’d follow [fellow Fort Worthers] Hogan and Nelson anywhere,” he said. “I went back and looked up everybody who’s in it and did some statistics. It turns out that I have known 95 of these people when they were living. I’ve written stories about 73 of them. I’ve had cocktails and drinks with 47 of them. And I played golf with 24 of them.”

During the Oakmont Open of 2016, as Arnold Palmer was failing but too considerate not to receive a sportswriter in his Latrobe office, Arnold said, “Before we start, let me ask you something. How’s Dan?”

One by one then, of course, Jenkins began to lose his friends.

In 2009, at 77, Bud Shrake.

Term Themes: “Bud drifted downriver at 2:45 this morning. His son Ben, a great kid, was with him at the end. He took part of my life with him. We’d been close since junior high school. But I’ll catch up with him one of these days—and we’ll be laughing at something. Bud will be buried next to [former Texas governor] Ann Richards in Austin state cemetery. Bud and Ann, who were great old Austin friends, and the last loves of each others’ lives, had arranged it a long time ago.”

(Once, Bud sneaked a news-magazine guy past a press secretary into the statehouse for dinner with Gov. Richards. “How do I refer to Bud in my story,” the man asked her during dessert. She looked at Shrake, smiled and said, “Just call him an iconoclast.”)

In 2016, at 96, Blackie Sherrod.

“My teacher,” Term Themes emailed. “Yours, too, Simon, whether you know it or not. I think you do know it. [Because I did all the driving at British Opens, he renamed me Simon after an earlier chauffeur.] I had Blackie. You had Red [Smith]. We shared them both, though, didn’t we? And Jim Murray. And Furman Bisher. Weren’t we lucky?”

Finally, on Thursday night, March 7, 2019, at 90, His Ownself.

He long ago picked out the exit music: Vera Lynn singing “We’ll meet again.” As for the carving on his stone, while he supposed he should go with something Oscar Wilde-ish like “Ah, now for the greatest adventure of them all,” the inscription he floated at the Hall was more his style: “I knew this would happen.”

What it was, was great.

Dead solid perfect.

Eddie be funny.

A news dog.

Best In Show.

The post His Ownself: Dan Jenkins, 1928-2019 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

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Augusta’s size is immense, and it has the reverse effect of a rearview mirror: things are larger in reality than they appear. Overlooking the 11th green and the impressive pines that surround it, the golfers seem like micro soldiers, each making their own trudge—some triumphant, most not—through this intricate puzzle. Perhaps they, too, are trying to make sense of Augusta’s enormous and bewildering scale.

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James Yang’s witty, colorful illustrations force us to reimagine how we see the world. Here on assignment for Golf Digest to create illustrations for the 2019 Masters preview issue, Yang spends his days roaming the grounds with his sketchbook. His unique understanding of space is exactly why Golf Digest chose him to portray such a confounding landscape. “The space seems larger in person than I imagined and the elevation cannot be caught in two dimensions. It’s almost like a surreal world.”

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The patrons might be the most powerful storyteller of all. They’re constantly pausing and gazing, and the lucky ones remember that they can use the cameras hanging around their necks to document every specific moment. The patrons who tell the most compelling stories are lured to Augusta not by any specific golfer but by the tournament’s most famous celebrity—the course itself. The opportunity to spend a day roaming inside Augusta’s gates makes the destination feel far more like “interactive art” than a golf course.

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Using the term “interactive art” to describe Augusta wasn’t my idea, I borrowed that from Digest’s Ashley Mayo, pictured here in the Media Center working over her breakfast, a common routine for her. Ashley has spent 11 years with Golf Digest and one of her duties at Augusta is to ensure that a maximum number of people see, read and consume the brand’s content. Her unique view of the game and her insight into the new ways we absorb golf are particularly interesting. Read: the future of journalism is hard at work. And she loves her coffee.

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Patrons who work their way to the front row will be rewarded with the most up-close view of world-class golf swings. Here, the awe is more personal rather than universal, and you can just hear them asking themselves, “How do they do that?”

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But perhaps there’s one person at Augusta who isn’t filled with awe. This is Dan Jenkins’ 68th consecutive year covering the Masters, which affords him special luxuries: a designated spot in the media parking lot, a prime seat in the media center, and palpable respect from every journalist in the building. He’s been credentialed for all four of the tournament’s media centers, and in this photo he stands in the current one, which is considerably fancier than any other. In his humorously dark perspective, he agrees this media center is perhaps “nicer than we deserve.”

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If the 10th hole could tell stories, it’d attract the most captive audience. You see, the 10th hole kickstarts the second nine, which on Sunday is the make-or-break moment of the Masters, and while it’s currently used as the second hole of every playoff, it used to be the first. Several green jackets have been won right here on this green. Its features are far more dramatic in person than any photo or televised coverage could convey. The 10th hole seems to have something in its soil that the other holes do not. Science doesn’t support this, but history probably does.

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And finally, let’s take a seat with Marty Hackel, the longtime fashion editor for Golf Digest who considers Masters week a “sartorial Easter.” He says it’s “the quintessential dress-up golf event of the year.” Marty sits here at the epicenter of Augusta’s social scene that unfolds under a giant oak tree just between the clubhouse and the first tee. This oak was planted in 1865 and it’s hosted some of the most important conversations in golf’s history. Sip your transfusion slowly here friends, as this may be a cocktail hour unlike any other.

Erik Anders Lang is the host of Adventures in Golf, and the Erik Lang Show, a new podcast. Golf Digest invited him to the Masters to share his first impressions of the tournament and Augusta National.

The post Portraits of places and people who bring you the Masters appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

When all of this started seven decades ago, I could never have imagined that I would someday become the Ancient Twitterer of Golf. But the fact remains that the 2017 PGA Championship will be my 230th major.

You might expect that I’ve been to so many of them, they’ve all become a blur of green jackets, USGA rulings and pork pies. However, the fact is, I have fond memories of a bunch of them, particularly those that were won by immortals instead of lurkers, meaning those competitors who are less a part of golf’s charm than they are its mysteries.

So, without further throat-clearing—and decade by decade—here are the most memorable majors I’ve been privileged to observe with my own eyes, type about with my own fingers, and tweet with my own mind.

Jenkins in his home office. (Photo by Darren Carroll)

1950-’59: Starting with Hogan

The Masters of ’51 was my first to attend and Ben Hogan’s first to win. I had never seen a golf course so green with blue ponds and pine trees that tall. In those days the Augusta National paired by whim rather than by scores. Thus Hogan, who had narrowly lost the Masters twice, went out two hours behind the co-leaders, Skee Riegel and Sam Snead. Sam stumbled, but Riegel got to the house with a 70 for 282. Ben eventually arrived with a four-under-par 68—the only sub-70 round of the day—to win by two.

Oakland Hills at the ’51 U.S. Open is still the hardest golf course I’ve ever seen. That’s where Hogan shot his amazing 67 in the last round to win. Luck of the pairings for the last 36 holes on “Open Saturday” saw Ben go out one hour ahead of Clayton Heafner, with whom he was tied, and an hour and a half ahead of the co-leaders, Bobby Locke and Jimmy Demaret. It was the only U.S. Open Hogan won sitting in the clubhouse. It was at the ceremony that Ben famously said, “I’m glad I could bring this monster to its knees.” In the locker room he called it something else.

In his Triple Crown year, Hogan led all the way at the ’53 U.S. Open on ornery old Oakmont. But Snead stayed close. Ben went out an hour ahead of Sam in the final round. Things were tight as Ben stood on the 16th tee and learned that Sam was still only one back with nine to play. So Ben solved the problem by finishing 3-3-3, a par and two birdies. Those numbers wilted Snead, and Hogan won by six shots.

For my taste, the Masters of ’54 remains the craziest of them all. On a windy course that week, it marked the last time that those two titans, Hogan and Snead, would duke it out in a major. Sam won their 18-hole playoff with a 70—thanks to a chip-in birdie at the 10th hole—to Hogan’s 71. But for all 72 holes, an unknown amateur, Billy Joe Patton, dominated the roars. Billy Joe led the first two rounds, dropped back, but recaptured the lead on Sunday with a shocking hole-in-one at No. 6. Then, just as shockingly, he frittered away the green jacket with an impetuous second shot into the creek at No. 13 that resulted in a double-bogey 7. Then another hasty decision led to a bogey 6 at the 15th hole. And he missed the playoff by only one shot! Hogan gave it away himself on Sunday with a pulled approach that found the water on No. 11 and cost him a double bogey. Overlooked in the reporting was the fact that a win in that Masters after his Triple Crown of the previous year would have given Ben a fourth straight major.

Snead (left) and Hogan shake hands just before they came to grips in the playoff for the 1954 Masters at Augusta on Monday after finishing in a 72-hole tie on Sunday. Snead won the playoff, keeping alive the tradition of the Masters that no holder has successfully defended the title. (Photo by Bettmann)

1960-’69: The Greatest U.S. Open

Maybe a new generation has to be reminded that the last day of the ’60 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills was the greatest of any U.S. Open, ever. It was the day that the current king, Arnold Palmer, outlasted the former king, Ben Hogan, and the future king, amateur Jack Nicklaus. Arnold did it with a six-under 65 in the last round, but he still needed a little help from Hogan, who hit a short wedge shot into the water on the 71st hole, and Nicklaus, who three-putted two of the last five greens. All in all, Arnold came from seven strokes and 14 players back to win.

By the time the ’62 U.S. Open at Oakmont rolled around, Arnold had won five majors, including his third Masters that April. He clearly towered over the sport. In addition, he would be competing on a course that he knew better than anyone. So how did he lose? He started by three-putting 11 times over the 72 holes, which left him in a playoff with a young Nicklaus, who had turned pro that year. But Jack was insanely long off the tee, longer than Palmer by anywhere from 50 to 80 yards on every hole. Jack won handily, 71-74. But Nicklaus would prove to be more than a surprise winner that week.

Three weeks later, Arnold played the best golf of his career when he trampled Troon—and Kel Nagle—in the ’62 Open. Palmer won by six and captured the hearts of all of Scotland. It was my first British Open to cover and test the heather with my loafers. In fact, it was my first year to cover all four majors, which permitted my pal Bob Drum to call me “the O.B. Keeler of Texas newspapers.”

Now came Lee Trevino—Super Mex, he called himself—to liven up the sports pages of America. This product of public-course gambling games in Dallas won the ’68 U.S. Open at Oak Hill, crushing the three-day leader Bert Yancey and becoming the first winner to shoot all four rounds in the 60s in our Open. Lee celebrated by saying, “I’m gonna buy the Alamo and redecorate it.”

Nicklaus (left) and Palmer pose for a photo before the final round of the 1962 U.S. Open golf tournament at Oakmont, Pa. (Photo by AP)

1970-’79: Eight of Jack’s major wins

Here was a decade ruled by household names and immortals. Nicklaus won eight majors in the ’70s, starting with the ’70 Open at St. Andrews, a thrilling event from start to finish, topped off by Jack’s win over Doug Sanders, 72-73, in their playoff on a windswept Old Course.

Nicklaus started off ’72 by winning the Masters and then the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, which was Pebble’s first time to host the Open. Jack was on track to capture the third leg of a modern Grand Slam, but Trevino had another idea. Muirfield in Scotland was where Trevino and Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin battled over the last 18 in one of the most exciting days of golf, ever. Lee’s chip-in birdie at the 71st hole was the blow that enabled him to survive Nicklaus’ closing 66. Trevino’s 71 nudged Jack by one and Jacklin by two, and in typical character, Trevino said, “I didn’t come over here to help Jack Nicklaus win the Grand Slam.”

The ’75 Masters produced one of the tournament’s most suspenseful finishes. This was the time Nicklaus went up against Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller. Jack won it by hitting one of the greatest shots of his life—a 2-iron second to No. 15 to secure a two-putt birdie, and then by sinking one of the timeliest putts of his life, a 40-foot birdie putt on No. 16 that seemed to take forever to reach the cup. But he still needed Weiskopf and Miller to miss makable birdie putts on the 18th green, which they narrowly did.

A quaint stat in Nicklaus’ career is that he finished second in seven British Opens. Perhaps as jolting to him as Muirfield was his loss to Tom Watson at Turnberry in ’77. That’s where Jack shot 65-66 over the last 36 only to lose to Tom’s 65-65. Jack was up by two with six to play, but Tom birdied 13 and then made Jack the victim of another hole-out. From off the green on No. 15, Watson putted in a speeding 30-foot birdie to pull even, primarily because the ball struck the flagstick, which kept it from continuing on to France. It was the stroke that made the difference.

Bonus choice: Seve Ballesteros won his first of five majors in the ’79 Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, my least-favorite venue. Bobby Jones won there in ’26, which is the only thing that makes it royal to me. It’s certainly not its proximity to Blackpool, the funniest seaside resort you will ever stumble across. Lytham was where Seve, forever wild off the tee, got a free drop out of a parking lot in the last round and turned it into a birdie that helped him hold off Nicklaus and Ben Crenshaw, thereby earning Seve his nickname of the Car Park Champion.

1980-’89: More Watson and Nicklaus

The ’82 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach featured Watson making great escapes and performing miracles again in the final round, which included sinking a 25-foot putt to save a par and a 40-footer for a birdie, and chipping in on the 71st hole, Pebble’s intimidating par 3, for the birdie that beat Nicklaus. Jack said he played “some of the best golf of my life” that week, but his putter turned obstinate on him. In the end, it was just another of his remarkable 19 runner-up finishes in majors.

In the ’84 Masters, it seemed like the whole world rejoiced when Ben Crenshaw finally got it done. Winning a major, I mean. It had taken him 11 years on tour and five second-place finishes in majors to do it. But it wasn’t easy. After leading with a first-round 67, he fell four behind Mark Lye after 36 and two behind Tom Kite after 54, but a closing 68 staved off Watson.

On Sunday, April 13, 1986—a date that will live in legend—Nicklaus won his record sixth Masters and his 18th professional major. And he did it with a closing 65 in a firefight with Kite, Watson, Greg Norman, Seve Ballesteros and Nick Price, a virtual Hall of Fame. It was epic. I have to confess I was among those reaching for a Kleenex at the finish.

Something else historic occurred in the last U.S. Open of the decade at Oak Hill, or Soak Hill as it became known after heavy rains drenched the course from the start through the third round. Curtis Strange became the first player since Hogan in 1950-’51 to win back-to-back Opens—and no one has done it since. Curtis had also won at The Country Club in ’88. He trailed Kite by three after 54 holes at Oak Hill, but a par 70 won by one stroke over Ian Woosnam, Chip Beck and Mark McCumber. Kite’s collapse was unforeseen, mostly to him, I’m sure, and his four-round line score still looks like a typo: 67-69-69-78.

Lee Trevino after shooting four rounds in the 60s to win the ‘68 U.S. Open at Oak Hill: ‘I’m gonna buy the Alamo and redecorate it.’

1990-’99: Faldo, Norman, Ernie & Tiger

This decade got off to an interesting start in ’90 when Hale Irwin won his third U.S. Open, at Medinah. Only four people have won more—Hogan, Nicklaus, Jones and Willie Anderson. It took Hale 91 holes to do it. First he sank a 45-foot birdie on the 72nd hole, and, after his victory lap around the green, he wound up in a tie with Mike Donald. They were still tied after shooting 74s in the playoff, but Irwin sank a 10-foot birdie on the first sudden-death hole, and the lurker was ultimately subdued. Irwin, at 45 and change, became the fourth-oldest major winner in the modern era behind Julius Boros, Nicklaus and Jerry Barber.

Faldo and Norman were the dominant players of the ’90s with Nick’s wins and Greg’s continuing near-wins. But Greg had his finest hour in the ’93 Open at Sandwich, where his final-round 64 and record 267 beat Faldo for his second and only other major.

A year later, Ernie Els won the ’94 U.S. Open at Oakmont. It would be the first of his four majors. To do it, he needed relief from an immovable object that wasn’t, and then a sudden-death win over Loren Roberts, which was after Colin Montgomerie, who had also tied, was eliminated in the 18-hole playoff. Oh, and it was also the week of the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase.

Now here came Tiger Woods in ’97. Tiger did the impossible by playing 72 holes on the huge, unforgiving Augusta National greens without a three-putt for a total of 270 to break the Masters record, win by 12 strokes and begin his string of 14 pro majors. As the first African-American to win a major, Tiger put golf on the front pages for one of the few times in history—after the feats of Francis Ouimet, Jones, Hogan and Nicklaus.

Bonus pick: Norman’s otherworldly plunge in the last round of the ’96 Masters. He had a six-shot lead going into Sunday but slow-bled it away with a painful 78, allowing Faldo to win his sixth, and last, major with a closing 67. It was Greg’s eighth, and last, runner-up spot in a major.

2000-’09: Tiger’s Time

The millennium arrived with Tiger at the top of his game. He won 12 majors in the decade, but none more spectacularly than when he conquered Pebble Beach in the 2000 U.S. Open. He opened with a 65, and despite a triple bogey in a third-round 71, he won the first of his three Opens, by 15 shots over Els and Miguel Angel Jimenez. It was stunning. You can’t do that to Pebble Beach.

After collecting the Open at St. Andrews by eight strokes, Tiger completed the second Triple Crown in golf history (after Hogan in ’53) at Valhalla in the PGA. But that victory wasn’t easy. Bob May, the greatest lurker since Jack Fleck, took him to a three-hole playoff that Woods won by one stroke with a birdie and two pars.

The millennium also featured Phil Mickelson doing something that his hordes of followers had been waiting years for him to do: win a major. He did it in the 2004 Masters, and in the toughest way possible. By birdieing five of the last seven holes to edge Els by one shot, and this included the 18-foot birdie putt he sank on the 72nd hole. It remains the longest final-hole birdie putt that ever won the Masters.

Jonathan Ferrey

Phil won his second major at the weird 2005 PGA at Baltusrol, and it was just as difficult for him. It required another final-hole birdie—a 50-foot lob chip out of high grass to within two feet of the cup—to beat Steve Elkington and Thomas Bjorn by one stroke and Davis Love III and Tiger by two. But this was on Monday morning after Sunday’s play was suspended by rain—and Tiger, having completed the 72 holes before the rain, had flown home from New Jersey. Yeah. Went home. Even though he stood a chance to win, depending on what Mickelson, Elk, Bjorn, and three others did on their remaining holes. A curious thing for anyone to do, was it not?

2010-’17: Roars for Rory

After frittering away three chances to win majors, Rory McIlroy crowned himself the Boy King by running away with the U.S. Open at Congressional in 2011, gliding home eight shots ahead of Jason Day. The year before, Rory had tied for third in the British Open and PGA, and two months before Congressional he’d blown the Masters with a surreal 80 after leading for three rounds. He achieved the 80 by sending a tee shot on No. 10 onto the doorstep of one of the cottages for a triple bogey, then four-putting No. 12 for a double. Kids today.

Mickelson shot the greatest round of his life in the final round of the 2013 Open at Muirfield to win his fifth major. It was a five-under 66 that brought him from five strokes and eight players behind. Among those he passed were Tiger, Adam Scott, Henrik Stenson and Lee Westwood. Phil finished in style with four birdies over the last six holes.

I do believe the 2014 PGA at Valhalla was the first major I ever covered that finished in the dark. It was also the most exciting PGA in my memory. And it produced a golf course with the best drainage system ever. There came a sudden log-floater on Sunday, and how the layout drained off those rivers and became playable again that day was a miracle. As we know, Rory topped Mickelson, the old silver collector, at the finish as he added this title to the Open he’d won a month earlier at Hoylake.

But exactly one year later, Rory, despite his four majors, surrendered his Boy King title to the 21-year-old Jordan Spieth, who startled the world not only by winning the Masters but by tying Tiger’s 72-hole record while doing it. The young Texan’s popularity continued to grow throughout the year as he won the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay and darn near won the Open at St. Andrews and the PGA at Whistling Straits. Spieth’s finishes in the big four that year—1-1-4-2—were about as good as you could do without Bobby Jones’s name coming up.

Bonus pick: Spieth’s incomparable win at Royal Birkdale this year. How does any golfer overcome a terrible collapse and redirect his poor frame of mind in the last round of a major with just six holes to play while facing a certain tragedy? Jordan made “the bogey that won the Open,” then followed it up with a streak of birdie-eagle-birdie-birdie. I throw this in although I wasn’t there: doctors’ orders to avoid overseas travel in the future. It’s OK. I’ve covered 45 British Opens. That’s enough bubble and squeak for one man.

I guess I don’t need to say what a pleasure it was to have witnessed all those championships for all those years. Of course, it would have been even more fun if it hadn’t been for all the deadlines that went along with them.

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