Customer Reviews

The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate: A Love-Hate Celebration of Golfers and Their Game (Fireside Sports Classic)

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I first read this book in 1977 as a requirement for my high scool golf team.I was actually sent to the principal`s office because my laughter was disrupting other student`s in the library! The antics of the gang at Goat Hills is a absolute scream. It`s Jenkin`s at his best. I `m buying extra copies for my foresome to read at the 19th hole!!

Before Tiger, before Jack, before Big Bertha, there was Arnold Palmer and a 40-week season where golf's greatest players paid cost for their wardrobes and counted themselves lucky being able to spend a weekend at the Holiday Inn.

Dan Jenkins followed the sport closely as a columnist with Sports Illustrated, and his work is still regarded as definitive examples of sports journalism. At its best, "The Dogged Victims Of Inexorable Fate" documents what made golf special in the 1960s before it became the superstar circuit it is today.

On Palmer, the King of the sport during that decade, though he never won a major after 1964, Jenkins writes movingly in one essay: "He is the most immeasurable of golf champions. But this is not entirely true because of all that he has won, or because of the 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."

Most of the time, Jenkins foregoes the heartstrings and settles for the funny bone. Take his lead on the PGA Tour's most august tournament: "It is commonly known among a select group of Masters goers that many of the best shots of the tournament are served in tall paper cups on the upstairs porch of the Augusta National Golf Club." About a freespending golfer of an earlier era: "If Jimmy Demaret had won the money he would have been 8 to 5 to leave it in a bar or blow it on a handmade pair of orange and purple saddle oxfords."

Funny stuff. Jenkins also scores points in summing up the histories of tournaments and eras in ways that are definitive and deceptively breezy. Reading him is to get a sense of how golf writing moved from the stodgy versifying of Herbert Warren Wind to the snarky cool of Rick Reilly and Alan Shipnuck, not to mention the gang in the 18th hole tower at CBS. For that, and other things, he may well have been the most revolutionary golf writer, and this book offers some prize examples why.

But there's something to be said for stodgy, too. Wind was not a snappy writer, but he was a measured and thorough one, and reading his account of golf's beginnings in America feels more like the real deal. Jenkins too often uses situations and characters as backboards for his zings and one-liners, then moves on, whereas Wind or another writer might linger and find something of value. Jenkins doesn't quote the players so much as channel them through his narrative, and though it is readable, it's suspect, too. He's also an impossibly snobby overdog, focusing on the favorites and ignoring the field. He seems to watch every tournament from the most exclusive part of the clubhouse, in the company of CEOs and Ben Hogan. He doesn't fawn, but he doesn't find a seat closer to the crowd, either.

At least two of his essays, a faux-Runyanesque tale of a freeloader living off Tour luminaries and an account of a round with several Hollywood stars, seem like excuses for hobnobbing and overstay their welcome. But the rest vary in quality from illuminating to awe-inspiring.

The second-to-last piece, "The Glory Game," is considered one of sports writing's all-time best. It's a really great first-person account about a group of compulsive gamblers who play on a Fort Worth muni course that whips through its longer-than-average length. Also terrific is "The Big Window," which details how CBS covered the 1966 Masters by putting the reader in the control room with blustery producer Frank Chirkinian.

Jenkins' book isn't up there on the top shelf of my golf library with Wind's "The Story Of American Golf," Shipnuck's "Blood, Sweat & Tees," or John Feinstein's "A Good Walk Spoiled," but if you like your sportswriting salty and dry, this is a good jar of peanuts to dig into.

This is my absolute favorite book, of any kind, on any topic, by any writer. (And I've written books of my own!) It's simply great, and repays rereading again and again.

I bought this book when it was first published and I absolutely loved it. I was in college and was so envious of Jenkins and his cronies. Doesn't every guy want to have a group of crazy friends who can act outrageously without repercussions? Don't we guys all want to know someone who can drive up directly onto the golf course in a Caddy and bet anyone he doesn't have a duck in the car? When I was in my dorm sharing a room with a nerd and pretty much having no friends I thought these guys were the coolest guys in the world. It's the funniest sports book, maybe any book I've ever read. If you love golf you will love the history of the sport from a master sports writer. Even if you don't you will enjoy reading about the way the pro tour was prior to todays' sanitized version. Those guys certainly had some character. If I can figure out how to do it I want to send my first copy to Jenkins and have him sign it for me.

Dan Jenkins' "bonus" golf pieces for SI collected in this volume are not only side-splittingly funny,but also penetrating about the agony of golf. The two great articles are "Goat Hill" and "Lockwrists and Cagecases." "Goat Hill" recalls Jenkins college days at TCU where most of his time was spent at a run-down muny without grass that brought together a cast of characters who would make any
bet, break any club, press any hole for the love of the game. "Lockwrists and Cage Cases" is the article that got Jenkins hired by SI in 1962. In it, every single PGA professional from Arnold Palmer to Billy Casper swears that he's not a good putter despite what others might say. Then there is Tommy Bolt who everyone knows is a horrible putter and Ben Hogan who wanted to do away with putting altogether. Still relevant fifty years after it was written, the article along makes this book worthy of purchase.

As usual, dealing with Amazon, and another source for a very difficult book to find, was wonderful. The condition was as advertised, and the service was quick and efficient.

Every year before the British Open I haul out my copy of Dogged Victims and read once again Dan Jenkins' non-fiction account of playing on a links course. Before long, I'm reading out loud to my wife, who -- so far as I know -- has never set foot on a fairway. We have our best laugh of the year, tuck our tattered copy away on the sports book shelf, and look forward to the following summer.

OK, I'll confess. Before the tucking, I sneak out in the backyard with a pint of Junior and read Jenkins' remembrance of Goat Hills. I grew up caddying and loading clubs on carts at a course about a faded persimmon three wood from my house, and this premium example of the sportswriter's art takes me right back to those twilight caddy tournaments -- a ball, a mallet head putter, a flashlight and a pocketful of tees. Listen this July -- you'll hear me howling in the woods.

If you love golf and you haven't read this book, don't die yet.