Customer Reviews

Jenkins at the Majors: Sixty Years of the World's Best Golf Writing, from Hogan to Tiger

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This book is a collection of short articles about the golf majors during Jenkins' career that spanned the 50s through the 00s (and is still going by the way). As such, it makes perfect bed-time reading. Three or four of the 94 "episodes" is just about right before turning out the light.
Jenkins is a prime example of the "old-fashioned" sportswriter, wrting in his humorous yet insightful down-home Texas style.
I have just two complaints: First, that Jenkins repeatedly includes the U.S. Amateur when counting major wins for Nicklaus, Woods, et al. The Amateur was a major when Bobby Jones won it. It had lost that status by the time Nicklaus won two in the late 50s. And it had LONG AGO lost that status when Woods won his in the 90s.
Second, Jenkins accepts Ben Hogan's claim that he (Hogan) won 5 U.S. Opens -- with Hogan, Jenkins, and pretty much nobody else counting the 1942 Hale American Open as a "war-time Open". Sorry, it was not the Open and not a major. Just as the Players Championship is not a major today.

Arnold Palmers win at the 1960 Masters: Venturi finished at 283, Finsterwald at 284, but Jenkins writes that Finsterwald would have tied Venturi if he had not been assessed a 2-stroke penalty in the first round that changed a 69 to a 71. That doesn't add up! Later in the same article, he writes that a Palmer birdie on #17 pulled him within one shot of Venturi, and then Palmer sank the winning birdie putt on #18. If he trailed by one shot, a birdie would have tied him with Venturi. ????? Who proof-read this chapter?

Dan Jenkins is the dean of American golf writers, by his count he's covered 197 Major Championships over 60 years for various publications, beginning with the 1951 U. S. Open, he has selected 94 of the best for our perusal. What lifts this book above the usual collections of columns by sportswriters is it's superb organization. It's organized chronologically so that it's easy for the reader to follow the march of golf history forward. It's a fast, fun read, the columns are short so the pages really fly by, this could also be seen as a negative however, as the medium of a column rarely offers one the space to give an in-depth, hole-by hole account of who won and how. Jenkins is usually limited to who won, by how much, and the general impression the tournament left him with. Luckily for us, thanks to his considerable skills, this feels like more than enough in most cases.

Jenkins at the Majors is absolutely essential reading for anyone who loves the game, especially for those fans whose golf consciousness began in the Tiger era.

If you're even a semi-serious golf history fan, you'll enjoy "Jenkins at the Majors", and if you've read Jenkins' golf fiction (and you should...) you'll recognize some tastes of actual events that he incorporated into the lives of his fictional golfer characters Kenny Lee Puckett and Bobby Joe Grooves.

There will be some who get their backs up at his Hogan-centric views of professional golf, but he comes by his prejudices honestly, as they say, as he is a fellow Fort Worth native, and covered Mr Hogan's career since he was a college journalist. As a Texan twice-removed myself, and a golfer who was introduced to the sport nearly a quarter-century ago (pre-Tiger) by the writings of Mr Jenkins, I share his reverence for Mr Hogan, and the opportunity to read his coverage of the major tourneys which occurred before I came to the sport (and many before I was born...) was a real treat.

Like any fan of Dan Jenkins, I have always gone out of my way to read almost everything
he has written through the years. Since this is a compilation of many (but, unfortunately,
not all) of his recaps of golf's majors thru the years it is great to see his writing evolve.
The only problem I have with the book is that many of the articles are condensed. Still a
great read, especially for anyone late to the game where Dan Jenkins is concerned.

This book contains examples of Jenkins' best sports writing - funny, incisive, informative. A must for readers of sports.

I never get tired of Dan Jenkins. This book is a great reminder of why that is. Don't rush through it. The articles are short, and should be savored.

Simply put, Dan Jenkins sees things others don't see, hears stories others don't hear and has a way of presenting those perspectives and stories that is second to none. None.

As he himself writes, his career (and this book)"covers Hogan and Snead to Tiger and Phil, with a couple of guys named Palmer and Nicklaus in between."

Not a bad career, a great one in fact, and this book offers the best of his work. His writing makes the past come alive like the old TV series, "You Are There" And Jenkins does take us there again, as if we were there when the last putt falls and the last story told.

A thought: This book is a good read anywhere, but like Reader's Digest, it's a great reads in what Sir Winston Churchill called "the smallest room in the house..." Chapters and stories are short and concise, just as they appeared in print and just right length for a book like this.

"Jenkins at the Majors" is Jenkins at his best. And golf at its most memorable.

60 years of Majors - written by one of the funniest and unique sportswriters ever. A must have for true golf fans - he captures the greatest moments - and usually has you laughing the whole time.

Pretty much what the title suggests-a collecton of Dan Jenkins' writing on golf's major championships. Jenkins is a fine writer, and his account of many of the sport's greatest moments makes for good reading.

However...

During an account of the 1985 US Open, in which Andy North defeated TC Chen at Oakland Hills Country Club, Jenkins writes the following phrases:

"Does anything made in Taiwan last more than three days?"

"Confucius say, 'Bad head give Andy North Open.'"

"..just when he was threatening to turn Oakland Hills into so much Moo Goo Gai Pan."

"He was the Orient Express. He had taken this Open to the cleaners. He was the Bridges of Toko Chen. He was Fu's Rush In. Until finally he became No Tickee, No Trophy."

"Mr. Chen, however, didn't look all that outwardly perturbed, being inscrutable."

Really? Seriously? In 1985, that was acceptable speech? I can't believe that got printed, never mind reprinted.

If those words were written in 1945, I would give them a pass. Maybe even 1955.

But in 1985, and especially to be reprinted in 2009? And to be read and reviewed by supposedly intelligent people like David Halberstam, Larry King, Mike Lupica, and Roy Blount Jr.?

Sorry, that's racist. And it spoiled an otherwise enjoyable book.