FORT WORTH, TEXAS
|
The years
melt away. As he thumbs through
photos from yesteryear, it is 1941 again
and he’s 11 in a striped shirt and khaki
britches, a boy at his first major. It’s
1953 and he is beside the great Ben
Hogan. It’s 1962 and there he is in the
locker room at Royal Troon “looking like
Arnold Palmer’s press officer.”
In the space of a few hours, the
conversation will be peppered with
weekends spent at Camp David with
President George H. W. Bush and a
round with His Royal Highness, Moroc-
co’s King Hassan II. It’s story time and
a master is at work. So, fore, please.
Dan Jenkins, member of the World Golf
Hall of Fame class of 2012, is on the tee.
Pull up a chair, sit back and enjoy a trip
down memory lane. That’s what I did.
We’re in the den of his ranch-style
house in Fort Worth, Tex., birthplace
of the 82-year-old Jenkins, who once
described it as “The All-American
town. Red, white and blue. Home of
the redneck, the white undershirt and
the blue norther.”
This is where he has banged out
so many leads that lassoed, where he
penned lines that left us weak with
laughter. In the golf-writing profession,
there’s no bigger figure than Jenkins,
who cut his teeth at
The Fort Worth Press
,
made his name at
Sports Illustrated
, and
during the last quarter-century at
Golf
Digest
continues to be a master humor-
ist, with an ear for the perfect quote, and
a gift for turning a phrase.
On May 5, Jenkins will be enshrined
at the World Golf Hall of Fame in St.
Augustine, Fla. Brodie Waters, the Hall’s
(Clockwise from top left) Jenkins with Arnold Palmer after Jenkins’ first British Open at Royal
Troon in 1962; Jenkins was an accomplished golfer, who captained the TCU golf team; Jenkins
reminices while sorting through photos in his Fort Worth home.
director of member relations, is the
point person for today’s expedition and
sits at the Jenkins dining room table
scanning images for use in his inductee
exhibit. Nearby, Andy Hunold, the Hall’s
curator, is giving the white-glove treat-
ment, wrapping items in tissue paper
and cataloguing the collection.
In less than a month, he will turn
this mountain of memorabilia into an
exhibit encased in two 43-inch wide
by 94-inch high by 14-inch deep glass
cases in the museum’s Shell Hall. Jen-
kins looks at the stack of awards he has
amassed and jokes, “There’s a lot of
stuff they give you for living too long.”
Hunold throws his head back and
laughs. He can’t hide his excitement at
the treasure trove Jenkins is entrust-
ing to or, in some cases, loaning to the
Hall. Each article of memorabilia tells a
story. Here is the machine where para-
graphs glided off his fingers, where
four
New York Times
best sellers were
crafted. And so begins a story about his
first typewriter:
“It was an old Remington. My aunt
found it in an attic and had it worked
over and gave it to me when I prob-
ably was 11 or 12 years old and I
started playing around with it,” Jen-
kins recalls. “I copied stories out of
the newspaper and pretended I wrote
them. That’s when I knew I was going
to be a newspaperman.”
A week before Jenkins graduated
high school, he was hired to cover golf
by Blackie Sherrod, the sports editor of
the
Fort Worth Press
. “I went to college
He was still a collegian when he
was dispatched to cover The Masters
in 1951. After he graduated from TCU
in 1953, he continued to write for the
paper. Now, as Hunold packs away his
Olympia, Jenkins takes a final admiring
glance and resumes waxing nostalgic
for his trusty typewriter.
“I remember when the great miracle
came,” Jenkins says. “The lightweight
Olivetti meant you could ditch the
400-pound Smith-Corona that you had
to lug up all those stadium steps. It (the
Olivetti) was as big then as the laptop
was later.”
Jenkins retired his typewriter in
1996, when his son, Marty, taught him
to use a computer for writing and send-
ing email. It took five years to learn the
modern-day writer’s crutch that is cut
and paste. “I don’t write that badly,” he
says. “I didn’t need it.”
As if proof was required, Jenkins
hands over a framed thank you note from
Ben Hogan on his company letterhead
dated May 7, 1959, for a story Jenkins
wrote about him. Hogan was his sun and
moon, and no one had a better ringside
seat than Jenkins to witness his genius.
Jenkins doubled as an accomplished
local amateur golfer, captain of the golf
team at TCU (his college letter is on its
way to the Hall), and played around 40
times with Hogan during his prime.
“I’d watch him practice and he’d say,
‘Let’s go play,’ ” Jenkins recalls. “One
time, we came in afterwards and wew-
ere sitting around having a drink. He
said, ‘You’ve got length, which you can’t
buy, and you can putt. If you work A
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