During my many years covering golf, it always was a thrill to know I was sharing the press room with Dan Jenkins. I know many of my colleagues felt the same way.
Looking forward to reading the great one’s new book, His Ownself. In a review, Dwight Garner of the New York Times writes that Jenkins was entertaining as always.
I woke up with a smile on my face every morning during the two or three days I spent reading “His Ownself.” It’s a casual and sly sportswriter’s memoir, albeit with a few egregious missteps that I’ll get to, one of those books that reminds you that good stories happen only to people who can tell them.
Mr. Jenkins has had, in his recounting, a busy, lucky and friend-filled life. If he tends to boil everything and everyone down to an anecdote, as if he were preparing to be the keynote speaker at the Great Sports Banquet in the Sky, well, at 84, he’s allowed. And his material isn’t bad at all.
Later, Garner writes:
Mr. Jenkins got to know almost everyone who mattered in sports, from Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer to Bear Bryant and Howard Cosell, but most of his best stories are about journalists and the writing life.
He remembers the editor who told him, “See how many paragraphs you can go before you put the score in.” He recalls a “cocktail-motivated routine” he had with another Sports Illustrated writer, Roy Blount Jr., about how to respond to people who say, “I saw your book.” Part of this routine went — and I recommend these lines to writers everywhere — “You saw my book? What was it doing?”
Garner, though, was critical on one point.
His anti-P.C. campaign is where his geezer routine crosses over into something worse. On Twitter in 2010, writing about the Masters Golf Tournament, he made a racist joke that got him into trouble: “Y. E. Yang is only three shots off the lead. I think we got takeout from him last night.”
Mr. Jenkins’s memoir would have been a good place to apologize, so we could all move on, but he doesn’t. Instead, he doubles down, printing several similarly derogatory and sophomoric Asian jokes. Now this writer is going to be partly remembered for this stuff, which is a shame.
I haven’t seen the book, so I can’t comment about Garner’s view here. Jenkins, though, has pretty made a career skewering everything and everybody in his books. I expect it is in the context of Jenkins being Jenkins again.
Regardless, I heard Jenkins tell many stories during my days in the golf press rooms. Now I can’t wait to read them.
“Jenkins, though, has pretty [much] made a career skewering everything and everybody in his books. I expect it is in the context of Jenkins being Jenkins again.”
Of course this is the context. Are you trying to excuse him? The point is that it’s racist and beneath any writer, especially an author who’s sophisticated enough to recognize a legitimate target for ridicule.
The most overrated golf writer of all time. Stopped having anything new to offer around 1970. The perfect example of “Get off of my lawn” sports writing. For the record, Charles Price is the most underrated golf writer of all time.