By Mike O'Malley
Photo by Dom Furore
June 2009
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. -- A man hits the 200-major mark, and you raise a glass in his honor.
Dan Jenkins is a unique talent, and Wednesday his colleagues honored him in the U.S. Open media center at Bethpage. His latest book, Jenkins at the Majors: Sixty Years of the World's Best Golf Writing, from Hogan to Tiger, has highlights from his previous 199 majors (198 that he has described for readers, plus the 1941 Open at Colonial that he attended as an 11-year-old in his hometown of Fort Worth). Thursday's opening round of the Open will be No. 200.
At Wednesday's ceremony the Golf Digest Writer-at-Large received a 30-pound bronze-on-marble bust of His Ownself, cast from the clay likeness created by artist Karen Caldicott for a book excerpt in the June issue of the magazine. Those in attendance Wednesday received Jenkins bobblehead dolls, and a book signing that followed included a few of the tart comments that have been a hallmark of his style.
"There's probably not a sportswriter in this room who hasn't grown up reading Dan Jenkins and at one time or another trying to write like him," said Golf Digest Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Jerry Tarde, who honored Jenkins along with USGA Executive Director David B. Fay. "I think it's unanimously agreed there have been three giants of golf journalism who stand above the rest. Two of them are in the World Golf Hall of Fame: Bernard Darwin and Herb Wind. And one is still to come as a Hall of Famer."
Added Fay, alluding to Jenkins' 200th major: "Like Byron Nelson winning 11 in a row, that record may never be eclipsed."
Jenkins, who will turn 80 on Dec. 2, is filing 140-character one-liners this week as part of GolfDigest.com's Open coverage. When a writer dropped by and said, "I never thought I'd see the day: Dan Jenkins on Twitter," Jenkins replied, "It's a new world."
One of Jenkins' opening salvos for the site: "This will be my 56th U.S. Open. After my 100th, maybe the USGA will finally give me a parking space." That was followed by this: "Counting all the majors, this will be my 200th. That's four years of my life. Some people waste theirs. But all I ever wanted to be was a sportswriter."
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