Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate (Classics of Golf)

Rating:
Summary: Dead Solid Look At Vintage Pro Golf
Review: 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 about him 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 ESPN. 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.

Rating:
Summary: The funniest golf book ever written!!!
Review: 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!!

Rating:
Summary: my absolute favorite book
Review: 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.