Dan Jenkins to be inducted into World Golf Hall of Fame

[Raiders]

I know Jenkins excels in writing about golf, but I miss his football stories to this day. Those stories had muscle, grit and everything else that comes with big-time football gamers.

 

[Versatile]

I know Jenkins excels in writing about golf, but I miss his football stories to this day. Those stories had muscle, grit and everything else that comes with big-time football gamers.

Agreed.

In the land of the pickup truck and cream gravy for breakfast, down where the wind can blow through the walls of a diner and into the grieving lyrics of a country song on a jukebox—down there in dirt-kicking Big Eight territory—they played a football game on Thanksgiving Day that was mainly for the quarterbacks on the field and for self-styled gridiron intellectuals everywhere. The spectacle itself was for everybody, of course, for all of those who had been waiting weeks for Nebraska to meet Oklahoma, or for all the guys with their big stomachs and bigger Stetsons, and for all the luscious coeds who danced through the afternoons drinking daiquiris out of paper cups. But the game of chess that was played with bodies, that was strictly for the cerebral types who will keep playing it into the ages and wondering whether it was the greatest collegiate football battle ever. Under the agonizing conditions that existed, it well may have been.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1085606/index.htm

 

[UNCGrad]

One of my heroes. God, I love this guy.

I just hope Kenny Lee Puckett gets to do the intro speech...

 

[spurtswriter]

fork golf. Viva Dan Jenkins.

 

[clutchcargo]

Jenkins is a true master. Good guy too.

 

[hondo]

I know Jenkins excels in writing about golf, but I miss his football stories to this day. Those stories had muscle, grit and everything else that comes with big-time football gamers.

Agreed.

In the land of the pickup truck and cream gravy for breakfast, down where the wind can blow through the walls of a diner and into the grieving lyrics of a country song on a jukebox—down there in dirt-kicking Big Eight territory—they played a football game on Thanksgiving Day that was mainly for the quarterbacks on the field and for self-styled gridiron intellectuals everywhere. The spectacle itself was for everybody, of course, for all of those who had been waiting weeks for Nebraska to meet Oklahoma, or for all the guys with their big stomachs and bigger Stetsons, and for all the luscious coeds who danced through the afternoons drinking daiquiris out of paper cups. But the game of chess that was played with bodies, that was strictly for the cerebral types who will keep playing it into the ages and wondering whether it was the greatest collegiate football battle ever. Under the agonizing conditions that existed, it well may have been.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1085606/index.htm

And from the same story, one of my favorite paragraphs in sportswriting, on Johnny Rodgers' punt return:

"It was one of those insanely thrilling things in which a single player, seized by the moment, twists, whirls, slips, holds his balance and, sprinting, makes it all the way to the goal line. Rodgers went 72 yards for the touchdown, one which keeps growing larger in the minds of all. And afterward, back on the Nebraska bench, he did what most everybody in Norman, Okla. probably felt like doing: he threw up."

 

[Don Perryman]

Damn, he's 82. His fiction writing was excellent as well. I thought "Fast Copy" was really good stuff. I go back and read it again every couple of years.

 

[Moderator1]

yeah, you don't get to 210 majors without starting young and staying old.

Damn right about his fiction. Dead Solid Perfect may be his best, though it didn't get as much acclaim as Semi Tough.

 

[Moderator1]

Potattus Frye, by the way, may be my favorite Jenkins' fictional name ever. And this was a guy who has a boatload of them.

Mr. Frye, if I recall correctly, played for Climpson

 

[Don Perryman]

Then there were the twins in Sometimes You Gotta Play Hurt - Lemonjello and Limejello

 

[Huggy]

I have no interest in golf unless Dan Jenkins is writing about it. Loved the monthly sports column he did for Playboy back in the 80s. Some great stuff there.

Loved the two guys he had fighting for the heavyweight title in You Gotta Play Hurt: Porkchop Perkins (or something like that) and Car Radio Jones (again, it's been a while since i read it maybe I am confusing him with someone else in that book).

 

[Ben_Hecht]

yeah, you don't get to 210 majors without starting young and staying old.

Damn right about his fiction. Dead Solid Perfect may be his best, though it didn't get as much acclaim as Semi Tough.

. . . as well as serving as searchlight inspiration for at least one other prominent fiction writer . . .