Fairways and Greens - Hardcover

Jenkins, Dan

4.04

100 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385474253 ISBN 13: 9780385474252

Publisher: Doubleday, 1994

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A distinguished sportswriter and best-selling author of Semi-Tough brings together a collection representing some four decades of writings on golf, offering essays on classic tournaments, the great players, and anecdotes about the PGA tour.

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Review:

The fun in reading Dan Jenkins's golf writing is that no matter how askew his slant or how teed off he may be about something, he can never hide his passion for the game and the respect he has for the players who've nearly mastered it. This collection of nearly three dozen selections from his work at Sports Illustrated and Golf Digest is alternately irreverent and revering, continually insightful, and often hilarious.

Both his writing and his thinking are as bold as a six-foot putt uphill: his deep respect for the Ben Hogans, Tommy Bolts, and Byron Nelsons is as palpable as his disgust with the game's corporatization and the self-important foolishness of swing theorists and TV announcers. A fine golfer himself, Jenkins isn't content to just sit on the sidelines opining; "Golf with the Boss" is a luscious romp around the links with President Bush, and "You'll Not Do That Here, Laddie," has him touring, and suffering on, the courses of the game's birthplace in Scotland.

Years after the fact, his reportage continues to resonate and spin like a crisp drive on a chilly morning. "It was, I still believe, the most remarkable day in golf since Mary Queen of Scots found herself three down to an unbathed bagpiper and invented the back nine... What happened?" he asks in "Whoo-Ha, Arnie!," his dramatic account of the 1960 U.S. Open. "Oh, not much. Just a routine collision of three decades at one historical intersection. On that afternoon, in the span of just 18 holes, we witnessed the arrival of Nicklaus, the coronation of Palmer, and the end of Hogan." To be sure, it was one for the ages, and Jenkins's prose etches it in stone with dead-solid perfection. --Jeff Silverman

From the Inside Flap:

"Tell me about plumbing, fine. Tell me about carpentry, terrace gardening, the timer on VCRs. Go ahead and explain cellophane. Tell me about all of these things, but don't try to tell me about golf, okay? Golf I know."--Dan Jenkins
After four decades of covering golf-not to mention "playing scratch from the blues and gambling for my own money when I didn't have any," Dan Jenkins most definitely knows golf. He may, in fact, know the game better than anyone on the planet. Now, his latest and long awaited collection brings together his best writing on the game, from serious pieces on timeless classics like the 1954 Masters and the 1960 Open to humorous takes on everything from the best things in golf-the best bar is Club XIX in the Pebble Beach Lodge-to his unrequited love of golf carts. With a cast that includes everyone from Hogan, Palmer, and Nicklaus to all of the lurkers and spoilers on the PGA Tour, the book is a timeless addition to great golf literature.

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