Dan Jenkins

Daniel Thomas Jenkins (December 2, 1928 – March 7, 2019) was an American author and sportswriter who often wrote for Sports Illustrated.^[1] He was also a high-standard amateur golfer who played college golf at Texas Christian University.

Jenkins was born in 1928 and raised in Fort Worth, Texas,^[2] where he attended R. L. Paschal High School and Texas Christian University (TCU), where he played on the varsity golf team.^[3]

Jenkins worked for many publications including the Fort Worth Press, Dallas Times Herald, Playboy, and Sports Illustrated, where among other things he covered the 1966,^[4] 1967,^[5] 1969,^[6] and 1971^[7] versions of the college football Game of the Century. In 1985, he retired from Sports Illustrated and began writing books full-time, although he maintained a monthly column in Golf Digest magazine.^[8][9]

Larry King called Jenkins "the quintessential Sports Illustrated writer" and "the best sportswriter in America." Jenkins wrote numerous works and over 500 articles for Sports Illustrated. In 1972, Jenkins wrote his first novel, Semi-Tough.

In December 2014, Jenkins published an article in Golf Digest titled "My (Fake) interview with Tiger; or how it plays out in my mind."^[10] In the piece, which featured images of a Tiger Woods lookalike in golfing gear, Jenkins mocks Woods's reputation in an imaginary interview with the athlete. Though the piece was clearly marked as parody, the champion golfer requested an apology from the magazine. Woods stated that the piece "fails as parody, and is really more like a grudge-fueled piece of character assassination."^[11]

Jenkins's daughter Sally Jenkins is a sports columnist for The Washington Post.^[1]

• 1993 Texas Golf Hall of Fame, Distinguished Service Category^[12]
• 2012 PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing^[13]
• 2012 World Golf Hall of Fame, Lifetime Achievement Category^[14]
• 2013 Red Smith Award^[15]
• 2015 Old Tom Morris Award^[16]
• 2017 Ring Lardner Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism^[17]

• Jenkins, Dan (1970). The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-66750-4.
• Jenkins, Dan (1972). Semi-Tough. Atheneum. ASIN B000OL8MP0.
• Jenkins, Dan (1973). Saturday's America. Berkley Books. ISBN 978-0425023952.
• Jenkins, Dan (1974). Dead Solid Perfect. Atheneum. ISBN 978-0689106200.
• Jenkins, Dan; Shrake, Edwin (1976). Limo: A Novel. Atheneum. ISBN 978-0689107344.
• Jenkins, Dan (September 1, 1981). Baja Oklahoma. Atheneum. ISBN 978-7018982948.
• Jenkins, Dan (October 1, 1984). Life Its Ownself. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671460242.
• Jenkins, Dan (October 1, 1988). Fast Copy: A Novel. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671602062.
• Jenkins, Dan (September 1, 1989). You Call It Sports, But I Say It's a Jungle Out There. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671690212.
• Jenkins, Dan (October 15, 1991). You Gotta Play Hurt. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671683320.
• Jenkins, Dan (September 1, 1993). Bubba Talks: Of Life, Love, Sex, Whiskey, Politics, Movies, Food, Foreigners, Teenagers, Football. Anchor. ISBN 978-0385470797.
• Jenkins, Dan (May 1, 1994). Fairways and Greens. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385474252.
• Jenkins, Dan; Stout, Glenn, eds. (November 15, 1995). The Best American Sports Writing 1995. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0395700709.
• Jenkins, Dan (September 15, 1998). Rude Behavior. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385470001.
• Jenkins, Dan (August 7, 2001). The Money-Whipped Steer-Job Three-Jack Give-Up Artist: A Novel. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385497237.
• Jenkins, Dan (May 3, 2005). Slim and None. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385508520.
• Jenkins, Dan (June 3, 2008). The Franchise Babe: A Novel. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385519106.
• Jenkins, Dan (May 5, 2009). Jenkins at the Majors: Sixty Years of the World's Best Golf Writing, from Hogan to Tiger. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385519137.
• Jenkins, Dan (March 4, 2014). His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385532259.
• Jenkins, Dan (January 1, 2017). Stick a Fork in Me: A Novel. Gallery Books. ISBN 978-1507201473.
• Jenkins, Dan (November 11, 2019). The Reunion at Herb's Café. TCU Press. ISBN 978-0875657271.

• Dan Jenkins on Golf Digest
• Dan Jenkins at the World Golf Hall of Fame
• Podcast with Dan Jenkins in September, 2018