Fairways and Greens

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