Clear Thinkers favorites Dan Jenkins, the dean of American golf writers, is making his first trek to TPC Sawgrass in a decade this week to cover my favorite tournament, The Players (which includes the always fun video of the 17th hole).
Geoff Shackelford scores this interview with Jenkins (which is a follow-up on this one from last year), and it is clear that Jenkins is already in mid-season form. The first part of the answer below is from last year’s interview, the second from this year’s:
The men’s tour sucks. Everybody drives it 340 and shoots 63. I’ve never heard of half their names, and don’t care to know them until they get back to me with two majors.
My fee for talking to Tiger Woods is going up every day. I’ve tried for 10 years to get a one-on-one with him—and can’t. Why? Because Mark Steinberg says, "We have nothing to gain."
Can you imagine what the men’s tour would look like if Tiger and Phil both suffered career-ending injuries? I’ll tell you. It would look like what it looks like today when they aren’t in the field. It would increase interest in polo.
. . .[I]in my declining years, I have arrived at the point where I don’t give a damn about anything but the four majors and the Ryder Cup. They are important. The regular tour sucks.
I should mention that the regular tour didn’t used to suck. It used to be quite glamorous, when the LA Open was always first, when the Crosby was the Crosby, when the players wore snappy clothes and movie stars hung around them, when the Florida swing had its own charm, same for Texas, and so on. But mainly when every winner was SOMEBODY.
I live in the past. It was a better world.
No doubt that more than a few of the folks attending the tournament this week will, at least part of the time, be enjoying Jenkins’ classic “Mankind’s 10 Stages of Drunkenness” from his 1981 novel, Baja Oklahoma:
0) Sober
1) Witty and Charming
2) Rich and Powerful
3) Benevolent
4) Clairvoyant
5) F**k Dinner
6) Patriotic
7) Crank Up the Enola Gay
8) Witty and Charming, Part II
9) Invisible
10) Bulletproof