Although it was mildly interesting to watch Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk and Colin Montgomerie’s choking competition yesterday afternoon that handed the U.S. Open title to Geoff Ogilvy on an absurdly tricked-up Winged Foot Golf Club West Course, this Anthony Cotton/Denver Post interview of Clear Thinkers favorite Dan Jenkins is far more entertaining. Among Jenkins’ gems are the following:
Q: Do you like professional golf now?
I like the majors. I don’t care about the rest of it. It’s boring. If you take away Tiger (Woods) and Phil (Mickelson), there’s nothing. They’re the only two superstars out there right now. There’s no set decoration like there used to be, no 12, or 13 or 14 guys. It’s just a bunch of people you don’t care about. God forbid Tiger and Phil get hit by a truck, because I don’t know what they’d have left. . .
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m hearing [from] other people who don’t care either. That’s the best thing that’s happened to the LPGA. Everybody likes Michelle Wie and Paula Creamer and all of them. You’ve got to have glamour, you’ve got to have excitement in any sport. This is the worst period in (men’s) golf I’ve ever seen, in all of the thousands of years that I’ve been out here. [. . .]
I hate what equipment has done to the game. I’m old-fashioned. I just think style and technique should be more important than driving it 350 yards, making a putt and “See you on the next tee.” That’s what the tour game has become because of equipment. It makes great old courses outdated. You can’t have a U.S. Open anymore without an extra course to store all the hospitality tents. I used to be able to drive up to the clubhouse and park like the players. Now, there are seven corporate hospitality guys who have my spot and I’m on a bus.
Q: You’re so closely associated now with golf, but you have done a lot of the NFL and other sports.
My favorite sport, frankly, is college football. I’m a college football junkie, even though I’m associated with golf and like golf and have played it all my life. . . Golf and football are the two things I’ve covered all my life and the things I grew up with. If you didn’t like football growing up in Texas, they just drowned you.
Read the entire interview. By the way, while on the U.S. Open, did anyone else notice that David Duval finished 11th in the tournament? Also, as you are placing Mickelson, et al’s collapses yesterday in perspective, don’t miss Johnny Miller’s classic Golf Digest piece on choking and this play-by-play rendition of Miller’s analysis of Mickelson’s decision-making over the disastrous last two holes of the tournament.