Dan Jenkins Quotes & Sayings

Laughter is the only thing that'll cut trouble down to a size where you can talk to it. — Dan Jenkins

First, I thought Twitter was some kind of hybrid car being developed by Government Motors. Then I thought it was a new bite-size snack combining what's best of the Frito and the Cheeto. Then I found out it was me. On a laptop. At the U.S. Open. Having fun. — Dan Jenkins

I've worked my whole life and never missed a deadline. — Dan Jenkins

There have been so many great tournaments that I've been privileged to see, and people paid me to go watch, that I'm awfully grateful for it. — Dan Jenkins

Something mystical happens to every writer who goes to the Masters for the first time, some sort of emotional experience that results in a search party having to be sent out to recover his typewriter from a clump of azaleas. — Dan Jenkins

I actually don't have a single regret, professionally or domestically. I planned it that way. — Dan Jenkins

The devoted golfer is an anguished soul who has learned a lot about putting just as an avalanche victim has learned a lot about snow. — Dan Jenkins

Putting is not an art, it's a dreaded evil. No wise man ever said that. — Dan Jenkins

There was a time when caddies couldn't wear shorts. — Dan Jenkins

The Masters is a sell-out annually, and even the scalpers mind their manners. — Dan Jenkins

I like to be entertained, not smothered with 'literary' riddles. — Dan Jenkins

Laughter is the only thing that cuts trouble down to a size where you can talk to it. -- character Billy Clyde Puckett in Semi-Tough — Dan Jenkins

Being a club pro and all, a guy trying to keep up with golf's modern technology, I hadn't found much time for Internet dating, but then one day I knew I'd met the girl of my dreams when she replied to a comment. She said, 'I love it when you talk equipment to me.' — Dan Jenkins

High school golf, college golf and the decade that followed all come back to me now as one big raucous, goofy gangsome. — Dan Jenkins

Tiger Woods was a month away from 34 years of age when his debutantes began turning up in the news. He was a grown man with a wife and two children. Well, we supposed he had a wife, but that was before we learned she was only an ornament. — Dan Jenkins

I haven't looked for a golf ball since mulligans were free, which was a law I passed in 1995. — Dan Jenkins

Locker rooms and grill rooms are still the best places to find out things you don't know - at the Masters or any other golf tournament. — Dan Jenkins

The golf ball has no sense at all, which is why it has to be given stern lectures constantly, especially during the act of putting. — Dan Jenkins

Players don't usually like anybody who makes more money than they do. — Dan Jenkins

I had always suspected that trying to play golf in the company of big-time pros and a gallery would be something like walking naked into choir practice. — Dan Jenkins

Golf is 90% mental. Once you know how to hold the club, swing it, it's all in the mind. — Dan Jenkins

I hate political correctness. — Dan Jenkins

The golfer has more enemies than any other athlete. He has fourteen clubs in his bag, all of them different; 18 holoes to play, all of them different, every week; and all around him is sand, trees, grass, water, wind and 143 other players. In addition, the game is 50 percent mental, so his biggest enemy is himself. — Dan Jenkins

The key to any good sports story is identifying the defining moment. In football games or a boxing match, it's usually pretty obvious. But in golf, sometimes it happens on Thursday. Usually it's Sunday, but guys who don't know the game, they can miss it. — Dan Jenkins

Lonnie says it doesn't take long to write a song if you're stricken with a severe case of the Tennysons. He wasn't necessarily talking about a chart-climber. — Dan Jenkins

It was a hot sticky night in Barcelona and all the good whores had the summer flu. — Dan Jenkins

In a story, you have to have a theme and an angle, you have to have a beginning, middle and an end. You have to have a defining moment and kick it to death. You gotta be able to recognize that, by the way. It probably takes experience. — Dan Jenkins

The U.S. won the majors 29-11 in the 1980s. That's when Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus were carrying the ball, and when Seve Ballesteros was becoming a Brit in the minds of English and Scottish journalists. — Dan Jenkins

Among the many things that have slipped up on me while my back was turned are all of these challenging and well-manicured public courses that have sprung up across America with elegant bars and restaurants. — Dan Jenkins

Always keep in mind that if God didn't want a man to have mulligans, golf balls wouldn't come three to a sleeve. — Dan Jenkins

Golfers don't fist fight. They cuss a bit. But they wouldn't punch anything or anybody. They might hurt their hands and have to change their grip. — Dan Jenkins

Nobody can make a putt that breaks to the right. It's unnatural. Unless you're left-handed, of course. Standing over a putt that breaks to the right can actually make you dizzy. I've long thought that right-breaking putts are a major contributor to mental and physical ill health. — Dan Jenkins

My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.' — Dan Jenkins

Valet parking is an essential at any decent club. — Dan Jenkins

Nobody else is Tiger Woods. Not on this planet. — Dan Jenkins

Presidents are nice people. They're nice, fun-loving people who have great jobs. — Dan Jenkins

Fort Worth is friendly; it's still a Texas town. It's the most Texas city in Texas. — Dan Jenkins

Kids flew B-17s in daylight bombing raids over Germany in World War II. Kids fought in Korea and Vietnam. — Dan Jenkins

The maplewood flat-finished Martin had represented the most outrageous luxury in her life when she bought it in 1971 for four hundred dollars. But Lonnie Slocum assured her the Martin was a good investment, even if she never learned to play it better than an acid head who was into heavy metal. — Dan Jenkins

As the NFF Historian, I'll have a new platform to indulge my passion for the most emotional, colorful and hysterical game ever developed by mankind and Walter Camp. — Dan Jenkins

I get 'USA Today,' the 'New York Times,' 'Wall Street Journal' and the 'Star-Telegram' at my doorstep. I can't do without them. — Dan Jenkins

I don't suppose anybody's ever enjoyed being who they are more than Arnold's enjoyed being Arnold Palmer. — Dan Jenkins

The first president I met was L. B. J. — Dan Jenkins

If a caddie can help you, you don't know how to play golf. — Dan Jenkins

Anybody can make jokes. But unless they come from conviction, and there's truth in them, you haven't nailed it. They aren't as funny as they could be, and they don't make a point. — Dan Jenkins

Until Sammy Baugh - pro football in Texas was a one-paragraph story on the third page of the Monday sports section. — Dan Jenkins

Jack Nicklaus is the greatest winner I've ever seen. — Dan Jenkins

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. — Dan Jenkins

I don't cover golf tournaments anymore - I preside over them. — Dan Jenkins

My real heroes have always been sportswriters. — Dan Jenkins

All day long I've been telling myself it's only a merry-go-round. Some people fall off quicker than others. No big mystery. — Dan Jenkins

The greatly anticipated 2009 Masters was like going to a Broadway hit and finding out that the star, Sir Tiger Woods, was off that night, and his replacement was the cab driver who dropped you off at the theater. — Dan Jenkins

When I was a lad in my 20s, as carefree and debonair as any other underpaid newspaperman, I happened to be a golfer who could flirt with par fairly often, and I was adventurous enough in those days to play any known or unknown thief who showed up at Goat Hills for whatever amount he fancied. — Dan Jenkins

I don't know how television or radio is going to survive without newspapers because that's where they get all their news. It's going to be hopeless. — Dan Jenkins

I'd follow Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson anywhere. — Dan Jenkins

The recreational golfer who gives it careful thought will conclude that the favorite golf hole in his life played downhill, gradually or severely, and normally was downwind as well. — Dan Jenkins

When Ballesteros triumphed at the British Open in 1979, for his first major win, he hit so few fairways off the tee that he was often mistaken for a gallery marshall. — Dan Jenkins

Here's all I know about Dubai: It's one of those somewhere-over-there places where they make sand. — Dan Jenkins

The PGA Championship, last of the majors each year, might well be accustomed to having fun poked at it by the print press for being mired in August, but this isn't fair. — Dan Jenkins

Who is the best the sportswriter who wore shorts? I keep trying to envision Grantland Rice or John Lardner in shorts. It never occurred to me to wear shorts. I'd look too silly to wear shorts. — Dan Jenkins

I gather most people don't remember that when the U.S. Open first went to Pebble Beach in 1972, a big deal was made of the Open going to a public course for the first time. — Dan Jenkins

Real golf is the 20 million people who play once a week or once a month. — Dan Jenkins

Part of the charm of basketball lies in the fact that it's a simple game to understand. Players race up and down a fairly small area indoors and stuff the ball into a ring with Madonna's dress hanging on it. — Dan Jenkins

If you want to put golf back on the front pages again, and you don't have a Bobby Jones or a Francis Ouimet handy, here's what you do: You send an aging Jack Nicklaus out in the last round of the Masters and let him kill more foreigners than a general named Eisenhower. — Dan Jenkins

Historians tell us that a gentleman named John Ball once captured eight British Amateur titles. — Dan Jenkins

Juanita found herself at Old Jeemy's radio station in a room she could have sworn was a laboratory where creatures with antennas in their heads, knobs for eyes, jagged arms, and dangly legs conducted experiments on the bodies of dead vocalists. — Dan Jenkins

My life has been very lucky, but I made some of that luck. — Dan Jenkins

I don't have contempt for Tiger Woods. — Dan Jenkins

You must remind yourself at all times that the golf ball is nothing. It's an object. It's something to be swatted and sometimes lost and not even looked for. — Dan Jenkins

You count a man's U.S. Amateur titles after he starts winning professional majors. That's something any intelligent golf writer with a sense of history is supposed to know. — Dan Jenkins

All I've ever done is try to get at the truth of the matter. — Dan Jenkins

Though it was never a goal in life, it has occurred to me that I've met six presidents of the United States. OK, I met four of them before they became president, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, No. 43. — Dan Jenkins

Prescott Bush was himself a president of the U. S. Golf Association at one time - 1935 - before he became a U.S. senator from the state of Connecticut. — Dan Jenkins

A sportswriter's life means never sitting with your wife or family at the games. Still working after everyone has gone to the party ... Digging beneath a coach's lies, not to forget those of athletic directors and general managers and owners of pro teams. Keeping a confidence. Risking it. — Dan Jenkins

The first thing they gave me at 'Sports Illustrated' was a first-class air card. 'And oh, by the way, there's the petty cash drawer,' they told me. 'Take a few thousand dollars for expenses.' — Dan Jenkins

Just think about it: what in the name of God would Alabama be without the University of Alabama? What would Oklahoma be without the University of Oklahoma? Nothing. — Dan Jenkins

Baseball would be a better game if more third basemen got hit in the mouth by line drivers. — Dan Jenkins

Tennis was a game invented by a woman named Samantha Tennis in 1839, in the village of Lobsworth, County of Kent, as a diversion for the wealthy and titled Englishmen of the region, who had nothing better to do at the time but drink, belch and wear funny clothes. — Dan Jenkins

At times, my very own media makes me cringe, and occasionally out loud. By the way, nothing clears the head like an out-loud cringe. — Dan Jenkins

Marty Russo was too good a golfer to be a servant of the people. — Dan Jenkins

Regardless of what the tour pros think, golf is a rich and varied game, and what all of us awkward fools do on weekends is what golf is truly all about. — Dan Jenkins

If you see a player out in public having dinner, chances are he's with his boring money manager or some boring rich guy he hopes to design a golf course for. — Dan Jenkins

I think newspapers will survive in some form or another. — Dan Jenkins

Only two things can stop Tiger - injury or a bad marriage. — Dan Jenkins

I am among those who firmly believe that a round of golf should not take more than three and a half hours, four at most. Anything longer than that is not a round of golf, it's life in Albania. — Dan Jenkins

There's usually one piece in 'Vanity Fair' every month that grabs me, but when it presents hatchet jobs without substantiation to impress its liberal friends, I laugh first, then toss. — Dan Jenkins

It must be the PGA Championship if it's August and you can sit down and talk to the heat or reach inside your shirt, where it's 110 degrees, and grab handfuls of humidity. — Dan Jenkins

I just come from a school where you have to win something to be accepted. — Dan Jenkins

Every immortal except Jack Nicklaus has hit a wall and stopped making putts he had to make in order to win. Jack did it for 20 years. — Dan Jenkins

Sally Jenkins of the 'Washington Post' is the best sports columnist in the country. Second best is Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN, and third is Dan Wetzel on Yahoo! — Dan Jenkins

Every golfer has at least 14 enemies: his clubs. — Dan Jenkins

Even as a little kid, I was fascinated by newspapers and magazines. They were my TV. I'd be the first one up to grab the morning paper, mainly to look at the sports pictures, the war pictures. — Dan Jenkins

There have been so many great moments in golf that you even forget some of them. — Dan Jenkins

I quickly discovered that trying to go play golf while living in Manhattan was about as easy as trying to grab a taxi while standing out in front of Saks Fifth Avenue in the freezing rain on the last shopping day before Christmas. — Dan Jenkins

Of course, Dwight D. Eisenhower gets credit for doing more for golf than any other White House resident, a mid- to high-handicapper though he was. — Dan Jenkins

The president I came to know best was George Herbert Walker Bush. No. 41 in your program, No. 1 on your list of fast-playing golfers. — Dan Jenkins

When you're a fledgling youth-type adult, it appears that all people in their 40s look old enough to be in a painting hanging on the wall of a stately home in England. It's not until you limp into your 70s that people in their 40s look too young to vote, and college cheerleaders closely resemble Yorkshire terriers. — Dan Jenkins

There's nothing anyone can do about Tiger Woods but look at his game and swoon. — Dan Jenkins

I used to never miss the 'New Yorker' or 'New York.' Now I never bother. — Dan Jenkins

Everybody in the Olympics is paid. Lindsay Vonn is going to make a million dollars whether she skis or not. — Dan Jenkins