Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate

Every year before the British Open I haul out my copy of Dogged Victims and read once again Dan Jenkins' non-fiction account of playing on a links course. Before long, I'm reading out loud to my wife, who -- so far as I know -- has never set foot on a fairway. We have our best laugh of the year, tuck our tattered copy away on the sports book shelf, and look forward to the following summer. OK, I'll confess. Before the tucking, I sneak out in the backyard with a pint of Junior and read Jenkins' remembrance of Goat Hills. I grew up caddying and loading clubs on carts at a course about a faded persimmon three wood from my house, and this premium example of the sportswriter's art takes me right back to those twilight caddy tournaments -- a ball, a mallet head putter, a flashlight and a pocketful of tees. Listen this July -- you'll hear me howling in the woods. If you love golf and you haven't read this book, don't die yet.

Before Tiger, before Jack, before Big Bertha, there was Arnold Palmer and a 40-week season where golf's greatest players paid cost for their wardrobes and counted themselves lucky being able to spend a weekend at the Holiday Inn. Dan Jenkins followed the sport closely as a columnist with Sports Illustrated, and his work is still regarded as definitive examples of sports journalism. At its best, "The Dogged Victims Of Inexorable Fate" documents what made golf special in the 1960s before it became the superstar circuit it is today. On Palmer, the King of the sport during that decade, though he never won a major after 1964, Jenkins writes movingly in one essay: "He is the most immeasurable of golf champions. But this is not entirely true because of all that he has won, or because of the mysterious fury with which he has managed to rally himself. It is partly because of the nobility he has brought to losing. And more than anything, it is true because of the pure, unmixed joy he has brought to trying." Most of the time, Jenkins foregoes the heartstrings and settles for the funny bone. Take his lead on the PGA Tour's most august tournament: "It is commonly known among a select group of Masters goers that many of the best shots of the tournament are served in tall paper cups on the upstairs porch of the Augusta National Golf Club." About a freespending golfer of an earlier era: "If Jimmy Demaret had won the money he would have been 8 to 5 to leave it in a bar or blow it on a handmade pair of orange and purple saddle oxfords." Funny stuff. Jenkins also scores points in summing up the histories of tournaments and eras in ways that are definitive and deceptively breezy. Reading him is to get a sense of how golf writing moved from the stodgy versifying of Herbert Warren Wind to the snarky cool of Rick Reilly and Alan Shipnuck, not to mention the gang in the 18th hole tower at CBS. For that, and other things, he may well have been the most revolutionary golf writer, and this book offers some prize examples why. But there's something to be said for stodgy, too. Wind was not a snappy writer, but he was a measured and thorough one, and reading his account of golf's beginnings in America feels more like the real deal. Jenkins too often uses situations and characters as backboards for his zings and one-liners, then moves on, whereas Wind or another writer might linger and find something of value. Jenkins doesn't quote the players so much as channel them through his narrative, and though it is readable, it's suspect, too. He's also an impossibly snobby overdog, focusing on the favorites and ignoring the field. He seems to watch every tournament from the most exclusive part of the clubhouse, in the company of CEOs and Ben Hogan. He doesn't fawn, but he doesn't find a seat closer to the crowd, either. At least two of his essays, a faux-Runyanesque tale of a freeloader living off Tour luminaries and an account of a round with several Hollywood stars, seem like

This is my absolute favorite book, of any kind, on any topic, by any writer. (And I've written books of my own!) It's simply great, and repays rereading again and again.

I first read this book in 1977 as a requirement for my high scool golf team.I was actually sent to the principal`s office because my laughter was disrupting other student`s in the library! The antics of the gang at Goat Hills is a absolute scream. It`s Jenkin`s at his best. I `m buying extra copies for my foresome to read at the 19th hole!!