Mount Rushmore of Golf Writers

It’s unlikely Gutzon Borglum had any inkling of how much fun but, at times, contentious debate his famous monument to four prominent U.S. Presidents would prompt in the years following its completion (1941). Discussion over the Mount Rushmore of actors, guitarists, quarterbacks, comedians, comic book heroes, and a thousand other categories has preoccupied the minds of fans for decades with commenters rarely coming to an agreement.

Recently, I endorsed four (well, five) individuals we believed deserve to be on the Mount Rushmore of golf course architects, and now I’m inviting further discord with my choice of golf’s most distinguished writers.

It’s generally accepted golf writing existed before the profession of course architecture became validated, and, for every course architect, it seems there is, or has been, at least a dozen golf writers of various stripes. The capacity for protest, division, and dispute is, therefore, even greater this time. So be it. That’s what makes these things worthwhile and enjoyable.

 

Bernard Darwin

While there is always disagreement over who might be the greatest musician, thespian, or athlete, you’ll rarely see or hear of anyone objecting to Darwin’s status as the greatest-ever golf writer. Considering how many golf writers there have been, and the fact he died over 60 years ago, that is pretty conclusive.

Born in 1876 into a family of revered scientists (Charles Darwin, the celebrated biologist who developed the Theory of Evolution, was his grandfather, and three of his sons, including Bernard’s father, Francis, were knighted for their contributions to science), Darwin wrote his first article for the Times of London in 1907 and his last in 1953. He contributed articles to the America Golfer between 1922 and ’36, and his reviews, reports, and essays for Country Life magazine spanned 54 years.

golf writers
August 6th, 1949: BBC Radio commentators Stewart Macpherson (right) and Bernard Darwin at the Golf Open. Original Publication: Picture Post – 4853 – Radio’s Top-Line Reporters – pub.1949 (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 

His extensive knowledge of Charles Dickens, English cricket, and numerous other subjects enabled Darwin to contribute articles and even write books on several themes and topics. He wrote the preface for the first edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and was a regular contributor to the Times’s fourth leader, a space in the newspaper reserved for whimsical and light-hearted editorial. Golf, though, was absolutely his first love and main area of expertise. In addition to the millions of words he wrote in the London Times and Country Life, he authored dozens of golf books and had several anthologies of his work published.

A result of his Victorian upbringing and classical education at Eton College and Trinity College Cambridge, Darwin’s prose was certainly cultured, but it was also full of the charm and wit that won him so many fans among multiple generations and on both sides of the Atlantic. An army lieutenant during the First World War, former barrister, and a skilled golfer who captained the Cambridge University golf team, played in the Amateur Championship 26 times, and even appeared in the inaugural Walker Cup as a stand-in for a player who fell ill prior to the match, Darwin was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire—the step below knighthood) in 1937 and elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2005.

 

Herbert Warren Wind

Only great sports writers can cause readers to get excited about game stories long after the game has finished (days, sometimes weeks). Wind had that effect on subscribers to both the New Yorker and Sports Illustrated from the 1940s to the late ’80s, writing stylish reports of the major championships and profiles of the players that contested them, which New York Times sportswriter Frank Litsky described as “elegant but straightforward that showed respect for his subject.” Ben Crenshaw always enjoyed Wind’s writing saying that every time you read him, “you got a history lesson, a golf lesson, and a life lesson.”

A graduate of Yale and Cambridge Universities, Wind wrote a total of 141 articles for the New Yorker between 1947 and his retirement in 1990, and 111 for Sports Illustrated from 1954–60. He wrote on tennis, squash, basketball, and football besides golf, authoring (or co-authoring) 14 golf books including the seminal Story of American Golf which was first published in 1948 and reissued in 1956 and 1975; Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons; and the World Atlas of Golf. In 1983, he co-founded the Classics of Golf Library to preserve the game’s best writing.

He received the PGA of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992 and the USGA’s Bob Jones Award in 1995. In 2006, the USGA named its annual book award in his honor, and the World Golf Hall of Fame welcomed him in 2008. Despite the numerous accolades, however, Wind is surely best-known for coining the phrase “Amen Corner” in 1958 in reference to the second half of the 11th hole, the short 12th, and first half of the 13th hole at Augusta National.

 

Dan Jenkins

Another highly skilled writer who covered sports other than golf (predominantly college football), Jenkins was a Texan who wrote for the Fort Worth Press (as a high schooler) and Dallas Times Herald before joining Sports Illustrated in 1962. He wrote over 500 pieces for SI, contributing significantly to the weekly publication’s most successful era. Following his death in 2019, the New York Times’s Bruce Weber said Jenkins brought a “Southern wiseacre erudition to the pages of a magazine not exactly used to the arch or earthy or impolitic remark” in describing the often less-than-PC tone and sarcasm that proved so popular.

Jenkins obviously wasn’t afraid to mix a little (off)color into his reporting but, as Golf Digest’s Tom Callahan would say, his prose was a “blend of prairie-twang and ranch-hand nasalness softened by and cultivated with a surprising lilt of sophistication. He was willing to be funny, but only if it was true.” Being funny is one thing, but making serious and credible observations while being funny is a skill few writers had/have like Jenkins did. “Even though I was making a stab at humor, I don’t think I ever wrote a line I didn’t believe,” Jenkins said. “When something like Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods or Ben Hogan happens, you don’t have to be funny, you just have to be accurate.”

dan jenkins
Golf Writer Dan Jenkins speaks during the Golf Writers Association of America Awards Dinner on April 6, 2005 in Augusta, Ga. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

 

Jenkins left Sports Illustrated in 1985 to work on books of which he wrote more than 20—Semi-Tough, The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate, and Dead Solid Perfect perhaps the highlights. During the book years, he wrote a regular column for Golf Digest and contributed to Playboy.

In all, Jenkins covered 222 major championships and, in 2012, became just the fourth golf writer to enter the World Golf Hall of Fame, after Herb Graffis (1977), Bernard Darwin (2005), and Herbert Warren Wind (2008). (There are now five with Henry Longhurst being elected in 2017.) The following year, he won the Associated Press Sports Editors’ (APSE) prestigious Red Smith Award for his outstanding contributions to sports journalism.

 

Charles Price

As was the case with the Mount Rushmore of course architects, the identity of the fourth figure is bound to surprise some readers who should know it wasn’t arrived at without a great deal of thought, more than a few late substitutions, and even a little reluctance. The hesitancy didn’t stem from doubt over Price’s worthiness (he belongs), however, but because it meant leaving out other luminaries such as Graffis, Longhurst, Pat Ward-Thomas, O.B. Keeler, Peter Dobereiner, Lorne Rubenstein, etc., plus other brilliant and prolific writers who wrote only occasionally on golf—Jim Murray, George Plimpton, Mark Frost, John Feinstein, Alistair Cooke, P.G. Wodehouse, Grantland Rice, etc.

Price gets the nod for a handful of reasons. In 1959, he founded GOLF Magazine and was its first editor. He wrote for Golf World in its early years, and was later a contributing editor at Golf Digest. Dobereiner described himself as a dustbin man (trash collector) next to Price, and Golf Digest editor-in-chief, Jerry Tarde, said Price should definitely be in the World Golf Hall of Fame and that his prose was so elegant it belonged on a Paris runway. He wrote or co-wrote 17 golf books of which A Golf Story and Golfer at Large are surely among the game’s best. He wrote the foreword in Bobby Jones’s (who wrote exceptionally well, too) instructional book Bobby Jones on Golf and, like other greats, could alter his focus—writing architecture and music criticism for Newsweek and Cosmopolitan. He also contributed to Esquire.

Finally, he wrote this: “Everybody has three vocabularies: The largest is the one you read with. You can gather the sense of an unfamiliar word from its context. Next is the one you write with. It permits you the luxury of second thoughts. The smallest is the one you speak with. Since nobody likes to put his foot in his mouth, you only use words that are second nature. Consequently, the only way to improve all your vocabularies is by reading.” And that might be the greatest line(s) I ever read.

 

Who is on your Mount Rushmore of golf writers?

Subscribe
Notify of

5 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Dick Golobic
7 days ago

How about Rick Reilly? Great humorist.

Mark Kirk
6 days ago

O B Keeler

Larry Guli
6 days ago

Al Barkow

Jim Keever
6 days ago

Without Grantland Rice, The formation of Augusta National Golf Club during the depression becomes an even heavier lift.

5
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x