Dan Jenkins and Me

Dan Jenkins, one of the finest American sportswriters in history, and arguably the finest ever to write about golf, died Thursday, March 7, 2019. He was 90 years old.

In the days following his death, better-known and more-accomplished writers than myself have written, and will be writing, about Jenkins and what his work and career meant to them. Among them there may be other besides me who can make this statement:

Dan Jenkins is the reason I became a golf writer.

I might have run across one or two of Danֹ’s golf columns in Playboy in the mid ’80s, thumbing through the pages of the magazine on the way to perusing the photos of the “shapely adorables” (as Dan would have called them), but I first fell in love with his work in 1987, when I read his golf novel Dead Solid Perfect. The father of the young lady I was dating at the time recommended the book to me, footnoting his recommendation with this piece of advice: “Don’t read it anyplace where laughing out loud will bother other people.” I picked up a copy, read it straight through over a weekend, and was hooked.

Though I was born and raised in Salinas, California, I flatter myself that I have a connection, at two removes, to the part of the world that shaped Dan—a native of Fort Worth, Texas—in early life. My paternal grandfather was born in nearby Krum, Texas, growing up there before moving to Oklahoma, where both of my parents were born. And while some of my attitudes and beliefs would probably have struck Dan as a little liberal and “PC”, as a “CIO” (California-Improved Okie), in many ways I can relate to the point of view of a native Texan like Dan.

Prior to reading Dead Solid Perfect my sole exposure to golf had been one round with some 8th-grade friends on the local nine-hole muni in Salinas, and a few P.E. classes in high school—from which I took away a decent understanding of the Vardon Grip and little else. Even after falling under the thrall of Jenkins’ words, reading and re-reading his fiction and non-fiction books, it was years before I picked up golf clubs again. I was knee-deep in an engineering career; had embarked upon what is, to date, a 29-years-and-counting marriage (to a different young lady…); bought a house; started a family—all the usual things.

Most important of all was the fact that I didn’t know anybody who played golf, so I hesitated to take it up with serious intent (and am still shy about inflicting my game on strangers.) So, my investment in the game stalled out at reading about it, and watching the occasional tournament on TV. For years then, while I probably had more golf trivia at my fingertips (from reading Jenkins’ work) than most people who actually played the game, I had no one to talk to about golf, to share my interest with. As an outlet for that interest, which all started with Dead Solid Perfect, I started this blog.

On February 2, 2011 I posted the first, introductory column on Will o'the Glen on Golf, wherein I wrote:

I have only been playing golf with any level of intent for about a year and a half, so I am relatively new to the game, but I have been reading about and following golf for nearly 25 years, having gotten that bug when the father of a friend of mine recommended that I read Dan Jenkins’ book Dead Solid Perfect. I quickly set about getting hold of as many of Mr. Jenkins’ books as I could track down (golf-related and otherwise), and have read everything new that he has come out with since then. Mr Jenkins’ writing, and viewpoint, set the tone for my own viewpoint on the game of golf, so expect to hear a lot about Dan and his golf writing, and Ben Hogan—the mid-20th century golf legend who Mr Jenkins was privileged to know, and whose career he covered from 1951 until Ben’s retirement from competitive golf in 1967.

Jenkins and Hogan have been with me ever since. After an initial two columns about the 2011 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (“Crosby Weather”, and “Cinderella Story”), I took it upon myself to pen a story about Ben Hogan and his record at Riviera Country Club (the event there followed the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at the time): “Hogan’s Alley — Riviera Country Club and Bantam Ben”. I continued to read, and review, every book by Dan Jenkins, or about Ben Hogan, that I could find.

In 2012 I responded to an ad on the Monster.com jobs web-page for an events website called Examiner.com, applying for a part-time, freelance position as a writer covering golf for the San Francisco Bay Area and Monterey Peninsula. I was accepted, and with the legitimacy conferred upon me by being affiliated with a recognized media outlet, in June of that year I found myself in possession of a media credential for the 112th United States Open golf tournament at the Olympic Club, in San Francisco.

I was 55 years old, with 30 years’ of experience as a mechanical engineer, but in the world of golf writing I was a wet-behind-the-ears newbie. I was a little star-struck as I walked into the huge media-center tent and looked around, spotting a double-handful of golf writers whose work I had been reading for years—and more so when I spotted Dan Jenkins himself, three rows up and half a dozen seats to the left of my work station in the cheap seats in the back row.

It never occurred to me to walk up and introduce myself to him—I was afraid of tripping over my tongue and looking like a fool in front of the man whose work I revered above all others in the field. 

I did have a face-to-face encounter with Dan during the Open—accidentally. Walking up the steps to the fancy portable restrooms that had been installed next to the media center tent, Dan stepped out of the door just as I reached the landing. A quick recollection of the story of Ben Crenshaw’s first time meeting Jack Nicklaus—in the bathroom of the men’s locker room at Merion—flashed through my mind, so I just stepped back out of his way with a muttered “Excuse me”, clearing the way so he could walk down the steps.

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As melancholy as the news of Dan’s death made me, there was a glimmer of brightness in the column written by his daughter Sally Jenkins—a supremely talented sportswriter in her own right—about her father, in which she stated, “A new manuscript of a novel my father just finished is still open on his desk[…]. The novel, titled The Reunion At Herb’s Café, tells readers where his major fictional characters ended up.”

Dan’s words have made me think and have made me laugh as over the years I read and re-read my collection of his books, and delved into the Sports Illustrated “Vault” online archive—a wonderful resource—to read past articles of his that reside there.

His body of work—a treasure trove of sharply etched observations and finely tuned sentences, all delivered in take-no-prisoners style by a man who saw the humor, and the humanity, in sports and in life—has inspired me for years, and I expect it to continue to do so for many years to come.

Cleveland RTX-4: A versatile performer from a well-known name in wedges

The Cleveland RTX-4 wedge line has been on the market for a few months now, and you have probably already read a number of reviews of this new offering from Cleveland Golf. I might not have bothered to add to the list, but I have enjoyed this club so much that I felt that I had to chime in.

Of course, Cleveland Golf is a name that golfers associate very strongly with wedges. Roger Cleveland, who now designs wedges for Callaway Golf, built the company largely on the quality of the wedges they produced. Now a part of the Srixon family, Cleveland continues to produce innovative products that keep the company on the leading edge of the wedge market.

The RTX-4 features “Tour Zip” grooves, which Cleveland describes as “sharper and deeper” (though we all know that the USGA and R & A define groove configuration limits); laser face milling in the spaces between the grooves that takes face roughness right to the conforming limit; and additional Rotex face milling that extends to the toe of the club for that extra little bit of bite.

I was lucky enough to obtain an RTX-4 test club from Amazon.com through their Amazon Vine program. The club I got for review is a bog-standard mid-bounce 56/10 Cleveland RTX-4 in the Tour Satin finish, with a Golf Pride Tour Velvet grip on a True Temper Dynamic Golf Tour Issue shaft—straight-up, no bells and whistles. It felt good in my hands as soon as I took it out of the box, and that good feeling carried over to its performance on the golf course.

The Mid-Bounce grind is advertised as being suitable for medium to soft conditions (which describes my usual daily-fee course to a tee) for players who want stability on full shots and who like to open the face when the shot warrants. I played the RTX-4 from sand, rough and fairway lies, and was very happy with its performance. It flowed smoothly through moderate rough, glided cleanly across tight fairway lies, and worked through the not-always-ideal sand conditions in my local course’s bunkers with ease.

While I am a decent wedge player, I have never had the kind of wedge shot that zips the ball back on a string—I just don’t get that kind of super-spin on the ball with my slightly shallow angle of attack. The combination of swing weight (D5), well-situated center of mass, and optimized face milling in the RTX-4 seemed to suit me, however, and I was hitting beautiful drop-and-stop shots from bunkers and on short-approach fairway shots, with both straight and open face.

A nice illustration of the RTX-4’s drop-and-stop capabilities. This was a straight-face, 3/4-swing, 80-yard approach from a fairway lie to a slightly elevated green (≈six feet). (Photo by author.)

The Mid-Bounce RTX-4 is available in 2° loft increments from 46° to 60°, with the Full grind in 56° to 60°, Low in 56° to 64°, and Extra-Low in 58° to 62°. Retailing for $139.99, the RTX-4 is available in Tour Satin, Black Satin, Tour Raw finishes. A wide range of optional shafts are offered, in both steel and graphite; numerous grip options are available, as are loft, lie, and grip customization, all at additional cost.

As the most versatile grind in the RTX-4 range, the Mid-Bounce is probably the best all-around choice for most golfers. The RTX-4 is recommended for low- to mid-handicap golfers (three dots on their four-dot low-to-high handicap range), but it suited this 24-handicap player quite well.

Bay Area golf fans face a decision next September

2019 holds the promise of being a very good year for Bay Area golf fans. The 119th U.S. Open will be played at Pebble Beach Golf Links, in the storied seaside course’s centennial year; a new PGA Tour event sponsored by the Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry will appear on the schedule, played at Lake Merced Golf Club in Daly City†; and the LPGA will return with the second year of the reboot of their Bay Area tournament of recent years, also at Lake Merced.

However, a week before the Steph Curry event, in the last week of September, Bay Area golf fans will have a decision to make. In late September, as the 2019-2020 PGA Tour season is starting up, and the 2019 PGA Champions season is winding down, both tours will be playing in Northern California, at the same time, 160 miles apart. The PGA Tour will be kicking things off with the Safeway Open, at Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa, and the PGA Champions will be bringing along the next generation of golfers in the PURE Insurance Championship Impacting the First Tee, at Pebble Beach and Poppy Hills in the Del Monte Forest.

How did this happen? Aren’t the PGA Tour and the PGA Champions part of the same organization? Do their scheduling people talk to each other? Do they own a calendar—and a map?

Call it a first-world problem for Bay Area golf fans: Which world-class destination do we head to that week to watch golf—the Silverado Resort & Spa in America’s most venerated wine region, the Napa Valley; or Pebble Beach, the ne plus ultra of American public golf, on the picturesque Monterey Peninsula? Do we want to see the young guns of the PGA Tour (but probably few, if any, big stars), or the old-pro PGA Champions, playing alongside youngsters the same age as their grandkids?

What’s a golf fan to do?

Actually, there’s no wrong answer here—either choice results in a great time at a beautiful venue. Late September is prime time for visiting either the California coast or the Napa Valley; the weather is ideal: neither too hot nor too cold, generally sunny and clear, and there’s rarely any fog at the coast. It’s a shame that this scheduling conflict prevents local golf fans from possibly enjoying two weeks of great golf, but we’re still lucky that we have the choice of these two great events at beautiful destination venues.

† (Correction: In early January it was announced that talks with the potential title sponsor of the Steph Curry-sponsored event, Workday, had fallen through, and that the event would not be held in 2019. There is hope that the event will appear in the schedule in 2020, potentially at TPC Harding Park, in San Francisco.)

Review: “Sports Makes You Type Faster”, by Dan Jenkins ⭐️⭐️⭐️-1/2

Uneven offering from the dean of living American sportswriters

It can be difficult to see someone you have admired for decades – a parent or other relative, an athlete, or a writer or performer whose work you have enjoyed – start to decline, losing the powers of mind and body that were the reasons you looked up to them. I find myself in just that position with regard to Dan Jenkins, the quick-witted dean of American sports writing; and I present as evidence his most recent book, Sports Makes You Type Faster.

Dan has always cultivated something of a curmudgeonly persona, and it was his somewhat world-weary, even cynical, outlook, and his eye for the absurd, which attracted me to his work when I first started reading his books in the mid-’80s. In the last few years, however, and in his last couple of books, the inner curmudgeon has manifested itself more and more strongly, and it comes through in full force in many of the essays which comprise his latest book. He falls back, especially in the first part of the book, on tired clichés, and geezer-esque, get-off-my-lawn-style rants against PC-ism and liberals

He has arranged the essays in the book—most of which are new, with a few warmed-over and updated pieces mixed in—into two major groups: team sports, and individual sports, working, in order, from football (pro and college), basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey to golf (the high point of the book, in my opinion), tennis, winter sports (skiing and skating, mostly), track and field, boxing, and auto racing.

The essays range from the snarky third-person pieces he often does which are cast in the voice of a pro football owner or coach, or a pro athlete; to otherwise thoughtful essays on the state of college football or golf (the two sports where his interest mainly lies, and where he shines brightest) that are peppered with rants about the “PC crowd” and liberal professors, etc.

Dan is at his best when he tunes in to thoughtful, nostalgic reminiscence about the past. The chapter entitled, “When The Furniture Talked”, about the days of sports broadcasting in radio, is one of the finest pieces in the book. Part Two, which turns from team sports to individual sports, starts a little weak, with the golf piece “The Tour Stop”, which is a rework of a piece that appeared in his 1994 collection, Fairways and Greens (updated with current players’ names), but picks up three chapters later, with ponderings on the old days in Beware: Rascals Loose, and the following few essays in which he waxes nostalgic about Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, and Dan’s own amazing, never-to-be-equaled run of 230 majors covered. The book continues on a pretty good run from there, as Dan gets onto the subjects of tennis, skiing, track and field, boxing—even airplane racing.

The pieces in the second half are, on the whole, gentler and more thoughtful than those in the first half. I would go so far as to say that the second half saves the book, but all in all, I will stop short of calling Sports Makes You Type Faster a must-have book, except for the most ardent Dan Jenkins aficionado. For the golf-centric reader I recommend tracking down a copy of 1994’s Fairways and Greens, a more recent collection entitled Unplayable Lies, or his classic collection of golf writing, The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate.

Caddie stories: Like my miss off the tee, they work both ways

Caddies have to put up with a lot of nonsense. Toting staff bags for big-dollar resort golfers whose lack of skill is matched only by their excess of ego, searching for errant drives, reading three-foot putts for double-bogey, etc., they do it all, and have seen it all. It should come as no surprise, then, that the website The Caddie Network should put together an article on the best (funniest, most caustic…) caddie one-liners recorded or overheard on the golf course. Written up by the website’s Director of Content, T.J. Auclair, the article lists the 23 best caddie one-liners they had ever heard, and had me laughing out loud from #23 on.

Funny as the anecdotes are, however, you will notice that some of them are pretty harsh, and indicative of a certain lack of, shall we say, forbearance and perspective on the part of the loopers. I guess that you can’t fault them for developing a cynical outlook, but there are times when the bag-toters themselves deserve a little comeuppance.

Personally, I haven’t had much experience with caddies. I am more of a muni golfer, but through my writing efforts I have lucked into opportunities to play some pretty cool courses—higher-end layouts than my budget would normally support—where caddie service was provided. One such circumstance was when I played Pebble Beach for an assignment—yes, I actually got paid to play Pebble Beach—and had a little run-in with a caddie whose cynical outlook cried out for a response:

In 2014 I was approached by the media company which was producing the Monterey Convention and Visitors Bureau’s guide book—the big glossy magazine you find in hotel rooms with information on restaurants, attractions, etc., in the area—to write an article about playing Pebble Beach for the first time. The project was postponed to the next year because: 1) I had never played Pebble Beach, so it would have been fiction; and 2) there wasn’t time before the publication deadline to arrange a tee time for me.

So, the next summer they approached me again. I was told that a tee time would be arranged, with this proviso—the green fee would be deducted from my payment for the article. I agreed—but not too eagerly, wanting to avoid setting a dangerous precedent—and a week or so later I showed up at Pebble, parking my 15-year-old Volkswagen well away from the Jags, BMWs and Range Rovers arrayed along the road, and presented myself at the pro shop.

I had been slotted in with a threesome, three friends—businessmen from Kentucky and Tennessee—who were out here on a buddy trip. They had hired two caddies between them, and true to my muni-golf roots (and to avoid spending what was left of my fee on a caddy and tip…), I was carrying my own bag.

My round got off to a rough start—first-tee jitters—when I teed the ball up too high for my four-hybrid and hooked my tee shot off of the wall behind one of the houses that use to line the left side of the first fairway (before the new Fairway One development went in.) I found the ball with some help from one of the caddies, but it was not an auspicious start.

I had mixed results over the next few holes—for example, I made par on #2 after getting on in two, and then three-putting, on the first par-5 on the course; and I put down an “X” on #6 after losing the tee shot right and the next shot left.

At # 8, the spectacular par-4 with the well-known second shot over the cove—the “greatest second shot in golf” according to Jack Nicklaus—I pulled my tee shot somewhere into the no-man’s-land between the sixth and eighth fairways, but true to my “Second-Shot Hall of Fame” credentials, after reloading, I pured a 3-wood shot to beautiful position in the left side of the fairway, where I had 175 yards on a perfect line to the friendly, center-of-the-green flag.

One of the threesome’s caddies, the same one who had helped me find my ball on the first hole, came over while I was checking the yardage with my rangefinder, and said, “You know, there’s that nice layup area short of the green. You can hit it there and leave a nice pitch to the flag.”

Now, I know that I hadn’t been showing great chops on the holes we had played so far, but this remark kinda got up my nose, and I might have sounded a tiny bit teed-off when I responded with, “What makes you think I can’t hit that green?” I didn’t wait for an answer, and pulling my Taylormade five-hybrid, I lofted a beauty of a shot (one of my best of the day, if I say so myself…) that landed, and stayed, low on the green, pretty much straight below the flag. I two-putted for a six—net par—but it felt like an actual par despite the lousy tee shot and the lost ball.

That caddie and I got along great for the rest of the round—not least of all because he didn’t offer me any more advice.

Greatest comeback in golf? Don’t even talk to me about Tiger Woods…

When the final putt dropped at East Lake in the 2018 PGA Tour finale, cementing Tiger Woods’ 80th career PGA Tour victory–in the Tour Championship, no less–the expected chorus started up: “What an achievement! Greatest comeback in golf!” It was a comeback, and it was pretty good—but great, let alone greatest ever? Excuse me while I scoff…

Now, I’m not going to diminish Tiger’s achievement in winning the Tour Championship tournament. He returned from potentially career-ending back issues, after four surgeries; after developing cringe-worthy glitches in his short game; and after a general downturn in his game as a whole, to cap a 19-event season with a win in the final tournament of the year, against a field which consisted of the 30 survivors from the Top 125 of the 2016-2017 season.

Tiger started this season in December 2017, in his own event, the Hero Challenge (for which he didn’t qualify on the numbers, but, you know—he knew a guy…); he played a total of 18 official tournaments, made 14 cuts (the WGC-Bridgestone, and the Tour Championship were no-cut events, and he missed the cut in the Genesis Open and the U. S. Open), with a win, a second, seven top 10 and 12 top 25 finishes. Not bad for a guy whom many people had written off just a few months before.

But… does this constitute the “greatest comeback in golf history” as many folks, fans and media alike, are calling it? Does it really compare to Hogan’s recovery from life-threatening injuries sustained in a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus? Many of those who put Tiger’s return on a par with, or above, Hogan’s comeback are adding into the account his personal (marital) problems as well, with the resultant bad publicity, and his relegation to counseling for a “sex addiction” (AKA the inability to not be a horndog like his imminently unlikable father.)

Me, I don’t think it counts if you threw yourself in front of the metaphorical bus that hit you…

Ben Hogan’s crash occurred on the morning of February 2nd, 1949,  on Highway 80 just outside of Van Horn, Texas. The poor visibility due to foggy conditions had Hogan moving along cautiously at no more than 30 miles per hour. Despite the conditions, a Greyhound bus with an inexperienced 27-year-old driver at the wheel was passing a truck on a narrow bridge. Hemmed in by the concrete bridge abutments, Hogan had nowhere to go. At the last moment, he flung himself to the right to shield his wife—and in the process, saved his own life, as the steering column speared the space where he had just been.

Let’s look at what Hogan endured in the wake of that horrific collision: a broken pelvis (in two places), a fractured collar bone, a broken left ankle, extensive damage to his left leg, and a broken rib.

This is what the Cadillac that Ben Hogan and his wife,Valerie, were driving looked like after a head-on collision with a Greyhound bus.

He was in the hospital for 59 days. Doctors detected potentially fatal blood clots in his legs, and in the absence of the modern anti-clotting medicines that we now have, an eminent thoracic surgeon was flown in from New Orleans to perform a radical procedure—tying off Hogan’s vena cava (the major vein which returns blood to the heart from the legs.) The resultant poor circulation would plague Hogan for the rest of his life, requiring him to wrap his legs in elastic bandages from calf to thigh every day that he played golf.

In a recent weekly round table on the subject of Tiger’s return to form, golf writer Josh Sens, of Golf.com, wrote, “Hogan got badly injured and then recovered to dominate on much, much less competitive terrain. Tiger fell much farther and rose much higher in return.”

This is an interesting take, given that there are those who credit Tiger’s dominating years to competing in an era of weak players (for the record—I don’t agree with that assessment.); it also gives short shrift to Hogan and the level of skill of the players on the Tour at the time. Regardless, it is a futile exercise to make absolute comparisons of performance across eras. The competition was what it was, and each player’s record must be evaluated within the appropriate context.

As far as falling farther, whether you take that in the context of physical injury or level of dominance in the game pre-injury, it just doesn’t wash.

Tiger’s dominating years were put in the rearview mirror in 2009 when his marriage hit the rocks and his Escalade hit a fire hydrant. He had racked up 31 wins in the five seasons preceding those events, including six majors.

Hogan’s solo-win total for a similar time period preceding his accident was 41, including 11 wins in 1944, with three majors.

And what about rising “much higher in return.”?

Post-hydrant, Tiger had two winless seasons in 2010 and 2011, then a mini-comeback with three and five wins, respectively, in 2012 and 2013, before another round of back injuries and personal complications brought on the longest winless stretch of his career, from 2014 to 2017. In his much lauded return to the U.S. Ryder Cup squad, in the week following his Tour Championship victory, he went winless in four matches, bumping his overall losing record of 13-17-3 to 13-21-3.

By contrast, Hogan, returning from a level of physical injury that far surpassed Tiger’s, and contending with continuing physical problems that limited his participation to a select list of events that included the majors and the Colonial Invitation (in his home town of Fort Worth, Texas), won the U.S. Open in the year following his car crash. He had 11 wins in the six years following his accident, of which six were majors—three U.S. Opens (two of them back to back), two Masters, and a British Open. Oh, and three of those majors, his “Triple Crown”, came in 1953, when he won the Masters, the U.S. Open, and the British Open, the first such string of major victories since Bobby Jones won the U.S. and British Amateurs and Opens in 1930. Hogan was named non-playing captain of the 1949 U.S. Ryder Cup squad, which defeated the British team 7 and 5; two years later he played on the again-victorious U.S. squad, winning both of his matches in the 9-1/2 – 2-1/2 victory over the British team.

So, Tiger comes back from essentially self-inflicted back injuries (a result of the violent action of his swing), a bad marriage, and the yips to win again—and OK, against a pretty stiff field—once, at the end of a 19-event season. Hogan came back from life-threatening injuries, and after doctors predicted that he would never walk again, let alone play golf, let alone play championship golf—went on to win 11 times in the next five years, including six majors.

So, you tell me—who made the better comeback?

Book review: “The Prodigy”, by John Feinstein ⭐⭐⭐-1/2

I have been aware of John Feinstein’s writing, especially his golf writing, for many years; in fact, his 1996 chronicle of a season on the PGA Tour, A Good Walk Spoiled, was my introduction to non-fiction reading about professional golf. Though I have concentrated on his golf writing, Feinstein has written several well-regarded books on basketball, baseball, and football—and I have only recently learned that he has also authored a series of sports-related YA (young adult) novels, including the recent release, The Prodigy, the first of his books for younger readers on the subject of golf.

The Prodigy is the new YA sports novel from John Feinstein—his first that is set in the world of golf.

The Prodigy is the somewhat fanciful tale of a 17-year-old golf phenom named Frank Baker, a nice kid from a small town in Connecticut who has amazing golf skills. The book is set in the recent past—2017 and early 2018, to be exact—and we pick up the story when Frank is preparing to play in the 2017 U.S. Amateur at Riviera Country Club, in the upscale Los Angeles-area city of Pacific Palisades.

Frank is being raised by his father, Tom, a divorced single parent who is a freelance stock trader—and a full-time golf dad. Frank is looking forward to playing college golf, and given his record, which includes making it to the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur the previous year at the age of 16, he is assured of a multitude of offers, from the best programs in the country. His father, on the other hand, has his eyes on a different prize.

Frank’s prowess on the golf course has attracted attention from more than just college coaches; agents and equipment company reps have shown interest, and the book’s story arc is built around the conflict that arises when Frank’s dad gets too cozy with an agent from a big sports-representation firm. Frank is under pressure from his dad and the agent to forgo a college career and turn pro. The pressure gets more intense when the youngster earns a spot in the field at the 2018 Masters, heating up even more when Frank shows that he can keep up with the big boys on one of the biggest stages in the game of golf.

There are two people in Frank’s corner in all of the drama surrounding his college / pro dilemma: his swing coach, Slugger Johnson—the head pro at Frank’s home course; and Slugger’s longtime friend and college golf teammate, Keith Forman, a former low-level pro golfer turned golf writer. Forman’s involvement raises journalistic dilemmas for him as he finds himself becoming part of Frank’s story—even coming into conflict with Frank’s father and the ever-present agent—and not just a dispassionate observer who is reporting the story.

Feinstein creates an air of conflict that the Keith Forman character has to work through, describing a number of rather hostile encounters between Forman and tournament volunteers and security personnel, even citing a USGA training session for marshals in which media-badge holders are singled out as untrustworthy (based on a real experience of Feinstein’s—I guess I had better watch my P’s and Q’s the next time I’m at a USGA event on a media credential!)

The conflict between Frank (with Slugger and Keith in his corner), and his dad and the agent, along with his extraordinary play at one of the most high-profile golf tournaments in the world, are the main factors that combine to bring the action to a dramatic conclusion at the 2018 Masters.

One thing you can be sure of in a John Feinstein book is the insider’s touch. Feinstein knows everybody in the game, from players to agents, equipment reps, media folks, and officials and functionaries from the USGA and the PGA Tour. This knowledge is on full display in The Prodigy, to the extent that it starts to feel like rather gratuitous name-dropping. Players, including big names like Phil Mickelson, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas, not only have cameos, they play significant roles in the story, interacting with Frank and the other characters.

And it’s not just players, though they are the most recognizable names. Some of the other real-life names that are dropped include golf media personalities from TV, print journalists, and behind-the-scenes folks from the USGA and the technical side of broadcasting. As for the agents and equipment reps, they get the same short shrift that Florida real-estate developers get in a Carl Hiaasen novel—and I wonder how many of them are still going to be speaking to Feinstein after reading this book.

For the golf-knowledgeable teen audience at which this book is aimed, the big-name golfers who are mentioned will be well-known figures, and those readers might get a kick out of reading a story in which these stars of the PGA Tour interact with a teenaged golfer, even if the conversations and situations feel awkward and contrived—which they do.

The inclusion of real people from golf broadcasting, such as Joe Buck, Paul Azinger, Brandel Chamblee, and Holly Sonders, will pique the interest of young readers who watch golf on TV, but the use of the real names of people from the behind-the-scenes operations, and from the print-media world, will go right over the heads of the young reading audience (and many older readers, too…). On the other hand, readers and reviewers who actually know these people (and I know, or at least have met, a few of them) will find it odd to see in print a fictionalized version of a known person. This aspect of the book rings false with me, and seems rather pointless, all things considered.

Other aspects of the story are also rather uneven. While the overall “voice” of the book has a decided YA tenor, it wanders back and forth between over-explaining simple aspects of the game, as if catering to non-golfers, and using shorthand references that only a reader who is well-versed in the game will understand.

There are curious (and admittedly, mostly minor) lapses that will bother the knowledgeable golfer (or maybe just golf writers who are also editors…). For instance, when setting the scene for the section of the book in which Frank is playing in the 2017 U.S. Amateur, at Riviera Country Club, Feinstein describes the club’s location as being “…a few miles east of the Pacific Ocean…”, but Riviera’s westernmost border lies a scant mile or so from the beach. (Yeah, it’s a nit, but it caught my eye because I specifically checked it for a column I did a few years ago about Ben Hogan’s history at Riviera.) 

Another little faux pas that caught my attention was a misquote of the tagline from the USGA’s pace-of-play campaign of a couple of years back (a line borrowed from a scene in Caddyshack), which is cited as “While we’re still young”, rather than the correct line, which is just “While we’re young.” There are a few other instances like that scattered throughout the book—small things, but noticeable to the knowledgeable, and attentive, reader.

One thread that runs through the latter part of the story, and one which I relished, is a series of subtle, and not-so-subtle, digs at Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters—and their fussy rules and regulations, which are capriciously enacted and vigorously enforced, such as their insistence on referring to spectators on the grounds of the club as “patrons”, a ban on cellphones on the grounds (which Frank is gently but firmly admonished for joking about in an interview), and the use of the terms “first nine” and “second nine” instead of “front nine” and “back nine”. The Keith Forman character is characterized as “…(knowing) he was privileged to cover the Masters and (that) he was in a place any golf fan would kill to be, but the atmosphere of the place—the entitlement of it all—made him feel a bit squeamish.” I’m with Keith on that one.

All in all, while The Prodigy is an engaging read, especially for young golf fans, the overall scenario—which I cannot fully describe without introducing spoilers—is a little over-the-top, and the scenes which involve real-life people from the golf world feel forced and unrealistic. These things might not matter to, or be noticed by, the intended teenage audience, but adult readers, especially those with a bit of familiarity with the personalities involved, will squirm a little over some of those passages.