Quotes from Dan Jenkins

My real heroes have always been sportswriters.

I'd follow Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson anywhere.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Valet parking is an essential at any decent club.

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

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.

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.

Laughter is the only thing that cuts trouble down to a size where you can talk to it.

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

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

The best access is to be tendered to shore from a U.S. Navy destroyer.

and undying hope for improvement that makes golf so exquisitely worth the playing.

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

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.