Sports Makes You Type Faster

Dan Jenkins’ 23rd book includes a tale of his obscure Grand Slam

- Dan Jenkins

But it’s been a great gig.

I started in the old press tent in 1951. It overflowed with grown men in fedoras bumping into each other, or their folding chairs and Smith-Coronas. A few 40-watt bulbs dangled from the ceiling. There was a din of phones ringing and bells pinging on wire machines. The place was dense with cigarette smoke. I knew this was where I belonged.

So this sportswriter walks into a press room . . . That sounds like the start of a joke, right? But it isn’t. At this writing, it has been my job to spend one year and four months of my life in Augusta, Ga., covering the Masters for 68 consecutive years. That’s a Masters record for journalists that stretches from the Augusta National veranda to a public course in Istanbul. Each day I go to the mailbox to see if the prize money has arrived yet. No luck so far.

Western Union operators were clacking on their whining contraptions in a cramped alcove sending out urgent pieces about Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, the only two golfers of interest in those days. Sports editors back in the offices in New York, Chicago, even Fort Worth, took a dim view of their writers filing stories on golfers they’d never heard of.

The tent was open at two ends—we could catch the breezes. Augusta used to offer a buffet of weather in one week—ideal, hot, windy, warm, rainy, freezing.

The writers were still dressing in coats and ties at golf tournaments. I suppose it was because Grantland Rice did. I was excited to see the nattily attired Rice at my first Masters. This saintly gent in a shirt, tie, sweater, checkered jacket and light-gray hat. I saw him across the crowded tent. But I was too shy to introduce myself to the gentleman who, along with bringing dignity to my profession, had given the Masters its name. Three years later, he passed away.