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Dan Jenkins Stays Home, Eats BBQ, Breaks Streak

by Jeff Skinner

History is made at every major championship. This week at the Open Championship a bit of history came to an end. A streak that may never be broken ended as the dean of sportswriters, Dan Jenkins was absent from the Open Championship.

Jenkins had been to every Open Championship for the past 45 years. It started at the 1969 Open Championship and he had been to everyone since.

His string of consecutive majors ended at 179…that’s 179 majors! We are talking 45 years of majors! Will any writer, will anyone ever come close to that.

His streak of 179 came to an end at the U.S. Open in Pinehurst.  I happened to be in the Media Center at Pinehurst when Jenkins was spending some time with the USGA’s video crew. I snapped this shot of him as they got ready. 

Mike O’Malley pays tribute to his friend and gives us the facts on Jenkins’s record. 

The apple didn’t fall far from the Jenkins Tree. Here is a column from the Washington Post by his sportswriter daughter, Sally Jenkins.  

The British Open is better in Texas because you can watch it with barbecue. This is how my father has consoled himself while missing his first golf major championship in 45 years. jenkinsIt seems his doctor felt the bracing air of northwest England might not be good for him, but the medical community said nothing about smokehouse ribs. The fact that Dan Jenkins, 84, stayed home from the British constitutes not just a concession, but some kind of historical event, because the last time he was absent from a major the club heads were made of persimmon, and not every Tour wife was a blonde.

Forty-five straight British Opens is a lot of trips to the firths and forths, a lot of gorse and whin under the quaint old footbridges. My father had covered the past 179 majors consecutively for either Golf Digest or Sports Illustrated, and overall he has witnessed 222 majors (counting one he saw as a kid in 1941), a feat that helped put him in the World Golf Hall of Fame.   

So you can see how he might be a little sentimental about breaking his streak, and skipping a tournament that has always been equal part pleasure and discomfort. “I’ll be tweeting Hoylake from Fort Worth, where we have reliable plumbing, bath towels bigger than a wash cloth, and food I can identify,” he told his more than 41,000 followers on Twitter.
Instead we’re doing our best to simulate the experience of golf on the links of Hoylake inside the family home. On Thursday morning we rose at 3 a.m. central time to watch the telecast from overseas. I staggered into the living room, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, to find him sitting upright in a chair, wearing a heavy windbreaker and black cashmere Ben Hogan golf cap. My brother explained, “It’s his game face. Like the guy who wears the Eagles jersey in front of the TV.” 

It’s a bit sad to see such an amazing run come to an end. There are few men with the wit of Jenkins and even fewer that could stay at the top of their game for so long.

Click here for Sally’s full column it’s a must read. 

Click here for The Ancient Twitterer’s Twitter feed and get ready to laugh like hell. He is absolutely hysterical.

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