His Ownself: Dan Jenkins on pros, presidents, and when a funny line becomes a cheap shot

Golf Digest, June, 2001 by Guy Yocom

For decades, all you've done is travel and type. Did success come at the expense of being a good husband and father?

Well, I'm still married after 40 years to the most beautiful and wonderful woman in the world. June Jenkins knew what she was getting into, and she's traveled with me a great deal. The kids never got a vote--and kids shouldn't get a vote--but they've all turned out plenty OK.

Your daughter has said you used to take one of your kids, she or Marty or Danny, with you to a football game or golf tournament now and then when they were young. She's written, "The idea of taking us to a sports event was to see if we could tell the difference between him and the electrician."

My daughter is a wiseguy.

So what keeps you going these days?

I love what I do. The journalism, the deadlines, the books. The travel. The people. The conversation. I don't believe in retirement. I believe when you retire, you die in many ways. I hope I'll be slumped over my laptop or my desktop when they carry me out.

What would His Ownself like written on his headstone?

"Sorry if you couldn't take a joke." That would be the first line. Then I'd steal from my daughter and add, "Hey, it was only a sports event--it wasn't child-birth."

Do you have a question for Dan Jenkins that we didn't ask? Send an e-mail to us at editor@golfdigest.com, and we'll follow up in a future issue. And for more than 30 Golf Digest interviews from our archives, please see www.golfdigest.com and click on "Features."

RELATED ARTICLE: The Jenkins file

Born: Dec. 2, 1929; Fort Worth, Tex.
Residences: Fort Worth and New York City.
Family: Wife, June; sons, Danny and Marty; daughter, Sally.
College: Texas Christian University.

Novels: The Money-Whipped, Steer-Job, Three-Jack, Give-Up Artist (due out in August); Rude Behavior; I'll Tell You One Thing; You Gotta Play Hurt; Fast Copy; Life Its Ownself; Baja Oklahoma; Limo (with Bud Shrake); Dead Solid Perfect; Semi-Tough.

Nonfiction: Fairways and Greens; Bubba Talks; You Call It Sports But I Say It's a Jungle Out There; Football (with Walter Iooss Jr.); Saturday's America; The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate; The Best 18 Golf Holes in America.