Dan Jenkins, sports writing great, golf expert and author, dies at 89

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Dan Jenkins, the sports writing great and best-selling author whose career covered Ben Hogan to Tiger Woods, began with Western Union and ended with Twitter, has died. He was 89.

"The message on my tombstone will be, 'I knew this would happen,"' Jenkins always said, exemplifying the trenchant humor he brought to the 232 major championships he attended, starting with the 1941 U.S. Open at Colonial as a 12-year-old in his hometown.

TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati confirmed Jenkins died Thursday.

Jenkins began his career at The Fort Worth Press and rose to stardom at Sports Illustrated with his two loves, college football and golf. He also wrote for Playboy and joined Golf Digest in 1985. Jenkins continued to write books, including a memoir called, "His Ownself." His best-sellers included "Semi-Tough," "Baja Oklahoma" and "Dead Solid Perfect."

Jenkins covered his first major at the 1951 Masters, won by his beloved Hogan. Starting with the 1969 PGA Championship, he covered 179 consecutive majors. The streak ended when his health kept him from going to Royal Liverpool for the British Open in 2014.

His last major was the Masters last year.

Jenkins became only the third golf writer to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2012, following Bernard Darwin and Herbert Warren Wind.

His writing style was grounded in humor, and he often mocked the players he felt unworthy to win a major -- starting with Jack Fleck, who took down Hogan in a playoff at Olympic Club for the 1955 U.S. Open, which remains one of the game's biggest upsets.

Through all of his writings, though, Jenkins said he never tried to sell out accuracy for a good joke.

"Even though I was making a stab at humor, I don't think I ever wrote a line I didn't believe," Jenkins said. "I tried not to draw too much blood. I tried to rave about all the heroes of the game, and they deserved it. ... When something great happens -- like when an Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods or Ben Hogan happens -- you don't have to be funny, you just have to be accurate."

Jenkins also is member of the Texas Golf Hall of Fame and the National Sportscasters and Sports Writers Hall of Fame.

He wrote effortlessly, with keen observation, and trusted his instincts. He recalls using Western Union in the 1951 U.S. Open -- "They were in charge of the typos," he once said -- and used a typewriter until the late 1990s.

"He always filed clean copy," his daughter, Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, once said. "If a page got sloppy with correction, he would retype the entire page. Because he has grown up writing on a typewriter, he thought cleanly."

In addition to his daughter, Jenkins is survived by wife June and sons Danny and Marty.