Yahoo Golf Coverage Plumbs New Depths

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=dw-jenkinstwitter081209&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Check out this link if you are seeking new ways to loathe the modern golf media. I thought that Jimmy Roberts and Jim Gray were obnoxious for their unnecessarily sentimental send-ups of every minor human interest story to even brush up against the golfing world, but this one gives new meaning to nauseating ass-kissing. The article is allegedly about the infamous golf writer, Dan Jenkins, who is a self-congratulating relic in his own right. But even Dan Jenkins would have never penned something so droolingly phony as this. It's either a sycophantic puff piece or Dan Wetzel will need to look into getting a prescription to fight his precariously low self-esteem.

Jimmy Roberts and Jim Gray are paid to do their saccharin time-fillers about sick kids, fading hopes, and people seeking to regain lost glory, all with tinkling piano music in the background. Their producers apparently expect at least one mostly irrelevant caveat per tournament, so like the good soldiers they are, they go gather up all of the unpleasant stories they can and then pick the one most likely to end on a mildly happy note. But this does not mean they have hopelessly aligned themselves with their own media persona. For all we know, they both go home and drink Wild Turkey with Led Zeppelin turned up to 11 on the CD player. I don't forgive them, of course, but I wouldn't send them away from the dinner table, either. These guys just know how to play the game.

Dan Wetzel, on the other hand, takes a giant leap into the insulting and the inane. Who did he write this article for? Me? You? Dan Jenkins? I doubt it. If you take his Yahoo Bio to heart, he is a generalist, an "award winning" sportswriter covering all sports. Perhaps he won an award for Most Insincere or Biggest Fraud. One thing is certain, he needs to leave golf writing to actual golfers. As much as Dan Jenkins is a dinosaur and a constant reminder that no one over 65 thinks today's golfer could hold a Soda Fountain Phosphate to the legendary players of old, at least he was an actual golf writer. Just how exactly Dan Wetzel is qualified, beyond his obvious sense of entitlement to write just about anything and have his editor run with it, I will never know.

To say that Wetzel is not a good writer is probably not a true statement, but to point out that this "article" is precisely why golfers have virtually no voice in the game that they love is completely accurate. All Wetzel does here is perpetuate a totally self-serving piece of sportswriter folklore. Dan Jenkins is basically a cranky old jerk, and likes to dwell on how far the game has fallen from the glories of yesteryear. You know, recalling great golf traditions like the top players treating everyone around them like garbage (Hogan, Snead, Weiskopf, Watson), massive drinking problems (Mahaffey, Trevino, Knudson, and many more), not to mention transient instances of cheating, adultery, equipment failures, unreliable transportation, dishonest tour promoters, shady golf hustlers, lousy golf balls, low purses, and marginal public support. Ah yes, those good old days. Dan Jenkins is a professional at propagating the myth that lives in his head, and because he can make people laugh, nobody seems to mind. Let me include a few of the brilliant gems he is sending out to all of us thankful golf fans on Twitter these days:

"Women say men don’t know what labor is like. Ross Fisher, whose wife is due any moment, just gave birth to an 8. They’ll call the child Quad.”
“(Chris Wood) looks like a guitar player who lost the rest of his band.”
“Bulletin: Greg Norman just shot 77. And he wasn’t even leading this time.”

Ha ha ha ha ha! Ouch, my sides hurt! How original and wonderful that he would make fun of Greg Norman, who at 54 years old could actually still win a Major at any time, and could easily fold Dan Jenkins into quartered segments and ship him off to 1960 where he belongs. But should we really blame Dan Jenkins for never being able to leave the era that treated him so well? Probably not. A 79 year old man that has dedicated his life to popularizing and humanizing a great game should get a pass. Dan Wetzel, on the other hand, needs someone to yank him back into 2009 and explain to him that "snarky" (I apologize for using the word, but he used it and I think that speaks volumes) geezers who take pleasure in slamming some of the greatest sportsmen in the world are not supposed to be spontaneously honored. Am I supposed to believe that Dan Wetzel could find nothing better to write about the very day before the last Major of 2009, Glory's Last Shot, and a tournament that has all of the basic ingredients to be one of the better PGA's in modern history? You can't be serious. Is his editor on vacation? Did they leave him unsupervised with his laptop again? You know what happens when 'Lil Dan is left to write without grown-ups - he'll eat all the cookies, stay up too late, and write 1000 words of remedial nonsense. No no, Dan. No.

One thing is clear to me after reading this unfortunate pile of horsemess, and it is that modern golf media personalities, as a general rule, are far more interested in bolstering their own careers using golf as the mechanism than in serving as tribunes of the game and of the fanbase that supports it. Spoon feeding us this garbage in lieu of actual golf coverage is a mindboggling mistake. From now on, Dan Wetzel and Dan Jenkins (The Dans) should only be allowed to write in Twitter form, and only about one another, and leave the real golf coverage to Faldo, Johnny Miller, and Jim Nance (or anyone else who actually cares about the game). That would leave so much time for the Dans to communicate thusly:
Dan J: "OMG! That guy is sooooooooo bad! He just shot a totally stupid 77!"
Dan W: "LOL! You are the King of Snark. The Great White Snark! I totally think you are the diggity and think that everything after 1960 is a hot mess. You should totally come over later and we can listen to Perry Como and talk about how balata balls used to go out of round after 3 swings."
Dan J: " Oh, that'd be just swell. We can make fun of these talentless modern palookas like Anthony Kim and Adam Scott and Paul Casey. Jack would have won 36 Majors if he'd played against bums like these!"

You get the picture. Somebody had to say it, so I said it. Golf is at its best right now, and does not need fussy old killjoys like Dan Jenkins reminding us of how great it was when Kenny Venturi almost died from heat stroke or when somebody threatened to kill Charlie Sifford if he showed up to play. If those are the good old days, Dan Jenkins can have them all. And Dan Wetzel should either give his full respect to the honest, hard working, enormously talented players and fans of 2009, or just stop writing about golf altogether. The world of golf deserves better.

And remember, if it isn't Gofl blog, then it's just plain gofl (though not as gofl as Dan Wetzel).