Legends’ long wait between Majors can give McIlroy hope

Smoking is bad for your health, but the noxious habit at least gave this writer a chance to chat often with the man the New York Times described as a “chronicler of sports in raucous prose” when he passed away in 2019 at the grand old age of 90.

There are no characters like Dan Jenkins in the press rooms these days, and he was missed in Louisville at the 106th PGA Championship.

He married three times, and he’d have had a field day last Monday when news broke that Rory McIlroy had filed for divorce.As forThursday’s Scottie Scheffler arrest, Jenkins’ stock in trade was making fun of players in an era when they didn’t mind so much and didn’t have agents.

“Arnold used to laugh but maybe he didn’t get it in the first place,” he said in 2001. “I’ve enjoyed some friendly give and take with Jack and Crenshaw, guys like Weiskopf, Trevino, Jerry Pate. Some others. Until today’s era of rich, spoiled brats, players sort of respected you more if you dragged them down to your level.

“Today you’ ve got guys who aren’ t even Tiger Woods who are constantly fawned over by fans and sucked up to by tournament committee men. I lay a lot of blame at the doorstep of the sponsors. You’ve got two kinds of tournament sponsors now: One kind wants his picture taken with Scott Hoch, the other kind wants Mark Calcavecchia to marry his daughter.”

Back in 2014, Jenkins endured the opprobrium of Tiger Woods for doing a mock interview with the star who famous gave little to writers.

“What was your reaction to Rory McIlroy calling off his wedding to Caroline

Wozniacki?” he wrote in a made-up Q&A that Woods later described in The Players Tribune as “a grudge-fuelled piece of character assassination.”

“He’s better off. He won another two Majors, didn’t he?”

Jenkins’ irreverent writings on modern golfing stars were a throwback to his yearning for the days when he was close with fellow Texans Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson and drank with Palmer and Nicklaus.

“Only two things can stop Tiger – injury or a bad marriage,” he wrote prophetically of Woods, long before the injuries and collisions with fire hydrants.

McIlroy, of course, has a right to keep his private life private but his terse interactions with the press in Louisville when simply asked how he was feeling, displayed a tendency to blow small things out of proportion.

McIlroy still has two Majors left this season before his drought extends to 10 years and he can take solace from the fact that Woods, Henry Cotton, Julius Boros, Hale Irwin and Ben Crenshaw went 11 years between Major wins while Lee Trevino and Ernie Els had to wait a decade.

Entire forests have been felled analysing McIlroy’s major drought but Jenkins perhaps came close when analysing the Golden Bear.

“Jack never played for money in his life,” he said of Nicklaus. “He played against the history books, which is tougher. Immortality is a lot tougher to play for than money.”

McIlroy would pay a pretty penny for a fifth Major but to fathom the reasons for his drought, one only has to look at the packed leaderboard entering last night’s final round at Valhalla.

“The fields are stronger now,” Paul McGinley said of the difference between 2014 and 2024. Back then, he was a young guy forging his way, and his elbows were at their pointiest.

“It was really a case of, ‘I am on a march to be the top player in the game, so get out of my way.’ He had a clear vision.”

Getting some perspective surely can’t do any harm.