If you’re looking for a good golf book for Father’s Day you might consider Dan Jenkins’ Unplayable Lies (Doubleday, $25.95.) One of the foremost golf writers of our time, Jenkins has compiled a tome of thirty-eight essays on a variety of golf subjects, many of which are imparted in Jenkins’ wickedly funny and sardonic manner. Half of the essays are original while the balance has been reworked based on previously published articles in Golf Digest. Accordingly, if you’re a GD subscriber many of these essays will be familiar. What I found most entertaining and surprising about this book was its insight and studied reflection on the history of the game. Yes, there’s plenty of Jenkins patented wit and sharp one-liners at play here. But there’s also a wealth of golf history and appreciation for the game’s most revered figures and milestones. Given Jenkins’ admitted idolization of Ben Hogan, there are also a number of references and mentions about Hogan throughout the book.

As it’s been said, these Texans really stick together.assassin's creed hoodie scarf tutorial For those in Michigan who count Walter Hagen as an adopted favorite son, Jenkins rightfully elevates his stature by a thoughtful review of his distinguished career. under armour storm fleece half zip topFor one, he quotes Gene Sarazen saying, “We owe a greater debt to Walter Hagen than we do to anything else that’s happened in this game. jack daniels shirt kopen nederlandWalter took the club pro out of the kitchen and the repair shop and put us on the map.” phs hoodiesLater in an essay titled “The Match of the Century” he reports on the head-to-head matches in 1926 between Hagen and Bobby Jones. nike fleece hoodie v2

Hagen got the better of Jones while also donating $5,000, half of the purse, to a local hospital. seahawks lynch hoodieThe Haig was “giving back” before it became a corporate branding tactic.sasquatch hoodies sale I also appreciated Jenkins re-examination of what constitutes a “major” from a historical perspective. As he writes, “First you have to go with me and acknowledge there were majors before there were majors.” In this vein, the Masters as a major was preceded by a number of other tournaments, including the Western Open, North and South Open and the Metropolitan Open. As such, Jenkins establishes a “new count of the all-time multiple winners of golf’s major championships.” For would-be golf historians or those who love to regale buddies at the 19th hole, this chapter alone is reward enough for purchasing the book.

It’s no revelation that Jack Nicklaus still tops the list with 23 “majors” but many will be enlightened to see Hagen in second place with 22. Jenkins goes on for six pages, listing the majors of past and current players (male.) But those who relish Jenkins for his wit and biting humor won’t be disappointed. As in, “take the sports agent. Or his recalling a locker room incident between two angry players when one of them accused the other of having an affair with his wife. According to Jenkins, the player retorted, “I thought about it, but the line was too long.” Similarly in an essay titled “Letter of Resignation” he has a devilish nickname for a philandering tennis pro at a club. Along the way, Jenkins shares his special memories and anecdotes, in individual chapters, for the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA. Along with Michigan’s Jack Berry, Jenkins was presented the Masters Majors Achievement Award for having covered over 40 Masters (now 65!) and like Berry was issued a reserved parking spot in the Media lot.

In that chapter, he nicely credits the much maligned Hootie Johnson by saying he “stood up to the media heat. Refused to be intimidated by howling ladies and other protesters.” At the time, the Augusta National (and thus the Masters by association) was mischaracterized as being a “stag club” (see Pine Valley) and categorically banning female members. Current Masters Chairman Billy Payne receives a favorable nod by Jenkins for being smart enough to defuse the situation and wisely admitting female members Condi Rice and Darla Moore. Jenkins does have an old school prejudice against wearing shorts on the golf course. This in spite of recalling that at the 1996 PGA at Valhalla the caddies rebelled and refused to wear pants in the insufferable Louisville heat that caused several of their brethren to incur heat stroke. “Now it’s shorts everywhere. Caddies, sportswriters—everywhere but on me.” Guess one could say after reading admirable Unplayable Lies, Jenkins’ writing definitely has legs even if he doesn’t.

The day after shocking the world by defeating heavily favored Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship in 1964, Cassius Clay shook things up even more. He announced that he was joining the Nation of Islam and renouncing his “slave name.” Soon, he would be known as Muhammad Ali. That bold assertion of black identity was discomforting to both whites and blacks. For many whites, who knew nothing of the Nation of Islam and its ideology of black separatism, it challenged everything they thought they understood about African-Americans, and opened a window to the complexity and diversity of black identity. For African-Americans, long accustomed to papering over internal differences to present a “respectable” and unified front to the white world, it revealed long-standing – and still ongoing – debates over political outlook, self-image and even style. Ali made both groups confront the question of what it meant to be black in a majority white society. Decades later, the question still echoes in ways both profound and picayune.

The nation’s first black president has been criticized for not doing more to forge a black policy agenda. Is he black enough? Justice Clarence Thomas is the only African-American on the U.S. Supreme Court. He opposes affirmative action, saying it stigmatizes its beneficiaries. Does that make him a racial sellout or a man of principle? Darius Rucker first found musical success as a guitarist and lead singer for the rock band Hootie and the Blowfish. As a solo act, he has become a country music star. Is that a black thing? More than any athlete of his time, Ali challenged the nation’s limiting notions of black identity. “I think he raised the fact early on that all African-Americans were not cut from the same cloth and we all did not have the same consciousness as such,” said Dewey Clayton, a University of Louisville political scientist. When Ali took the championship from Liston, there was a widely accepted role for athletes, particularly black athletes. They were to play their games, reap their ample rewards, and remain apart from the social turmoil percolating around them.

In the eyes of many civil rights leaders, who were about the business of proving that black people belonged as full-fledged citizens, black athletes were supposed to be “credits to the race,” dignified and not showy. Ali rejected all of that. He was the Louisville Lip, mocking opponents and often predicting victory in rhyme, at a time when athletes were mostly stoic. He also deigned to be more than just an athlete. He was a man of religion. He chose to take political positions, and to be a social critic. At the time, a prominent black athlete could have done few things that would have been more unsettling. He became a Muslim in a country that saw itself as Christian. He questioned a war and defied the draft, at a time when most of the country saw that as unpatriotic. At a time when fighting for civil rights meant pushing for integration by marching or sitting in, Ali did neither. Instead, he joined a religious sect that preached racial separation. As skeptical reporters pressed him about his religion and his name, the new champ refused to back down.

“I don’t have to be who you want me to be. I’m free to be who I want,” he said. It barely mattered that Ali was not always consistent. The man who defied the draft later advocated for it. The global icon at times looked down on less developed parts of the world. Yet, he asserted his blackness and self-respect in ways that African-Americans often found inspiring. “He would ask things like why is Tarzan white and king of the jungle,” Clayton said. “He would ask why the media would beautify everything white, and do the opposite with everything black. This came at a time when black men were not supposed to stand straight and look white people in the eye.” Ali was not the first black athlete to do things on his own terms, of course. Jack Johnson waved a middle finger at convention by whipping white men in the ring, and dating white women outside of it. Paul Robeson, the Rutgers football star and valedictorian turned singer and actor, spoke out against U.S. imperialism and social injustice.

Both Johnson and Robeson were relentlessly persecuted by the government and largely silenced. And they were never widely embraced as American heroes, never mind global icons. Jackie Robinson is beloved, maybe now more than ever. But early on, he largely suppressed his instinct toward fierceness in service of the cause of integrating baseball. But after Ali, the rules changed. Ali’s rebelliousness was rooted in the same racism that moved Johnson, Robeson, and Robinson. He grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, during Jim Crow segregation, a reality that grated on Ali as he grew older. African-Americans could not try on clothes in downtown department stores, sit near whites at movie theaters, or buy homes in many Louisville neighborhoods. In those days, University of Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp was his state’s sports hero. Rupp, who led Kentucky from 1930 to 1972, was one of the most successful coaches in collegiate history. But the so-called “Baron of the Bluegrass” resisted recruiting black players until 1970, long after many other Southern schools were fielding integrated teams.

All of that had an effect on Ali. “Lots of things were working in my mind,” Ali told one of his biographers, Thomas Hauser. “In my own life, there were places I couldn’t go, places I couldn’t eat. I won a gold medal representing the United States at the Olympic Games, and when I came home to Louisville, I still got treated like a n—–.” Back home in Ali’s old neighborhood in the West End, even people who had known him all of his life did not know what to make of some of his new identity. When he said that he was becoming a Muslim, they wondered what happened to the Bible-toting young man who used to shadowbox through the neighborhood. “Mostly, our people were against it,” said Lawrence Montgomery, 81, a longtime friend who still lives on the same block where Ali grew up. “That was because we did not know what the Nation of Islam was all about. But then, I decided if that’s what he wants to do, that’s his business.” The neighbors thought much the same when Ali refused to be inducted into the military during the Vietnam War, famously saying “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.

No Viet Cong ever called me n—–.” For a time, that decision brought him widespread scorn. Yet, as the nation turned against the Vietnam War, the rebel became a hero and his fearlessness proved inspiring. “Every young man in this country who finds this war objectionable and abominable and unjust will file as a conscientious objector,” civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said. “And no matter what you think of Mr. Muhammad Ali’s religion, you certainly have to admire his courage.” That sense of independence lifted him to prominence and eventually unparalleled popularity. Former President Bill Clinton will deliver a eulogy at his memorial service at downtown Louisville’s 22,000-seat Yum! Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, King Abdullah II of Jordan and comic Billy Crystal are also among those scheduled to speak. Still, some things have changed and others have not since Ali stood up for himself. Many black athletes are applauded now when they make political statements even if their actions come with few of the risks that confronted the former champ.

Cleveland Cavalier LeBron James and other NBA players were widely celebrated for wearing “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts during warm-ups before a 2014 game in Brooklyn, New York, to call attention to the killing of Eric Garner by New York City police. Other prominent athletes are criticized for not doing enough. Michael Jordan has never lived down his decision not to endorse black U.S. Senate candidate Harvey Gantt of North Carolina when he was running against Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, who was widely condemned as a racist. The debate continues to rage over the value of respectability, whether it is more effective to work within the system to effect change, or to agitate from outside. Black Lives Matter protesters have taken to the streets in many cities, including those run by black politicians, to protest police brutality. Meanwhile, some black elected officials and others have challenged these activists to do more to combat the street crime that claims thousands of black lives each year.

And if Americans are now more familiar with Islam than they were when Ali converted in 1964, it seems that much of the old suspicion remains. Polls have found that more than half of Americans hold unfavorable views of Islam. And one poll late last year found that nearly half of Americans support presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s proposal to impose a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Once, Ali’s choices cost him his heavyweight title, more than three years of his boxing prime, and untold millions of dollars. Now, Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the U.S. Senate, who once vowed to limit the country’s first black president to one term in office, took to the floor to extol Ali, calling his story “an American story” that touched people “in every corner of the world.” In a statement issued by the White House, President Barack Obama noted that in his private study off the Oval Office he keeps a pair of Ali’s boxing gloves on display.