The Franchise Babe

March 3, 2008
In Jenkins's outrageous sports satire (after Slim and None
), middle-aged sportswriter Jack Brannon is sick of writing about Tiger Woods and the boring testosterone-charged PGA tour. So the swaggering Texan decides to check out the ladies of the LPGA, specifically hot teen sensation and fellow Texan, Ginger Clayton. She's a “fiery eighteen-year-old blonde” with the potential to become the next golf superstar (or, in pro golf parlance, a real “franchise babe”). Soon, Jack is impressed by Thurlene, Ginger's gorgeous single mom, and enamored of Ginger's talent, beauty and precocious professionalism. He decides to tag along, taking notes and observing the peculiar peccadilloes of professional sports—including crazed stage-golf moms and others who'll stop at nothing to get ahead in the high-stakes game. Jenkins pokes fun at the golf world eccentricities he knows so well and allows Jack major leeway in making smart-mouth commentary as he falls in love and gets a great scoop.

June 15, 2008
Jenkins ("Slim and None") takes his trademark humor over the top in this farcical novel about the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour. His method is to throw anti-PC jokes at everyone from lesbians to Native Americans and see what sticks. Unfortunately, nothing does. He half-heartedly includes a Tonya Harding-like plot against the "franchise babe" of the title, but drops it, seemingly from boredom. For larger public libraries and local demand.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2008
Jenkins, the dean of contemporary golf writers, delivers a rollicking broadside aimed at womens golf. Our narrator, golf journalist Jack Brannon, weary of the Tiger-dominated PGA Tour, has decided to check out the LPGAs Franchise Babe, 18-year-old Ginger Clayton, who seems primed to challenge the plethora of Korean women dominating the tour. The tale follows Ginger as she moves through several minor tour stops leading up to a major tournament, the Dinah Shore, renamed the Lagoutte-Dinah Cup in honor of a big-bucks Frenchman attempting to corner the U.S. market for horse meat (the commercial sponsorship of golf tournaments is only one of the many targets at which Jenkins slings his satirical arrows). But will the Ginger Express be derailed by golfs version of Tonya Harding? The laughs pour forth as Jenkins delivers politically incorrect body blows with an inspired randomness that suggests Jackson Pollack attacking a canvas with an overflowing paint bucket. But, as always with Jenkins, the golf is as precisely and knowledgeably described as the jokes are scattershot. Great fun for golf fans, who will have a ball filling in real names for fictional characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)