The celebrated American sports writer, Dan Jenkins, has passed away at the age of 89. Raised in the same Texas airts of Forth Worth which spawned his golfing heroes, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, Jenkins would go on to become a golf scribbling colossus and peppered his expertly crafted pieces with humour and withering barbs. Jenkins started his writing career with the Forth Worth Press before finding fame with that US powerhouse of publishing, Sports Illustrated.

He covered his first major, the US Open, in 1951 when Hogan did battle with a hellishly brutal Oakland Hills and conquered. Jenkins didn't miss many showpiece occasions after that during a long and fulfilling career and in 2012 was inducted into the world golf hall of fame.

During the 2015 Masters at Augusta, Herald Sport's golf writer, Nick Rodger, caught up with this decorated doyen of the Royal & Ancient game for a brief blether ...

He's not quite from the days of quill and parchment but Dan Jenkins has been committing his influential, inspiring golfing musings to print for a heck of a long time.

The golf writing game has changed a bit since this enduring and engaging doyen first began scribbling away but the decorated 85-year-old Texan has moved with the times. From the typewriter to Twitter, Jenkins has evolved from the old and has embraced the new and he continues to pen chapters in this long, rewarding sporting life. "I've never pondered retirement," says Jenkins, who began his creative career with his local paper and moved on to that powerhouse of publishing, Sports Illustrated, before settling in at Golf Digest. "When you retire, you die."

The media centre on the final day of the Masters is a thundering theatre of clatterings as the fevered masses thrash away at the laptop keys like Little Richard delivering one of his boisterous, piano-pounding epistles. Outside, in a tranquil little corner, Jenkins, his face shaded under a bunnet and his fingers gently caressing a thin cigarette, absorbs, ponders and reflects on yet another week at Augusta National.

This year has been his 65th in a row. "I only missed the first 14," he adds with a cheery chuckle and a glint in those wise eyes that have covered over 220 major championships down the years. "People kept paying me to come and I kept on coming. I would absorb it all and watch it all and then when deadline came I always felt like it was my turn on stage."

A native of that same Forth Worth town as the great Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan, Jenkins, like those fellow Texans, rose to greatness in another golfing field. His relationship with Hogan was deep and one borne out of admiration and mutual respect. "That's why Hogan liked me, I knew what golf was about," added Jenkins, who is part of a small decorated posse of media men who have been inducted into golf's world hall of fame. "We played together 30 or 40 times when we were home. Hogan was my idol and my friend and he got me covering majors. He was so gracious and he had a closet sense of humour which he didn't show to anybody. I couldn't say anything bad about him and I couldn't write anything bad about him. I tried not to write anything bad about anybody until Tiger."

Ah yes, Tiger Woods. When Jenkins wrote a parody article about the Tiger last year - or "invented fiction" as the former world No 1 oddly called it - the piece went down like a sack of spanners in the Woods camp. Jenkins remains defiant. "With the exception of Tiger, all the great champions have been the best players for us," he said. "Gracious interviews, great winners, great losers. Palmer, Nicklaus, Snead, Hogan; they made my job easier. I like guys who make my job easier. You know, Tiger was fun when he was beating the hell out of everybody in his first five or six years. But he smiled for TV, never for us and never told us anything. I tried to get close but decided I'm too old to try any more. I used to stupidly think that he needed us as much as we needed him. That wasn't so."

Honest, insightful, humorous, scathing and possessing the wisdom that comes from the passing years, Jenkins has plenty of opinions and thoughts as golf has changed and developed through the ages. "There's too much money," he stated. "That's why my interest in regular tour events has diminished. Players used to have to win to make money, now you can finish 20th and make millions a year. You have to compete and try to win, rather than compete to try and finish 15th. That's a sadness for me. As Lee Trevino said 'you never know what's in someone's heart'. Do they just want to get rich and buy boats and cars or do they want to play against the history book? Jack (Nicklaus) always played against the history book. It's the toughest thing to beat. Guys now come down the stretch and get close and think 'if fifth place is going to pay $600,000 then that's not bad'. They have to think they want to win. They claim they want to win but they don't."

The 79th Masters was drawing to a close and Jenkins had chalked another one off. "Why do I keep doing it?," he ponders. "It keeps changing. The cast keeps changing, we have new heroes, there is always a new wave coming. That's what makes it great."

And on that note, it was time to start writing ...