Franchise Babe by Dan Jenkins

From the Publisher

The legendary Dan Jenkins returns with another bawdy, over-the-top novel of hijinks on the links – this time, the LPGA gets the treatment

Jack Brannon, a golf writer in his forties who has been bunkered more than once in the marriage game, covers the sport for the big-time magazine SM. Lately he’s been bored out of his mind writing about the PGA Tour, which he says has become “Tiger and a bunch of slugs playing pushover courses.” So he decides to check out what he calls “the Lolitas,” a new breed of young chicks on the LPGA Tour. Jack chooses as a magazine subject Ginger Clayton, a fiery eighteen-year old with flowing blond locks, legs up to here, and a personality that combines mischief with confidence. With her killer looks and killer game, Ginger looks very much like the kind of star who can take the LPGA to the next level of excitement and acceptance. She is, indeed, The Franchise Babe, and everyone seems to want a part of her.

Jack’s interest in Ginger’s career might have something to do with her mother, Thurlene Clayton, a knockout herself who looks plenty okay in a jacked-up mini-to use Jack’s description of her outfit. As Ginger shows her grit on the ladies’ tour, the greedy hordes looking to benefit from the kid’s talent and personality aren’t the ones who worry Thurlene-and Jack-the most. Someone is trying to knock Ginger out of the competition-permanently.

Jenkins captures the growing buzz around the Franchise Babe and all the insane and hilarious things that happen when the sports world anoints someone new to the throne of super-stardom. Along the way, Jenkinsissues bawdy, dead-on takedowns of selfish sports moms, gasbag corporate sponsors, adventurous promoters, sleazy sports agents, point-missing magazine editors, and all the other modern annoyances that make life hard for a guy who, as they say in Texas, is just tryin' to get by without gettin' hurt.

Publishers Weekly

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)

Andrew Smith - Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews

Never has the worldview of Golf Digest columnist Jenkins (Slim and None, 2005, etc.) been pettier than in this cliche-ridden, boorish and brief exploration of the newly sexualized world of the LPGA tour. Sports Magazine writer Jack Brannon, 47, hits every 1970s-era formula branch on his way down. Twice-divorced with a penchant for four-olive martinis, Brannon sleeps with the well-worn PR nymphs on the circuit and picks restaurants Sinatra frequented. Weary of a men's game that focuses only on the legendary player he dubs "Black Jesus," Jack turns his attentions to the "Lolitas": the sexy and talented younger women gaining ground on the women's circuit in tournaments like the Firm Chick Classic. He zeroes in on a rising star, an ingenue shooter with model looks named Ginger Clayton, the titular "Franchise Babe" whose numerous gifts promise big-ticket endorsement deals (of Ginger the narrator says: " . . . it was a good guess she could kick a hole in the ceiling of a motel room if she was on her back doing what it looked like she could do best"). After Ginger is nearly poisoned by a rival and subsequently brained on the links on her way to the toilet-and Jack makes a pitiful but successful pass at her hot-to-trot mother, Thurlene-he starts investigating who might have it out for the feisty wunderkind. Jenkins makes some salient, well-worn points about the commercialization of sports and the exploitation of young athletes. Unfortunately, they're punctuated by sexist remarks, as well as juvenile taunts aimed indiscriminately at lesbians, Hollywood liberals, the French and others. The golf, meanwhile, is just as exciting as it is on television. The same old story, written by someone who shouldknow better.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0385519109
  
• ISBN-13: 9780385519106
• Format: Hardcover, 256pp
• Publisher: Doubleday Publishing
• Pub. Date: June 2008
• Sales Rank: 17,653