John F Kennedy was the best, Richard Nixon was one of the worst, Jimmy Carter never bothered and Bill Clinton just could not play by the rules, although he always convinced himself otherwise. Welcome to the world of United States presidential golf — a pursuit common to 14 of the last 17 presidents, even if most of them were pretty bad at it.
A recently released book by New York Times investigative reporter Don van Natta examines the golfing habits of the US presidents and discovers that, in many cases, they can act as illuminating motifs for the various presidential styles.
Only Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter did not play, leaving the others all the way back to William Taft (the first and the fattest of them all), who refused to lay down his clubs to meet a Chilean diplomat.
”I’ll be damned if I will give up my golf game to see this fellow,” he said.
In First Off The Tee, Van Natta writes of his astonishment, when playing with Clinton, at the president’s penchant for taking ”mulligans” — a second swipe at a poorly executed first shot — and then claiming a far lower score, as though his mistakes had never happened.
”Apparently being president means never having to say double-bogey,” he writes.
The Bushes, meanwhile, do not seem to care too much about the execution so long as it is swift. ”The Bush brand of game is speed golf, or aerobic golf, or power golf,” Van Natta reports. ”We’re not good,” the elder Bush said, ”but we’re fast.” Whether it’s war in the Gulf or golf on the green, the son, it seems, follows closely in the footsteps of his father. ”We like to bang away. My father’s measure of success is not how low you score, but how fast you play. His goal is to always finish 18 holes in less than three hours.”
While Kennedy was the best of all the presidents at the game, he was less keen to be seen on the links than most, fearing it would give the wrong impression. This left him plenty of time for other pursuits, hence Theodore Sorensen’s comment that ”this administration is going to do for sex what the previous one did for golf”. The theme of the book is lighthearted, but to some at least the issues it raises are serious. When Van Natta first wrote of Clinton’s style in 1999, one of the
president’s closest friends, Terry McAuliffe, called him. ”The president is furious with you,” said McAuliffe. ”Your piece was horrible. He is so mad at you. He will never forgive you.”
Van Natta pointed out that he had written far more damning things about Clinton in the White House, to which McAuliffe replied: ”You called him a cheater! The president takes his golf game very seriously.” —