Fore more years
PRESIDENTIAL GOLF | Obama ranks 8th among 15 who played -- JFK atop leader board
It may say more about the presidents who came before him than about his own skills, but Barack Obama has already cracked the top 10 of the best presidential golfers.
In the January issue of Golf Digest, which hits newsstands next week, the president-elect is No. 8 on the list of golfing presidents. "Yep, Obama is a golfer, too," is the headline.
(AP)
PHOTO GALLERY
Presidential golfers
1. John F. Kennedy
2. Dwight D. Eisenhower
3. Gerald R. Ford
4. Franklin D. Roosevelt
5. George H. W. Bush
6. George W. Bush
7. Bill Clinton
8. BARACK OBAMA
9. Ronald Reagan
10. Warren G. Harding
11. William Howard Taft
12. Woodrow Wilson
13. Richard M. Nixon
14. Lyndon B. Johnson
15. Calvin Coolidge
In fairness, not all of the 42 men who preceded Obama played golf. Golf Digest says Obama, when inaugurated, will be the 15th.
John F. Kennedy and his 80-stroke average tops the list. Calvin Coolidge, who left his golf clubs behind when he departed the White House in 1929, is ranked 15th.
Bill Clinton is just in front of Obama at No. 7 -- although Golf Digest flags Clinton's use of the score-improving "Billigans."
Much has been made about Obama's basketball skills. Not so much on his golfing prowess.
Spokesman Robert Gibbs didn't exactly hype his game when asked in June about a round Obama had just played.
"I don't know if he would tell you they played golf," Gibbs told MSNBC. "They went to a golf course and they swung clubs, but I don't think it was real pretty."
OK, so maybe his political Cinderella story doesn't transfer to the links. He could turn out to be our duffer in chief.
But golfers at Olomano Golf Links, where the lefty-swinging Obama shot a round on his August Hawaiian vacation, were more gracious, saying what they saw looked pretty good. "He hit more than . . . 200 yards," one man told a local TV station.
Obama's commitment to golf excellence may be in doubt, though. During his round at Olomano, he wore his cell phone on his belt.
Golf Digest says there is no official handicap index for Obama; they based his ranking on "research done by our editors vis-a-vis the public information that is available."
The rest of the list was based on observations and writings about presidential golf games, as well as help from Don Van Natta Jr., author of First Off the Tee: Presidential Hackers, Duffers and Cheaters from Taft to Bush.
Considering Obama's penchant for pickup basketball games, it seems unlikely he will ever rack up the 100 rounds a year that Dwight Eisenhower enjoyed.
But if he does keep teeing it up, Obama might want to borrow one of Ike's ideas.
"If I don't improve," Eisenhower once said, "I'm going to pass a law that no one can ask me my golf score."