Let the president golf in peace

Stop the presses. Tiger Woods is involved in another scandal. Only this time he had a date with the president of the United States.

Woods and Barack Obama played golf on Day 2 of the president’s big golf weekend in Florida. He wrapped it up Monday as the White House press corps was reaching a boil.

Barack Obama is being hounded by media for his private time on the links this weekend, which SN's David Whitley says isn't right. (AP Photo)

The political media are incensed they didn’t have access to the golf resort. The sports media could have told them that Tiger always has F-16s overhead to shoot down pushy reporters.

Obama is also getting whacked for playing a reported 72 holes in three days. Nothing new there. He’s caught more golf grief than any president since Augusta National member Dwight Eisenhower.

Can we please let the man play in peace?

I don’t say that as a Republican or as Democrat. I say it as a member of the Golf Party.

The perception, arguably, in the public eye is that a round of golf for a President is a five-hour shirk of duty. Instead of teeing it up with Tiger, Obama should have been defusing Joe Biden’s tongue or North Korean nukes.

It’s not just presidents who carry the goldbrick stigma. Trent Dilfer won the NFL players’ golf tournament when he was Tampa Bay’s quarterback. Fans ripped him for not spending those off-season days studying film and learning not to throw into double coverage.

You almost never hear criticism when someone devotes a few hours to playing chess or watching football. Obama plays plenty of pickup basketball, but his jumper hasn’t generated 1/100th the backlash as his putting. The hobby bias is an American tradition.

“Rail-splitting has produced an unparalleled president in Lincoln,” Mark Twain said. “But golf hasn’t produced even a good A-1 congressman.”

John Boehner supporters might disagree. The Speaker of the House told Golf Digest he plays about 100 rounds a year. But Twain had a built-in resentment of golf that defied reasoning.

“A good walk spoiled,” he supposedly called it.

There’s also the elitist rap. Greens fees at The Floridian are $300 these days, assuming you could even get in the place. And you can’t.

There’s no arguing the sport costs money. I’d also argue it’s the world’s most inclusive sport. Vijay Singh started out hitting coconuts in Fiji. If you have enough talent and dedication, anyone can win a major.

I don’t expect golf critics to buy that 99 Percent argument. Neither did the Romney campaign.

It set up a website during the campaign that tracked Obama’s golf rounds. It urged people to donate $18 to help “send President Obama on a permanent golfing vacation.”

Monday’s round was No. 115 since Obama first took office. Contrary to RNC reports, he was not wearing Foot-Joys at his inauguration.

That sounds like a lot of golf, though it actually breaks down to just over two rounds a month. By presidential standards, Michelle Obama is hardly a golf widow.

Fifteen of the past 18 presidents owned clubs. The first serious one was William Howard Taft, who was so big he needed his caddie to tee up his golf ball.

Dwight Eisenhower played more than 800 rounds in his eight years. Rest assured, there will never be an Obama Tree at Augusta National.

If the Internet had existed in the 1950s, Democrats would have set up a website counting Ike’s rounds. That’s why John F. Kennedy panicked when he almost had a hole-in-one during the 1960 campaign.

“If that ball had gone into that hole,” he said, “in less than an hour the word would be out to the nation that another golfer was trying to get into the White House.”

The non-golfing segment of the nation still doesn’t get it. Golf is no different than basketball or Parcheesi or bird watching or riding a bike. People do it for fun and relaxation, which most humans need.

Presidents are human, too. They also have a bit more on their plates than the average human. With the economy tanking and Germany on the march, Woodrow Wilson needed and found strength and solace in his clubs.

He played golf five days a week. He even used red and black golf balls to find his golf balls in the winter snow. George W. Bush gave up golf after the U.N. headquarters in Iraq was bombed in 2003. He said it didn’t look good to play golf during war.

I admire him for that, but the War on Terror (or whatever the Obama Administration is calling it these days) has no end. Obama has said golf is about the only pursuit that makes him “almost feel normal.”

Do you think the terrorists would be more worried if Obama had spent the weekend splitting logs on the White House lawn? Twain might, but consider the only president who didn’t play golf in the past 60 years.

Jimmy Carter. Enough said.

“I like the fact he loves golf,” Butch Harmon said of Obama.

He should. Tiger’s ex-coach joined the foursome on Saturday. Harmon usually gets $3,000 an hour for private lessons. If he charged Obama for all the time Saturday, the bill came to $24,000.

My guess is Obama got a presidential discount. Even if he didn’t, it’s not my money. So if any golf getaway helps clear Obama’s head, I say swing away.

It’s never a good walk spoiled. Especially when you have to walk in a president’s shoes.

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