A Golfer in the White House

On a commuters train heading into New York one morning last week, two Republican suburbanites gazed at newsphotos of Ike on the Augusta National Golf Links and savored the full measure of their triumph. Said one at last: "Thank God, we've got a golfer in the White House again!"

Like the Republican Party, the nation's golfers have suffered from a long presidential drought. Ike will be the first golf-playing President since Coolidge and the most enthusiastic since Harding.

The first U.S President to become aware of golf was Ulysses S. Grant. On a trip to Britain after his second term, he saw the game played and is supposed to have remarked: "That looks like good exercise, but what's the little white ball for?" Teddy Roosevelt tried his hand at the game, but found it unexciting. William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson played (the second Mrs. Wilson was the first golfing First Lady).

Eisenhower's devotion to the game, however, is of comparatively recent standing. Though he first played serious golf in the Philippines in the '30s, he abandoned it shortly before World War II to favor a bad arm, and did not take it up again until late 1946. Nervous or physical strain usually sends a golfer's score zooming, but Ike's game stood up well during the early weeks of his campaign when he was still able to get in an occasional round. (His best scores: an 84 at Denver's Cherry Hills Club, an 81 at the Blind Brook Country Club in New York's Westchester County.) Last week the effects of his recent layoff showed up in the 93 he shot on his first round for score at Augusta. Glumly the President-elect pronounced himself "emphatically not happy."

Undismayed by Ike's golfing slump, Ed Dudley, Augusta National's pro, rated the Eisenhower game "good in all departments." Ike, said Dudley, must be classified as a long-ball hitter since his drives regularly carry 225 to 230 yards. Practice has brought his putting which used to be "poor" about even with the rest of his game. "But he excels with the short irons," said Dudley. "He is more consistent with them--the wedge [for sand traps], the eight and nine irons [for approach shots]."

According to a golfers' saw, "If you can't break 100, you have no business on the golf course, and if you shoot under 80, you have no business." Ike, whose average when he has been playing regularly stands at about 84, is currently between these two extremes. Said Pro Dudley last week: "If he had time to practice, he would play in the high 70s easily. He's a fine competitor and never gives up."

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