Obama Is a Poor Golfer, But He Follows The Rules

While he running for the presidency he now holds, Barack Obama was known as a mean baller -- that is, he had a stellar basketball game for a man his age. Now in office, he plays golf, a game that he finds as difficult as herding the cats that roam the halls of the US Congress.

During his campaign, he visited the UNC Tar Heels, would go on to win the NCAA Tournament. There, a few of the talented Heels were impressed with his game when Obama visited the squad and played in a pickup game with the team. "At one point Coach Williams pulled me aside and said, 'You know, you have a presidential candidate on your team; you may want to pass him the ball,' " UNC Marcus Ginyard said in the Raleigh News and Observer after the event. "After that, I made sure I got it to him the next five or six times." Obama downed a 3-pointer and, for a man his age and skill level, played pretty well according to those who were present.

Since his swearing in, however, Obama has chosen another game to recharge, golf. In an article in today's Wall Street Journal, Obama is not as good on the links as he was on the basketball floor, and apparently the President shares many of the frustrations as other part-time hackers.

Obama has a golf handicap in the mid-20s, considered weak to average, and a cramped swing that's not so pretty.

A recent anonymous posting on Golf.com comes from a golfer who claims to have caught some of the action: "I had the misfortune of being stuck in a group on the same course as the Prez and his buddies and watching them play one hole in the time it took our foursome to play 3 was painful. The only thing stopping us from telling them to pick it up was the incredibly large security detail he had with him."

Rank does have its privileges, I suppose, but what's really interesting here is that the Secret Service even allowed normal citizens to be anywhere near the President's entourage while they were playing.

Of course, picking up would have been the right thing to do, but apparently, Mr. Obama plays by the rules, something that Bill Clinton was known to circumvent with impunity.

"Mr. Obama's aides say the president, known for his discipline, doesn't take mulligans and adheres to every rule on the course."

That's worthy of some respect, and it means that even though the President may not be a talented player, at least you can trust the scores on his card, unlike most other golfers.