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Ike and Golf

Young Dwight Eisenhower was an athlete.  He starred in baseball and football in high school and went to West Point for a free education and the opportunity to play football.  He was so good at college football (he even decked the great running back Jim Thorpe during a game) that everyone expected him to be named an All American.  But it was not to be. Two injuries to the same knee put an early end to his football career.  In fact the injury was so bad that it almost kept him out of the Army.

After a long recovery Ike found that he couldn’t perform in any sport. He simply couldn’t run. Period.  Determined to support the team in any way he could, he became a cheerleader during his final year at the Academy.  Later he spent much time during his early military career coaching intramural Army teams.  Still, he truly missed participating in sports. Then, in 1927 when he was in Fort Leavenworth attending the Command and General Staff School, his wife Mamie suggested he take up golf. One day after classes, a few of his fellow students invited him to play golf with them. 

He was 37 years old and had never been on a golf course.  His knee dealt him a sharp pain on his first attempt to drive a ball down the fairway because the normal swing of a golf club causes both knees to twist.  Having found a sport that didn’t entail running, however, Ike was determined to play.  By the end of his first round of golf he had found a way to lock his bad knee while driving.  It made for some terrible shots because he moved awkwardly through a power swing, but he persisted teaching himself to compensate for the odd movement and learn to shoot straight.  By the time he graduated from the school at Fort Leavenworth he could knock a golf ball straight down the fairway with no pain.  He was playing outdoors in a competitive game among friends. Ike had found his sport.

But then, Ike would never be satisfied to simply play, he had to master golf.  How did he do?  Even though he tried hard to keep his golf scores secret, we can now disclose that throughout his career Ike routinely shot in the low eighties and more than a dozen times scored in the mid-to high seventies.  In 1968 the seventy-seven year old former president hit a 104 yard hole-in-one from the thirteenth tee at the Seven Lakes Golf Club in Palm Springs. Not bad for a man with a gimpy leg.

His problem was, of course, how to fit golf into a very busy schedule. When he went to London in May of 1942 he picked living quarters some distance from the city so he could find some peace and quiet.  The house he rented near Kingston was named Telegraph Cottage and the backyard fence luckily opened on the 13th hole at Coombe Hill Golf Club.  During his stay in England Ike never played a full round at Coombe Hill, but he often played three or four holes before going to work in the morning. After the Allied invasion of Normandy, Ike placed his offices in a school house at Reims in the Champagne region of France – but he chose the Guex Golf Course clubhouse as his living quarters.  Once again he had little time for golf, but he practiced through a few holes when he could.  It was widely known that he was devoted to the game and six months after the victory in Europe, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, the oldest and one of the best courses in Scotland, made him an honorary lifetime member. 

When Eisenhower became president there was no doubt in the minds of most Americans that he loved golf.  Early in his presidential years the United States Golf Association, using privately donated money, built a two-hole putting green with a small sand trap on the White House lawn near the Oval Office.  He kept one of his irons in the office so that he could step out to the lawn and practice his swing.

During his White House years Ike managed, on average, to play golf about two times a week.  Most of these outings were on courses near Washington, but his favorite course was Augusta.  The founders, famous golfer Robert Tyre “Bobby” Jones and financier Clifford Roberts were Eisenhower’s personal friends. They even erected a small cottage on the grounds where Ike and Mamie could have some privacy during a golfing weekend.  At Augusta Ike got to know Arnold Palmer and the two men became close friends.

Ike’s detractors always complained that President Eisenhower spent more time playing golf than minding the people’s business, but, contrary to the advice of his aides, he never tried to conceal any of his outings to the links. He used many of these occasions to do the kind of personal networking that kept him in touch with the nation’s other leaders, and he seems as well to have used golfing as a means of convincing the American people to remain calm during the frequent crises of the Cold War.  If the president could relax then perhaps the people could too.  So the day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first earth orbiting satellite, and the media and much of the populace panicked about communist missile development, Ike left the White House for a two day golfing outing at Gettysburg.

People knew that Eisenhower grew up in a rural town on the wrong side of the tracks and was not wealthy.  Most Americans looked at him as “one of us.”  Prior to Ike’s presidency much of the population thought of golf as a rich man’s sport. But Ike’s constant endorsement of the game seems to have helped change this perception. During his presidency the number of golfers in the United States more than doubled, and people began attending golf events as spectators.  It was thus entirely fitting that Arnold Palmer spoke to Congress in 1990 at the joint session celebrating Ike’s 100th birthday.

Was Ike the most ardent golfer to inhabit the White House?  Not by a long shot.  Woodrow Wilson, who did everything possible to keep his golf from the public’s eye, played over 1,200 rounds while he was in the White House.  Ike, however, played only about 800 rounds during his presidency, about two a week.  So much for historical reputations!

 © Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission, Washington, DC, 2004