The Bush Golf Dynasty

The two presidents, 41 and 43, weren't the first golfers in the White House or the first in their family

By Dan Jenkins

October 2005

If you're a friend or a relative of George Herbert Walker Bush, Prez 41, or George W. Bush, Prez 43, or any other Bushes, then you know an 18-hole round of golf shouldn't take more than three hours out of your day—there are other important things to do. Like, oh, you know. Overthrow a tyrant. Imprison a terrorist. Expose a saboteur. And those are just the Democrats.

Funny, huh? No? Well, at least try to remember there's a war on, and loose libs sink ships. Just getting your attention, actually. I'll bet you'd be dozing off right now if this piece had started off discussing Nancy Pelosi's new book, How the Snob Sport of Golf Has Ruined America and Everybody in San Francisco Who Didn't Vote for Me.

This is about the Bush golf dynasty, is what it is, and the first thing you need to be reminded of is that the Bushes didn't introduce golf to the White House. A hacker named William Howard Taft, Prez 27, did that. Around 1909 or thereabouts.

Taft was the first president of the United States who was enthusiastic about the game, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it. Taft visited Augusta, Ga., before there was even a Masters or an Augusta National. Oops, too early, an aide told him.

Earlier, a White House resident named William McKinley, Prez 25, had expressed an interest in this new game that some Scot had brought to America, but his advisers convinced him that the public wouldn't like to see their leader frittering away his time on something called a golf course when there was an Industrial Revolution going on.

McKinley, as we know, got assassinated anyhow.

Of course, Dwight D. Eisenhower gets credit for doing more for golf than any other White House resident, a mid- to high-handicapper though he was. It used to be fun back in the '50s for us sportswriter slugs to watch the White House press corps come filtering into our Quonset hut on the last two days of the Masters because Ike was coming to town when the tournament was over and Hogan or Snead had won again.

"Hey, look, there's Merriman Smith!"

"Who?"

"The guy who always gets to say, 'Thank you, Mr. President.' "

"What for?"

Ike aside, you have to say the Bushes have done their part for the game. As for these Bushes, by the way, they didn't even introduce golf to themselves. They had ancestors who took care of that. One of them was George Herbert Walker, Old 41's maternal grandfather—his mama's daddy.

G.H. Walker, a single-digit handicapper, was president of the U. S. Golf Association in 1920, and that year he decided to donate a cup to an international competition for amateurs. Legend has it that G.H. didn't want the matches or the trophy named after him, but the blue coats and striped ties managed to twist his arm. Two years later, the first Walker Cup between the United States and Great Britain & Ireland was played at the National Golf Links of America on Long Island.

Things were a little different then. The U.S. side invited any country that wanted to compete, but only Great Britain made it. And then there was this: Bernard Darwin, the golf writer for The Times of London, was invited to play when British captain Robert Harris "fell ill." Darwin took out U.S. captain William C. Fownes Jr., but a U.S. team that included Chick Evans, Francis Ouimet and Bobby Jones had more than enough talent to make up for it.

The 41st president and father of the 43rd recalls a story about his grandfather and Jones that once made the family rounds. Supposedly, G.H. bawled out the young Jones one day for losing his temper and throwing a club in a tournament. But after the scolding, G.H. put his arm around Jones' shoulder and told him that if he could control his temper, he could become the greatest player the game had known.

This seems like a convenient place to mention that Prez 41 is an old pal of several years, and he's my chief source for much that's in here. Not to guest-room drop, but at one time or another I've been overnighted at Camp David in Maryland, at the Kennebunkport compound in Maine and in the Houston homestead by Old 41 and the incredible Barbara, the Valerie Hogan and Barbara Nicklaus of first ladies.

It was 15 years ago that the president invited me to join him, former Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton and then-U.S. Congressman Marty Russo, the Congressional golf champion for 10 of the previous 14 years, for a game. After a helicopter ride aboard Marine One and a 15-vehicle motorcade, we ended up at Holly Hills Country Club in Ijamsville, Md., a little under an hour by car from D.C. As I said at the time, the president seemed to take himself far less seriously than any CEO of any plastics company I've ever encountered. He was the friendliest and most relaxed person in every room and on every fairway.