Ike and the Gang

A private man who found himself increasingly in the public eye, Eisenhower could relax with the Gang at Augusta as he could nowhere else. The Gang also knew they had a political winner on their hands. In 1950, Eisenhower was demonstrably the most-popular public figure in America. In the pungent phrase of New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia about himself, Ike could have run on a "laundry ticket" and won any office he sought. President Harry Truman personally offered him the Democratic Party's nomination and never forgave him for eventually running as a Republican. Eisenhower was in a difficult political position. As a serving officer in the Army he was precluded by law from running for public office. If Ohio Senator Robert Taft, busy signing up delegates to the Republican Convention, was to be opposed, someone else would have to do it for him.

That is where the Gang and other Augusta members stepped in. With its widely distributed membership, Augusta's influential members were able to talk up Eisenhower's candidacy throughout the country. Roberts and others personally financed the first of the Citizens for Eisenhower volunteer organizations, which kept his name before the voters without the General's formal acknowledgment.

Some of the Gang were afraid that the simple old soldier from Abilene would be at a disadvantage in the political arena. In this, they missed their man. A five-star, general's flag is not awarded to the politically naive, and Eisenhower was as canny a politician as America has ever produced. Once, when Robinson and Roberts flew to Ike's headquarters in Paris to try to talk him into a preconvention declaration, Eisenhower demurred, saying, "The seeker is never so popular as the sought."

There was one final catch before Eisenhower entered the public arena: Money. Eisenhower told Roberts he would need financial help. "I could not possibly carry the load that each day brings to me," he wrote and added that all personal financial support must be given legally and "on the up and up."

Roberts assured him that it would be handled properly and when Eisenhower retired in 1952 he sought the nomination with a free will. Roberts, and even Bobby Jones, beginning to hobble on a cane, went to the convention to buttonhole delegates in support of Eisenhower.

What was "on the up and up" in the 1950s might not be so in today's sterner political climate. Eisenhower accepted money, travel and gifts from the Gang. Almost certainly his dues were paid by them.

It must be said the Gang did its office well. There is no record that any of them ever sought a position, asked a favor, or broke a confidence.

After he retired, Ike acknowledged his considerable debt to "his Augusta Gang."

"These were men of discretion," he wrote, "men who, already successful, made no attempt to profit by our association. It is a most impossible for me to describe how valuable their friendship was to me. Any person enjoys his or her friends; a President needs them, perhaps more intensely at times than anything else."

When the Eisenhowers were at Augusta, Ike ran the Gang through its paces like a drill instructor with a batch of new recruits. Roberts remembered, many times after a round of golf he was about to stretch out for a nap only to have Eisenhower's orderly roust him out, saying, "The Boss is ready to play bridge."

Ike was a world-class bridge player, but it was a game he played at Augusta only when it was raining or dark. Golf was his passion and he lost himself in the game.

One way to escape the pressures of high office is to let the striking of a 7-iron become, for a moment, the most important thing in the world. One Augusta member, who played regularly with Ike, said he had never seen a man with such intense concentration.

Golf was not an easy pursuit for Eisenhower. His promising future as halfback on the Army football team had been cut down in 1912 when he wrenched his left knee getting ready for the Army-Navy game. It was a debilitating injury that would have kept him out of West Point, had he not already been there, and bothered him for the rest of his life. He did not start playing golf seriously until he was in his 40s. A late-starting, single-pinned golfer, Eisenhower had trouble transferring his weight to the left and played with a permanent pronounced fade. A common enough fault in golf, but a particularly exasperating one for someone accustomed to excellence in all things. It was probably not a source of amusement to Ike that the forward members tees at Augusta were sometimes called the "Eisenhower tees" and the infuriating pine in the 17th fairway he invariably hit is still referred to as "Ike's Tree."

By all accounts, he was also an indifferent putter. During the war, he had taken up oil painting at the suggestion of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, although he admitted, "My hands are better suited to an axe handle than a tiny brush." His large bony hands were apparently not much suited for handling the flat stick, either. It is a testament to his spirit that a chronic slicer who couldn't putt managed to hold on to an 18-handicap at Augusta and break 80 there four times.

Eisenhower would dearly have loved to attend a Masters Tournament, but it was agreed his presence would be too distracting; so the President would frequently come down on the Monday following the tournament and play with the new champion.

Arnold Palmer, who first played at Augusta National with the President on the Monday after winning the 1958 Masters, remembers Eisenhower as "a regular guy on the golf course and a regular guy period."

Ike was also a ferocious competitor who fought for a $1 nassau bet as if he were hitting a beach in France. "When somebody conceded him a putt," Palmer recalls, "there was no discussion. He picked up his ball and moved on fast."

Eisenhower was eager to improve his game and he was always after Palmer for tips, sometimes with unhappy results. During one of their rounds, Palmer suggested keeping his right arm closer to his side during the swing. Like the good soldier he was, Ike did what he was told. But, during his long Army career, Eisenhower had adopted the practice of keeping his belt buckle on his right hip, and by the end of the round, his right elbow was bleeding.