From the Golf Journal Archives - Leader in the White House
Nov 06, 2009
By David Sowell
(Note: This article originally appeared in the November/December 2002 issue of Golf Journal.)
A night at the opera in the spring of 1953 proved beneficial to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Members of his new administration were keeping an eye out for developments in an area that the commander in chief had a keen interest. Admiral Lewis Strauss, former Atomic Energy Commission chairman, was also at the opera that night, and took a moment to inform Eisenhower of one such development.
Shortly afterward, Strauss arranged for the device’s delivery to the White House. It had been developed by Dr. Luis Alvarez, a future Nobel Prize winner in physics. During World War II, Alvarez had been a key member of the nation’s nuclear team at Los Alamos and had developed the detonator for the atomic bomb. He had also developed a ground control approach system to land planes during conditions of low visibility.
The device delivered to the White House dealt with a different type of plane – the swing plane. It turned out the distinguished scientist and new president shared a passion: golf. Alvarez had developed the device to improve his own game and subsequently had it patented. It was called the stroboscopic golf training device.
Ike received a prototype and used it often. The device flashed bright lights to illuminate the club head at five points during the downswing, allowing the user to determine whether the clubhead was on the proper path.
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Alvarez’s device was an early arrival in what would become a deluge of equipment, balls and practice aids in the White House. When Eisenhower was elected 50 years ago this month, he became the nation’s No. 1 citizen – and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue became home to an ardent golfer.
“It’s Ike who’s done it,” the operator of a semi-public, and largely empty, tennis facility in New York City said in August 1953. “I remember just as late as last year you couldn’t get on these courts without a reservation a couple of days in advance … When [he] started playing golf, it changed the whole sports picture … You can’t get near a course on weekends.”
After one bad round, Ike muttered that he was going to quit. Although surely uttered out of frustration, the USGA wasn’t taking any chances: It donated a putting green and practice bunker to the White House and arranged for designer Robert Trent Jones to supervise its construction.
Ike first played in 1927, but only sporadically until after World War II. In the spring of 1948, Eisenhower was invited to Augusta National Golf Club for the first time. He met Bob Jones and they became close friends. Eisenhower’s passion for golf turned red-hot. He played at every opportunity, as highlighted by his actions on Christmas Day in 1950. Ike and wife Mamie were in Denver with her family. An unseasonably warm day gave Ike an unexpected opportunity and he took off to Cherry Hills Country Club.
His political advisers kept Ike’s golf to a minimum during his run for the presidency in 1952, but after defeating Adlai Stevenson, Ike took a 13-day vacation in Augusta. A month after his inauguration, his first swings on the White House’s South Lawn created a traffic jam. Scores of passersby stopped to watch, The Associated Press reported, and a number of cards were left in the street. Ike “practiced both iron and wood shots and appeared to be having some trouble with his No. 8 iron. He frequently made saucer-sized divots in the lawn with the iron.”
Ike getting in a little practice a few steps from the Oval Office would be a scene Washingtonians would see frequently over the next eight years. He soon added Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning games at nearby Burning Tree Golf Club, and winter and spring vacations at Augusta.
Ike’s political opponents began to make critical comments about his playing time. A Gallup Poll question from June 26, 1953, revealed the opponents were out of bounds: 73 percent of respondents said he was not taking too much time off to play, while 17 percent said he was (10 percent had no opinion).
Ike was upset about the attention his golf was receiving. He tried to keep it on a low profile, which proved impossible. By his third year, Eisenhower must have accepted his visibility because he handily defeated U.S. Open champ Ed Furgol. Not on the course, but in a vote of Golf Writers Association of America members, who selected Ike by 394-321 to receive the William D. Richardson Award for his consistently outstanding contribution to the game.
Less than a week after being honored, Ike received a letter from Charles Grace, chairman of the USGA’s Implements and Ball Committee. Grace was concerned about press reports that a retired Air Force colonel was introducing a ball that did not conform to the equipment rules. The ball reportedly out-distanced conforming balls by 30 to 40 yards – and a supply of them had been delivered to the White House.
Grace’s letter praised Ike’s contributions to the game’s tremendous growth, noting: “It would certainly horrify me, as I am sure it would my other associates at the USGA, if it should become known that you were using a ball that might not conform with the rules and regulations.” Grace concluded by saying he fully expected Ike to experiment with the balls and asked him to respond with his comments. Ike replied quickly, writing that he had not tested the balls, and did not know any special qualities were claimed for them, adding he had never knowingly used any “non-regulation” item.
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Ike’s approval rating was high by mid-1955. The economy was booming and he had just concluded a summit meeting with the Soviet premier. About the only thing his opponents could complain about was the length of his vacations and the number of times he played. That September, on the last day of a 42-day vacation in Denver, Ike played at Cherry Hills. At the 26th of his 27 holes that day, Ike complained that he was having a little discomfort in his chest. He attributed the pain to an onion-laden hamburger he had eaten for lunch.
Early the next morning Mamie called Ike’s doctor; it was determined that Ike had suffered a heart attack. He spent 49 days in an Army hospital in Denver. Some believed that he could not seek a second term and presidential hopefuls in both parties quickly began piecing together campaigns.
After Ike left the hospital, doctors ordered him to his farm in Gettysburg, Pa., for convalescence. Ike, then 65, used a golf club as a cane to move about the house. In mid-February 1956, doctors approved his quest for another term and Ike went to a friend’s farm in Thomasville, Ga., for a vacation.
Ike’s doctors said he could play nine holes, but not a full 18 for another six weeks. Shortly after arriving, Ike showed up at Glen Arven Country Club in Thomasville for his first play. He completed nine holes in a steady drizzle. As he stepped onto the first tee, he told the large crowd of reporters and photographers, “I have been waiting for this for a long time.” Ike admitted to feeling tentative on his swings, and it showed. He hit two extra balls off the first tee and reportedly topped a number of shots, posting an 11-over-par 47.
For all practical purposes the 1956 election was decided in Thomasville, located 30 miles north of Tallahassee, Fla., the epicenter of the legal battles between George W. Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 election. Five days after Ike’s first nine, he returned to Glen Arven for what The New York Times would call possibly “the most politically significant round of golf in American history.”
Everyone thought Ike was there for another nine, but to everyone’s amazement he completed 18. To the press corps, Ike looked and acted like his old self. He could be heard setting wagers and giving opponents a little needling.
Spectators and the press were allowed only to observe the first and last holes of each nine. Ike hit a poor tee shot at the par-3 18th, and still had a wedge to the green. The crowd cheered when Ike pitched to within a few feet. His putting was rusty and he missed the par, the crowd groaning as if he had lost the Open. Ike’s score was not released that day but it was believed to have been around 100.
It was clear he was back. Soon after returning to Washington, he announced that he would run if his party nominated him. It did at its convention in San Francisco, after which he went to Cypress Point on the Monterey Peninsula and played with some friends for several days.
The Democrats decided to make the 1956 election a rematch and chose Stevenson. Ike, campaigning on peace and prosperity, easily won by taking 457 electoral votes.
After a relatively smooth first year, his second term hit rough times in 1957. The Little Rock school desegregation crisis rocked the nation and then the Soviet Union fired the first shot in the space race by launching the unmanned satellite Sputnik in orbit that October.
A Washington Post editorial cartoon had to be particularly stinging to Ike. It depicted Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, in golf attire and with driver in hand, tipping his hat as Sputnik orbited.
Ike suffered a mild stroke in late November while in the Oval Office. He bounced back quickly and was back at work in seven days, meeting with his cabinet and working on correspondence. That afternoon, he went outside to work on his chipping. In just a few swings, he came down with the most dreaded golf disease: the shanks. It had been that kind of year.
Late in his second term, Ike’s golf appeared to be on the way to easing cold war tensions with the Soviet Union. In the fall of 1959, Khrushchev paid a 12-day visit to the U.S., concluding his tour with two days with Ike at Camp David. The two leaders flew there from the White House by helicopter. On the way, Ike gave his guest an aerial view of Burning Tree Golf Club. Khrushchev would write, “We flew over a big green field where he told me he played golf. He asked me whether I liked the sport. I didn’t have the slightest idea what it was all about. He told me it was a very healthy sport.”
Khrushchev extended an invitation to visit the Soviet Union the following summer. At the urging of the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, Khrushchev decided to have a course built. Unfortunately, Ike never got to use it. On May 1, 1960, after playing the short holes that had been constructed for him at Camp David, Ike was told that one of the country’s U-2 spy planes was overdue from a mission over the Soviet Union. The Russians had shot the plane down and tensions between the powers increased dramatically. Khrushchev angrily withdrew his invitation.
After Ike left office in 1961, he enjoyed five years of reasonably good health and plenty of golf. In 1965, he was on an extended stay at Augusta National when he suffered another heart attack. His participation had to be curtailed to playing par-3 courses, but he was just as eager to play.
Although he would suffer heart problems eight weeks later, and remain hospitalized for the last year of his life, Ike experienced one last great moment on Feb. 6, 1968. While playing Seven Lakes Country Club in Palm Springs, Calif., he used a 9-iron at the 104-yard 13th to score his first hole-in-one. All of the practice on the White House lawn had finally paid off.
Over the next few days, a picture of Ike, displaying his famous grin and holding the ball, was featured on sports pages. The man who guided the Allies to victory in Europe and had twice been elected president called the shot, “The thrill of a lifetime.”
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Eisenhower’s passion for the game developed through frequent visits to Augusta National Golf Club. (USGA Photo Archives)
Sinking a 50-foot putt at the 17th green under the watchful eye of Arnold Palmer, winning a Heart Fund match against Jimmy Demaret and Ray Bolger at Merion Golf Club, May 26, 1964. (USGA Photo Archives)
Playing “the most politically significant round in American history,” Feb. 17, 1956, Glen Arven Country Club in Thomasville, Ga. (USGA Photo Archives)
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