The Kokopelli Golf Stance

Golf is the unofficial game of the American presidency. In the century

since William Howard Taft became the first golf aficionado

to live in the White House, only three of 18 presidents—Hoover,

Truman, and Carter—have chosen not to play the gilded game. And when

Congressional Country Club, in Bethesda, Maryland, hosts the U.S. Open

golf championship this month for the third time (it was there in 1964

and 1997), the event will serve as a reminder that golf remains one of the

capital’s favorite pastimes for flesh-pressing.

Golf fans will likely presume that Congressional

is suspending for a single week the usual dealbrokering

by politicos. But in fact the capital’s

power games are played at a number of marquee

area courses: the East Potomac Golf Course in

DC, where Joe Biden enjoys teeing off; the secretive

TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, in Maryland, a

tough track that’s the choice of so many legislator-golfers that a 2004 Senate

vote had to be delayed until GOP senators finished a round; and Burning

Tree, the country club of the capital old guard, which counts House

Speaker John Boehner as a member . . . .

you’ll have to buy the magazine to see the whole article . . . but BTW, that reminds me of a story . . .