I was afraid of this: golf has become an election issue:

As Donald Trump mulls scrapping a GOP presidential debate that has failed to attract even a foursome, perhaps a match-play tourney to determine who gets to face President Obama in 2012 would be an appropriate substitute. After all, with POTUS wannabe Mitt Romney making a campaign issue of the current Occupy Oval Office resident’s affection for a quick 18, news about Newt Gingrich’s Trump National membership making the rounds, and Rick Perry’s boastful disdain for the game, golf has already become an election theme.

Of course, this article is from a not-really-a-journalist in a not-quite-a-legitimate-news-outlet “Examiner,” but I’m afraid that the meme has legs.

I got an email today from the Mitt Romney camp taking a shot at Obama’s golf obsession. Here’s the text:

Since taking office, President Obama has repeatedly promised he would “not rest until every American who is able and ready and willing to work can find a job.” And 1,584 holes of golf later, the President has stayed true to this promise by staying busy on the links.
This figure doesn’t bode well with the twenty-five million Americans who are currently unemployed, underemployed, or have stopped looking for work.

I really hope golf doesn’t become an issue in this campaign.

Gulf Bloggers Sentenced To Prison

When I first scanned this headline, I had to do a double take: Why would anyone sentence a Golf Blogger to prison? Then I re-read it. Still doesn’t make a lot of sense in our Liberal American tradition of freedom of speech.

I am glad, however, that my hobby isn’t likely to send me to the slammer.

Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs’ vision impacted a lot of industries—even some you wouldn’t suspect, like golf.

I missed this story last week on Golfweek:

Is nicotine a performance-enhancing drug? That is what the World Anti-Doping Agency is trying to answer by adding the drug to its 2012 monitoring list, and the PGA Tour is paying attention.

The WADA has taken initial steps toward classifying nicotine as a performance-enhancing drug, citing a report from its laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland, that details alarming evidence of tobacco use by athletes in 43 sports.

“It is not WADA’s intention to target smokers, rather to monitor the effects nicotine can have on performance when taken in oral tobacco products such as snus,” Terence O’Rorke, a spokesman for the WADA, wrote to Golfweek in an email. “The sole purpose (of including nicotine on the monitoring list) is to collect data on the potential abuse of nicotine as a performance enhancer.”

There’s more here.

I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry. With all the problems the Olympic sporting world has with doping, I can’t imagine they have time to crack down on tobacco users. Maybe they figure it’ll be easier to catch the guys who are lighting up or taking a chaw than it is to find the ones who are masking HGH.

It also occurs to me that smoking is a detriment, not an aid. Smokers don’t have the wind of non-smokers. And I’ve seen what happens to the putting stroke when my cigarette addicted friends haven’t had a cancer stick in a while. If you can maintain a top athletic performance with all of the dangers cigarettes and chew pose, then more power to you.

To be honest, though, I lost interest in the Olympics a couple of decades ago. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc, with all the ensuing ideological rivalries made it less interesting to me. There will never be another Lake Placid hockey moment. I also can’t stand the “judged” Olympic “sports”: synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, artistic gymnastics, freestyle skiing, freestyle skiing, ski jumping, et. al. In my mind, if there is not an objective score or time, it’s not a sport.

The Historical and Beautiful St Andrews Golf Course, Scotland

The picturesque town of St Andrews is located in Fife on the east coast of Scotland. Golf has been played here since around 1400 AD which is what makes is a much sought-after destination for professionals and amateur golfers alike. The chance to play on the famous course is an ambition for many a golf-enthusiast and it is busy with players all year round.

Known as the ‘home of golf’, St Andrews regularly plays host to the Open Championship, welcoming many well-known names over the years. During this time, golfing fans flock to the area to try and catch a glimpse of their heroes. For the length of time that this competition is on, they put aside their regular routine of chilling out watching golf on the television, reading novels or playing Partypoker and line-up along the sidelines of the Old Course.

The famous names who have won here include Jack Nicklaus in 1970 and 1978, and Tiger Woods in 2000 and 2005. This is always an exciting time for the town, creating lots of hype and bustle, as well as jobs for locals and students of the university.

St Andrews also plays host to the annual Dunhill Links Championship. This sees celebrity amateurs team up with professional golfers to compete in the famous tournament. During this time, the town comes alive with bustle and celebrity spotting opportunities. You may be walking down the street in the evening and bump into Hugh Grant or Samuel L. Jackson having a stroll.

The weather in St Andrews is unpredictable at the best of times, and can prove difficult for the payers. However, this is seen as one of the endearing challenges that golfers face when playing here, and is considered worth it when the beautiful surroundings are considered.

College and High school football teams this weekend are using commemorative coins to mark the year of Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday (Feb. 6, 1911).  He remains the favorite president of my lifetime—and is perhaps the only one I actually voted FOR (as opposed to voting against the other guy).

Reagan was an athlete, who was a lifeguard and played football at Eureka College. He also played golf. But unlike more recent presidents (and the current golf-obsessed one), Reagan gave it up during his term in office. The story is that in 1983, Reagan was playing at Augusta National when a gunman crashed the gates and kept five people hostage for 21 hours (two White House staffers and three Augusta National employees). Reagan reportedly was shaken by the incident and decided that playing golf was not worth the risk of exposing others to such danger.

I find it interesting that—in spite of all the media hand-wringing about Republican crazies potentially taking shots at our first black president—there haven’t been any (that we know of) directed against Obama. On the other hand, there were two each against Republicans Reagan and Ford. My sense is that it has less to do with the alignments of potential crazies than with the tenor of the times. For all the rhetoric, my sense is that things are much more peaceable now than from the late 1960s through the mid 1980s. That was the era of the Manson Family, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, the Red Army Faction and the Weather Underground (including Obama pals Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn), not to mention mass insurrections (Watts, Detroit, Washington, Newark, Baltimore, Chicago, Stonewall-New York, et. al.) and routine airline hijackings. Violent crime has been falling steadily since 1993.

In spite of all our problems, I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to live than now.