The first US Presidential debate of 2024 teetered off the rails last week as the two elderly candidates traded jabs about each other’s golf games.
Donald Trump, 78, and Joe Biden, 81, descended into golf handicap trash talk as they bickered back and forth about each other’s game – raising more questions than answers to CNN moderator Dana Bash’s quizzing about concerns voters have expressed about their age.
The bizarre exchange of barbs was staggering. Yet, somehow not entirely out of place.
The game of golf isn’t a novelty to the White House. Almost every president between Willian Howard Taft and Biden has been known to swing a club with the exception of three – Jimmy Carter, Harry Truman and Herbert Hoover.
Here, DailyMail.com takes a look through US history’s top ten presidential golfers, according to their (alleged) handicaps.
The list dates back to William Howard Taft, who was president from 1909 to 1913 and the first real golfer-in-chief.
William McKinley may have made the first presidential putt in 1897 but it was Taft who truly brought the game to the Oval Office – and started the great presidential golfing debate.
That’s right, over 100 years before octogenarians were bickering about their handicaps on the national stage of an utterly bizarre presidential debate, the game was a point of contention in another race to the White House.
Taft was admittedly ‘addicted to golf,’ according to the Washington Post, arguably starting the great presidential tradition of golfing too much – and receiving ‘hundreds’ of complaints from the electorate about it.
He took to the course so much during the 1908 presidential campaign that his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, was forced to express his concerns, reportedly urging him to give up the game altogether.
It was such an issue for Roosevelt that he decided to challenge Taft for the Republican ticket at the following election. While Roosevelt lobbied at the Republican convention, Taft stayed back in DC and, of course, golfed. Taft still won the nomination, with Roosevelt a third-party candidate, but his golfing became a campaign issue and he ultimately lost out to the Democrats‘ Woodrow Wilson.
Yet, despite his countless rounds, Taft struggled to reap much reward on the golf course. He is said to rarely break 100 but that didn’t deter his love of the game, which Taft, who was famously obese, called a ‘splendid form of exercise.’
Dwight D. Eisenhower earned the title of Golfweek’s Golfer of the Century in 2000, despite failing to ever make it to single figures.
One of Augusta National’s most famous members, Eisenhower was known to brush shoulders with golf’s powers that be, in addition to those within the political world.
He frequently played with Arnold Palmer with the pair teaming up to win a charity event in 1964.
While Taft began White House’s golfing legacy, Eisenhower did his best to maintain it. He installed a putting green on the lawn of the presidential home.
During his eight years in office, Eisenhower is estimated to have teed it up 800 times. That’s a round every three to four days.
George W. Bush, like his father, who will be making an appearance later down the list, was a renowned quick player.
Not one for slow play, Bush Jr. described his game as ‘mediocre’ in 2015, despite boasting a decent handicap of 15. Bush said he once managed to crack 77 around the hallowed grounds of Augusta National.
He also hosted the Warrior Open – a golf event benefiting wounded servicemen.
However, unlike some of his presidential peers, George W.’s rounds dropped off after he took office. He is said to have been a frequent player but stopped following the 9/11 attacks.
While George W. Bush’s playing dwindled during his terms, his successor’s faced great scrutiny.
Barack Obama, the eighth left-handed president, also played golf as a lefty too a la Phil Mickelson and Bubba Watson – although it’s doubtful the trio share the same political beliefs as they do golf swings.
Obama is said to play with custom Titleist golf balls, personalized with ‘POTUS’ on one side and the number ’44’ on the other while serving as president, which he personally paid for, according to TIME.
He wasn’t the first Commander-in-Chief to tee it up with personalized balls, joining Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but he certainly suffered greater criticism for his golfing than his predecessors.
Obama is estimated to have played a round every 9.5 days, earning him heavy criticism for playing too much – notably from his successor Donald Trump, who ironically is calculated to have played every 6.3 days during his term.
Presidency wasn’t the only thing Richard Nixon learnt from Eisenhower, while serving as his Vice President.
Nixon is said to have picked up the game as Veep, quickly whittling his handicap down to 12.
However, he also undid Eisenhower’s hard work when he moved into the Oval Office, removing the putting green from the White House lawn.
Gerald Ford was the first president to join the US Golf Association and is partly responsible for a tradition that still exists today. On December 18, 1975, Arnold Palmer delivered a USGA bag tag to the program’s first member, President Ford.
Ford left another lasting legacy in the world of golf. He was the honorary chairman of the first Presidents Cup in 1994 – the international tournament between the USA and the rest of the world, excluding Europe.
Although Ford’s term had long finished at the time of the first tournament at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia, he set the tradition of the incumbent president of the host country assuming the role of honorary chairman.
Golf seeped into Ford’s life before he left office too. After pardoning Nixon in September, 1974, the first thing Ford did reportedly was attend the opening of the World Golf Hall of Fame and tee it up with Jack Nicklaus, Palmer and Gary Player.
Like a certain other president with a notorious reputation for cheating, Bill Clinton is said to play it loose and fast with the rules. He reportedly would often drop another ball and take another swing after a duffed shot.
PGA Tour legend John Daly previously took aim at the former president and his alleged cheating during an interview with Tucker Carlson in December.
‘Bill would take the club back and say, “Oh s**t, give me another ball,” before he even hit the first one,’ he said. ‘He’d throw another one down. He never kept score.’
When asked what he made of Clinton’s game, Daily simply responded: ‘He needs to take up tennis. He’s horrible.’
Clinton was also left-handed, but unlike Obama, would swing right-handed.
His foundation has hosted the PGA Tour’s CareerBuilder Challenge in La Quinta, California on a few occasions.
George H. W. Bush is a notorious presidential golfer, having made his way into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2011.
Beating his son by four shots, George H. W. Bush also wasn’t a fan of slow play with the once 11-handicapper known for his speed around the golf course.
In fact, Bush Snr. was so quick around the fairways that he reportedly owns the presidential speed-golf record, playing 18 holes as a foursome in one hour, 51 minutes.
His maternal grandfather, George Herbert Walker, was president of the US Golf Association and founded the Walker Cup.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was an avid golfer throughout his life up until the age of 38. After contracting polio at the age of 39, Roosevelt’s love of the game was snatched from him.
Polio ‘robbed him of the game. He really, truly loved it,’ said Don Van Natta, Jr., author of ‘First Off The Tee.’
However, before he was forced to put his clubs down, Roosevelt was an accomplished golfer, often playing with his fellow politicians in Washington. In college, he became the club champion at Campobello Island Golf Club in New Brunswick, Canada.
In his later life, despite no longer being able to swing a club, Roosevelt left a lasting legacy in the world of golf. He federally funded his public-works projects including the creation of multiple municipal golf courses, such as FDR Golf Club in Philadelphia and Bethpage State Park in New York, which will host next year’s Ryder Cup on its Black course.
Despite criticizing his predecessor Eisenhower for his frequent golf – even calling him Duffer-in-Chief – John F. Kennedy seemingly played enough himself to get down to single figures.
Kennedy had been a member of the Harvard golf team during his time in Cambridge. He also once almost struck a hole-in-one at the 16th at Cypress Point with his five-iron hitting the flagstick and finishing mere inches from the cup.
While in office, Kennedy played his golf at Burning Tree Club in the Washington DC area. The course, which has been played by many presidents, foreign dignitaries, members of Congress, and military leaders, is a private, all-male club just outside of the nation’s capital, neighboring US Open courses, Bethesda and Congressional.
However, Kennedy’s rounds are said to often be sporadic with the president skipping around the fairways and rarely completing a full 18.
Kennedy played off 7, making him the lowest member of this list who wasn’t bragging about his handicap during last Thursday’s Presidential debate.
During last week’s debate, Joe Biden claimed he got his handicap down to 6 while Obama’s Vice President, which sparked a pained expression of disbelief from his opponent, Donald Trump.
However, the USGA would have wiped that look off Trump’s face as records show that Biden’s registered handicap is indeed 6.7 – well, as far as his recorded scores can estimate.
Biden has reportedly not recorded a score since 2018, which suggests his handicap isn’t entirely reflective of the current state of his game.
Biden had been a member at Wilmington Country Club in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, which hosted the 2022 BMW Championship, the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, where the infamous player meeting with Tiger Woods and co. went down following the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger bombshell.
Donald Trump and golf are basically synonymous at this point. Despite repeatedly taking aim at his predecessor Obama for his frequent golf, Trump seemingly spent more time on the course than he did in the Oval Office during his term.
Last week, he bragged about winning a pair of championships at his own Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach, a club championship and a senior championship trophy .
Trump boasts he plays off single figures and, in his defense, USGA records do verify that his handicap is registered at 2.5. However, the accuracy of that number is up for debate given his reputation as Commander-in-Cheat.
His handicap is breathtakingly hard to achieve and suggests his average round sees him finishing around three-over-par. Legendary Jack Nicklaus, while eight years older, plays off 5.
And author and former sports columnist Rick Reilly’s book suggested that Trump’s feat may have more to do with the tricks up his sleeve than his swing. Trump has been accused of kicking his ball out of the rough, improving his lie, or even claiming he won a club championship without even playing in it.
Since leaving office, Trump has hosted multiple LIV Golf tournaments at his New Jersey, Washington DC and Miami golf courses. He has regularly attended the events, playing up to the crowds and brushing shoulders with the likes of Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka by competing the Pro-Am competitions.
