"I'm glad Barack Obama plays golf and doesn't care who knows it."

I guess Bob Carney finally got tired of all the frustrated losers writing Golf Digest letters for noticing that our President not only is playing golf, but not hiding and doing it at a time when the game could use all of the positive publicity it can get.

Hey, I'm glad Barack Obama plays golf and doesn't care who knows it. I'm glad he plays with men and I'm glad he played the other day with a woman. And I wish you could celebrate it, too.
However, next to Steve Williams' caddy bib, nothing seems to bug you like Obama's golf. He has his defenders, occasionally, but most letter-writers refer to our coverage of the President as "politics" and "politics" doesn't belong in a golf magazine. You probably object to my noting here that the president with that round overtook the immediate past president in annual rounds played, 24 to 23. Or, in the view of their spouses, 48 and 46, our goal, Republican and Democrat alike, being to play half as many rounds as our spouses think we do.

But really, political philosophy aside, how can a golfing president be a bad thing? As a friend of mine said today, only in America would we criticize a President when he wins the Nobel Prize. And, I'll add, only in America will golfers -- golfers!-- get after a magazine for writing about a golfing president, or criticize a president for playing golf!