Fred Astaire played golf almost as well as he danced. In his 1938 movie, Carefree, he drove twelve balls while dancing. According to those on the set, they all landed within 8 feet of each other.
Harpo Marx and George Burns once nearly got kicked out of Hillcrest Country Club in Beverly Hills when they played a round of golf in their underwear.
Country singer Willie Nelson has his own golf course, where the rules include:
Kim Jong II, the self-proclaimed “Dear Leader” of North Korea, is apparently quite the golfer. According to the club pro at Pyongyang's golf course in 1994, the dictator shot a 34 during an eighteen-hole game, including the remarkable feat of achieving five holes-in-one.
Comedian Bill Murray, who made a name for himself as a caddy in Caddyshack, showed up a few years ago at PGA tournaments to caddy for pro pal Scott Simpson.
You've heard of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby classics, for sure. You know you're a real golf fanatic, though, if you've heard of all of these past celebrity tourneys:
Actor Barry Fitzgerald, who won the 1944 Academy Award for best supporting actor for his performance in the movie Going My Way, had a run in with his Oscar. While practicing his golf swing, he inadvertently knocked the head off of his statue—at the time made of plaster, because the war was on. The Academy graciously gave him a new one. Fitzgerald probably took his practice to the links from that point on.
The first U.S. president who golfed was William McKinley.
William Taft was president during golf's early days. His avid love of the game is credited with helping popularize it among fellow Americans.
President Taft so loved the game of golf, it's recorded that when his meeting with the president of Chile conflicted with a round of golf he'd arranged earlier, he canceled the meeting and made tee time as scheduled.
President Woodrow Wilson used red golf balls so he could play his beloved game even in the snow.
The very first public golf course to be named after a U.S. president was an eighteen-hole course in San Francisco, which opened in 1925. Harding Park was designed by Scotsman William Watson and named after President Warren G. Harding, another political golf enthusiast.
President Calvin Coolidge didn't make too many long shots on the golf course. As a matter of fact, it's rumored his shots were short because he was afraid of losing one of his golf balls.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's father had a six-hole golf course built on their family home in Hyde Park, New York, when FDR was just a boy.
Dwight Eisenhower was the president who installed a full putting green on the White House grounds.
If you've ever played the Augusta National in Georgia, you may have run into the Eisenhower Tree, located on the seventeenth hole. It's named for the former president because he asked the course management if they could remove the pine, as he seemed to hit it an awful lot. They refused and made it a monument to him on the course.
Dwight Eisenhower was asked how his golf game had changed after he left the presidency. “A lot more people beat me now.”
President John Kennedy may have been the best golfer to ever occupy the White House. However, because he feared the public criticism that Dwight Eisenhower endured for his golfing, he played in near-secrecy during off-hours and away from the public and the press. One day he hit the ball just right and was chagrined to see it heading right for the hole, knowing that the story of the president's hole-in-one would be too good to keep from getting out in the papers. He was relieved when the ball missed the hole by inches.
A set of Kennedy's golf clubs—his MacGregor woods—was auctioned off with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's estate in April 1996. They sold for $772,500. His Ben Hogan irons went for a high bid of $387,500 and his putter for $65,750. Besides the clubs, three monogrammed head covers and a stroke counter were sold for a total of $63,250.
“I don't have a handicap. I'm all handicap.”
—President Lyndon B. Johnson
While in the Oval Office, Nixon often gave autographed golf balls as presidential gifts to friends.
Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew, who resigned because of corruption, had an equally crooked drive on the golf course. After he beaned several spectators, he had golf balls printed up that said, “You have just been hit by Spiro Agnew.”
After President Gerald Ford whacked a few bystanders with untamed drives, Bob Hope quipped, “Gerald Ford made golf a contact sport.”
Former president Ronald Reagan loved golf. He was known to practice his chip shots and putts on Air Force One, and even in the Oval Office itself. The story goes that when a reporter once asked Reagan what his handicap was, he replied without hesitation, “Congress.” Like much great material, it may have been borrowed—in this case, from former president Lyndon B. Johnson, who had answered the same thing to a reporter years earlier.
Dan Quayle was better at golf than at politics. In fact, some say he would've had better success at becoming a professional golfer, where being perceived as an over-privileged airhead isn't necessarily a handicap. He served as captain of his golf team in college after making a name for himself by shooting a hole-in-one when only seventeen years old. Quayle later defeated professional partner Joey Sindelar by several shots during a pro-am at the Kemper Open. He was on the golf course when he was asked to run for senator, and there again when news of his vice presidential run was announced.
While participating in the 1993 Doug Sanders Celebrity Classic, former president George Bush managed to bean Dan Quayle, his former vice president, on the top of his head. The ball did no apparent damage.
Former president George H. W. Bush has golf in the veins. Not only was his father, Prescott Bush, elected president of the USGA in 1934, but his grandfather, George Herbert Walker, also served as USGA president for a spell. It was this latter Bush who established the amateur Walker Cup.
Professional golfer Tommy Bolt's caddy during a tournament in Hot Springs, Arkansas, was none other than future president Bill Clinton. Clinton loved golf. He could often be seen during his presidency walking the fairways with Secret Service agents, aides, police snipers, special phones, and computers with nuclear codes in tow.
Of all of the golfing presidents, only three are known to have hit holes-in-one: Dwight D. Eisenhower, who hit one shortly before his death, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. Ford, it should be noted, hit not just one but three holes-in-one.