Fore! They Are In for a Bombshell

Well, we got ‘em now!

The Cold War is over. Let’s hear it for Ronald Reagan. Gorbachev. Nancy. Raisa.

Karl Marx, take a hike.

The INF Treaty? Glasnost? Perestroika?

Forget it.

The Soviets are going to take up golf! The comrades are building a golf course!

That’s the big news that’s come out of the summit. The Iron Curtain is just ground under repair. Free drop, two club lengths, no nearer the hole.

Lenin must be screaming, “No! No!” someplace today. Stalin must want someone to be shot. There goes Marxism. There goes the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The comrades are importing capitalism in its purest form.

We all know what happens next. The Politburo shows up for a meeting and, if you look under the desks, you see they’re all wearing cleats. And they’re in a hurry.

They’ll tell you Gorbachev is in conference when he’s really practicing putting on the rug.

Gorby will get on the hot line to the White House and, when the President comes on line, will ask, “Tell me, how far over do you keep the left hand at address? Do you keep the Vs pointing to the right shoulder even on the short shots?”

I can see it now: The Red Army is poised to invade the Persian Gulf. The chief of staff calls the Kremlin for the go-ahead. “Not today, lumpen! I got a four-ball at Omsk. And, besides, the Masters is on the tube this weekend and I got Stadler in the office pool. Why don’t we stage it the weekend of the Quad Cities? What do we want with the Persian Gulf anyway? I’d rather go to Palm Springs. I got a new set of Hogans.”

We all know what an obsessive game golf is. Remember Dwight Eisenhower, the only President in history who used the White House to get his handicap down, who made the White House lawn into a par-3 and who ran the country from a sand trap? His answer to every crisis was to keep your head still and be sure to follow through. And don’t give away the hole.

Look at it this way: A President on the golf course is not all that bad. Look at Jimmy Carter.

The Russkis have always been afraid of our Army, our Navy, Air Force, our missiles, technology, even our films and music. Now, they’re about to be taken over by a whole bunch of 5-irons.

Arnold Palmer gets to be secretary of state. On the first tee, he says to Gorby, “Let’s see, what shall we play for--Afghanistan?”

I wonder if the comrades know what they’re doing to themselves?

You know, Lenin used to say our capitalism was such a patsy it would probably sell them the rope to hang us with. Wait’ll they see what golf does to their way of life. Gromyko will be trying to get into Bel-Air. Gorby will be trying to wangle an invite for the Hope or the Crosby or whatever they call Bing’s old tournament these days. The KGB will be told to forget the computer plants and concentrate their industrial spying on square grooves or the dimples in Top-Flites and Titleists.

I’m only sorry they’re taking up the game after the eras of Palmer and Nicklaus and Hogan and Snead. Somehow, I don’t think Morris Hatalsky and Payne Stewart are going to inspire the same awe. We could send them Tommy Bolt to show them how to hit or throw a 2-iron and the stance for smashing a locker with a golf shoe.

This latest ideological departure is, as usual, the work of the legendary Armand Hammer, the longtime Russophile and one-time confidant and adviser to Vladimir Lenin, no less, who has been trying to bring the Soviet Union (and us) into the 20th Century for most of it.

Robert Trent Jones will build the course, which will be 6,800 meters or 7,000 yards long, will have four water hazards, more sand than South Africa, if I know Bob Jones, and walls of pine trees. It’ll be at Nachabino, 18 miles west of Moscow but not too far in spirit from Augusta National. It’ll have wide fairways but presumably all the doglegs will be left, since no self-respecting Bolshevik would ever want to go to the right.

Gorbachev looks like a natural-born 18, but he’ll probably think he’s a 12, that, like every other golfer, he’s six shots better than he is.

He’ll probably go out and get himself a pair of purple slacks, red shoes and a set of irons and mink covers, and every hustler in the world will be fighting to get a piece of him, get on the back and press the bet. On the other hand, he may be the only high-handicapper in the world who, when he says “I’m going to kill this guy!” would be able to do it even if he bogeys the 18th.

Anyway, communism is kaput. There has never been a communist on a golf course in the history of the game. Golfers are not collectivist idealists. Golfers are you-hit-it-there-you-go-play-it-there. Golfers’ political agenda is just-be-the-right-club-baby--right down the middle. They hate anything that goes left. Golfers are Calvin Coolidge times two. John D. Rockefeller was a golfer, to give you an idea.

Golf is not a game, it’s a religion. If they thought they had trouble with the Pope, wait’ll they get the PGA. They’ll find out what an evil empire really is when they get enmeshed in this game.

The summit was an American success. Hitler and Napoleon couldn’t take Moscow with all their cannon but 20 guys with 4-irons in Amana hats will bring it to its knees. I can’t wait till the first Central Committee member finds out that the breaks at Nachabino are harder to read than U.S. foreign policy. Golf, the Romanoffs’ Revenge.

What’s Russian for, “My God! Not over there!” and “You’re away, Tovarich”?