Spending Time on the Golf Course Is Vice President’s Driving Passion : Politics: The game is his forte. Only on the links can the ambitious Quayle dare to unleash his full competitive energies.

At 5:50 a.m. last July 12, Vice President Dan Quayle, four of his aides and seven Secret Service guards left the vice president’s residence for the 10-minute helicopter ride to Andrews Air Force Base.

It was the beginning of an 18-hour day that would take Quayle to New York, on Air Force Two, for a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, an editorial board meeting at the New York Post and the opening of a disabled athletes’ center on Long Island.

Quayle had finished all this by lunch time. Page 12 of his schedule for that day then listed “Washington Work--Private Time: 6 hours.” What that really meant was golf.

From time to time, aides and political advisers have urged Quayle to cut back on his golf. They have warned him that it reinforces the image of an elite, carefree child of privilege. But Quayle has refused, so his staff has learned to build his passion into their planning. They schedule important meetings, interviews and events several hours before he is to leave for the links. “He goes on a high,” one aide said. But the event cannot be too close to the game, else Quayle will be distracted by his desire to get to the course in time to practice before tee-off.

Golf has been a major part of Dan Quayle’s life since his youth in Arizona, where the family lived next to the Paradise Valley golf club. His grandfather, newspaper publisher Eugene C. Pulliam, advised him that the golf course was a good place to make “contacts and business acquaintances.”

Golf serves a special function for Quayle now that he is in the vice presidency, where he can never forget that he is, as Nelson A. Rockefeller put it, “standby equipment,” and where he can never fully unleash his competitive energies.

David Griffiths, a golf buddy of Quayle’s from their law school days, said: “One of the things people don’t understand about him is how fierce a competitor he is. Even when we were playing head to head, just the two of us, it was still very competitive.” When Quayle fell behind, he said, “invariably, he’d come roaring back.”

Quayle’s onetime aide and his successor in the Senate, Dan Coats, known as one of the toughest competitors on Capitol Hill, said he was no match for Quayle. “He hates to lose. All politicians are competitive, but most do not have the intensity that Dan does. . . . The key to understanding Dan, competing against him and working with him: the tougher it gets, the more determined he is.”

The intensity of Quayle’s drive to excel was demonstrated during what turned into an eight-hour golf marathon at Deepdale Golf Club in Manhasset on Long Island.

By 1:15 p.m. Quayle, in blue trousers and pink shirt, was on the veranda of Deepdale, which is one of the most exclusive and expensive private clubs in the country. He and Rep. Raymond J. McGrath (R-N.Y.), developer Lewis Rudin, club professional Darrell Kestner and stockbroker George Zahringer--who is one of the best amateur golfers in the United States--had the lush, manicured course virtually to themselves.

Quayle began with 30 minutes on the driving range, trying new clubs while Kestner, the pro, analyzed his swing. His drives are the best part of his game, at 250 to 275 yards, but Quayle was far from satisfied.

As he headed out to the 6,623-yard course, his Secret Service escort and a military aide carrying the “football,” containing nuclear war codes, fanned out in golf carts, communicating via hand-held radios. “SCORECARD is 150 yards from the green,” said one guard, using Quayle’s code name. Caddies drove golf carts with the clubs as Quayle walked. One caddy acted as a ball spotter while another taped Quayle’s shots with a video camera.

Quayle told Kestner and amateur Zahringer to advise him freely but not to overload the circuits with too many tips and criticisms. Reviewing his performance on the video of the first nine holes, they focused on three areas: keeping the shoulders down, proper location of the knees on the backswing and keeping the shaft of the club vertical at the top of the backswing.

On the 397-yard, par 4 14th hole, Quayle hit what looked like a perfect drive, but it took a radical departure to the left and hooked into the woods. The spotter located it in a stand of tall, slender trees.

Quayle spent a full minute, utterly calm, trying to develop a strategy for recovery. He saw the only way out was back toward the tee, against all golfing instinct to advance toward the hole. A lofted shot into the middle of the fairway provided a nice shot to the green. But the recovery was incomplete. He sliced the next shot to the right and ended up with a double bogey 6 on the hole.

On the 431-yard, par 4 15th hole, Quayle sliced his drive to the right, into an adjacent fairway, and had to shoot over a line of trees to get to the green. On the 18th, he putted out for a final score of 81, 11 more than par. It was not what he had hoped for, and his face showed it. Club pro Kestner shot a 72; amateur Zahringer scored 67.

Golf is the key to understanding the vice president, said one of his closest aides. “It’s the personality that goes with being a world-class golfer. You know, they’re not the people who wrap their clubs around the trees. They are not the people who shout at the galleries. They are not the people who let their bad performance on the first hole affect their performance on the sixth hole. And while they’re playing the sixth hole, they are not thinking about the 18th hole. . . . It helps me understand why he doesn’t go through each day thinking about how this is going to affect the California primary in 1996.”

A group of Quayle’s aides waited at the edge of the green. Among them was Dan Murphy, carrying an official-looking suitcase and a canvas bag, both filled with what Quayle’s staff calls chum, or bait, an assortment of Dan Quayle memorabilia including tie bars, T-shirts, golf balls and visors. As Lewis Rudin distributed crisp $100 bills to the caddies and ball spotter, the other golfers went into a mild “chum” feeding frenzy and nearly emptied Murphy’s bags.

Murphy, who has left Quayle’s staff for law school, said there are two things about his job he would not miss: carrying the “chum” and picking up after Quayle in various hotel rooms and residences.

Though he was scheduled to depart the club in about 15 minutes, Quayle headed for the driving range. For the next hour and 50 minutes, he hit balls as Kestner and Zahringer analyzed problems with his swing. As the sun set, Quayle continued to pound ball after ball down the range, achieving a nice zing with most shots, finding his groove, sending the balls regularly 250 yards or farther.

“Mr. Vice President,” one of his coaches finally said, “the sun is down. No one has been able to even remotely see where the last half-dozen shots landed.”

Quayle seemed to come out of a trance. “We’ll take a shower, then get something to eat,” he said. Afterward, his skin was pink and his blue eyes stood out even more than usual; he looked younger; he seemed totally relaxed.

Over thick steaks, baked potatoes and a 1982 Chateau Margaux, the talk was all of golf. Quayle launched a round of nostalgia by recalling with exactitude incidents from a 1966 tournament in San Francisco where he helped set the pins, and a 1975 tournament at Medinah Country Club in Illinois, where he and his wife, Marilyn, saw pro Ben Crenshaw hit his shot into the water on the 17th.

About 9:30, Quayle was ready to leave. With cleared freeways, Air Force Two and a waiting helicopter, he was home by 11:30.

People who know Quayle emphasize his eagerness for the game and its importance to his psychic balance. During his round at Deepdale he had exclaimed, “I can’t get enough of it!”

He likes to play at Burning Tree in Bethesda, Md., where usually he can finish in two-thirds the time it would take him to play other local courses, and where his “Honorary Resident” membership exempts him from paying the initiation fee. One Secret Service agent said Quayle plays there three or four times in some summer weeks.

He had a putting green built at the vice presidential residence. “After an evening appearance that did not go as well as he wanted, and he was clearly not happy with his performance,” one aide said, “I have seen him in the dark of night, jump out of his car and walk right to the putting green and start putting. The imposition of discipline. Or absolute order. What matters. And that’s not just relaxation. That’s his version of Oriental shadow-boxing.”

Marilyn Quayle has said of her husband’s love of golf: “If you’re going to play a good game of golf, everything else has to leave. . . . It requires such a level of concentration that everything that’s closing in on you and pounding you, it’s total relief.”