WASHINGTON INSIGHT

LINKSMAN-IN-CHIEF: After four months of being denied one of his great passions, President Clinton was not going to let 97-degree temperatures or ozone levels in the unhealthy range keep him off the golf course. Washington is experiencing some of its worst summer weather of the year, but having gotten a go-ahead from his doctor, the president on Monday played his first full round of golf since tearing a tendon in his right knee on March 14. Clinton, whose recovery from the injury he suffered at golf pro Greg Norman’s Florida home is about a month ahead of schedule, has already started walking on a treadmill and is expected to resume jogging soon, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said. Given the muggy conditions, Clinton’s eagerness to hit the links was not widely held--he played his maiden 18-holes solo at the Army-Navy Country Club in suburban Washington.

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TOBACCO WOES: The Butt-Man of campaign ’96 fame apparently is making a comeback. The life-size caricature of a cigarette who bedeviled Bob Dole’s campaign rallies after the Republican presidential candidate declared that nicotine wasn’t necessarily addictive had been dormant since the November elections. But it surfaced at a Capitol Hill news conference this week called by activists urging support for a Senate proposal to raise the cigarette tax by 20 cents a pack to help fund health insurance for children. Upon closer inspection, the protest symbol turned out not to be Butt-Man after all. Judging by its high heels, it was Butt-Woman.

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STAT DEPARTMENT: It looks like heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson will put Evander Holyfield in the record books--the Labor Department’s statistical record books, that is. As it turns out, Holyfeld is not the only American to get injured at work by being bitten. According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 957 Americans lost time from work as a result of bites in 1995 (it is not clear how many of those bites were inflicted by humans). Another 2,191 Americans were injured from squeezing, pinching, scratching or twisting, and 9,640 workers fell victim to hitting, kicking and beating--a category Tyson may fit into.

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GAVEL ON, MIKE: In a Senate full of show horses, freshman Republican Mike Enzi of Wyoming is turning out to be a work horse. And that led Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) to interrupt floor business recently to present Enzi with the Golden Gavel Award--given to members who have presided over the Senate for 100 hours or more in any one session. While many have won the award, few have done so as swiftly as Enzi, who notched his 100th hour after just 615 hours of Senate sessions this year. The thankless and largely mind-numbing task is relegated to junior senators of the party in control--a fact that Lott no doubt had in mind when he told Enzi: “Now that you have reached this milestone, we hope you will continue on.”

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A TAD DRY: From Burgundy to Bordeaux, French vintners long ago perfected the art of making wine. So it was that many invitees to the French Embassy for Bastille Day revelry in the nation’s capital last Friday awaited the evening with quivering palates. Alas, as with the occasionally maddening turns of U.S.-French diplomacy, not all went as planned. Scarcely halfway through the five-hour event, the wine barrel went dry. Although delicate pastries, cheese and champagne remained abundant, one Norwegian reaching for a glass of beer was heard to mutter: “That’s so typically French. They make wonderful wine, but somehow can’t manage to follow through.”