Rain Rescues Island From Clinton Wager

President Clinton bet on a golf game Friday, but a sudden rainstorm mitigated his gamble. As a result, Martha’s Vineyard remains U.S. territory.

The president, who has played golf this week with bankers and college friends, was joined by royalty Friday. The competition was Prince Andrew, Duke of York, who was visiting friends in New England.

As he drove off in a golf cart at the start of the round on the Farm Neck golf course with the prince in the passenger’s seat, the president said: “If he beats me, we have to give him back the island.”

Then came the rains, stopping play after 15 holes, with no clear victor.

After 80 holes of golf, one clambake, an uncertain number of books and nearly a half-million dollars in donations, Clinton is midway through his summer vacation and about to change his venue. His modus operandi remains the same.

Today, the president, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea are leaving one coastal island resort community for another, New York’s Hamptons, where they will be guests of producer-director Steven Spielberg.

On Monday, they are moving once again, to spend five days in and around the small town of Skaneateles (pronounced skinny-atlas) in the Finger Lakes region near Syracuse, N.Y.

In moving to the eastern end of Long Island, the Clintons are leaving behind the crowd--mostly from Boston and Washington--that frequents Martha’s Vineyard for the New York and Hollywood types who favor the Hamptons.

But the recreational activities on the playlist remain the same: golf and fund-raising--typically 18 holes a day of the former and, if predictions hold, nearly $2 million of the latter waiting to be picked up at New York parties on top of $491,000 already contributed over the last week.

For two days at midweek, the Clintons held to a private routine, remaining within their borrowed compound on Oyster Pond.

But on Thursday and Friday, the president broke out with a vengeance:

Horseback riding with Chelsea on sandy paths cut through an oak forest early Thursday morning. A round of golf with Wall Street friends that afternoon. Wearing the same maroon shirt, khakis and white shoes that he sported during the first 18 holes, a second round of golf--this time with friends from his college days at Georgetown University--in the late afternoon and early evening. Only after a chill fog rolled over Farm Neck and darkness fell did the game get cut short at 11 holes, with the president claiming that he had been shooting his best golf ever, at two over par.

“He’s crazy. He’ll play in almost pitch black and go trudging around looking for the ball,” said one acquaintance familiar with the president’s golf game.

As for presidential scorekeeping, Sen. John F. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, discovered this when he played a round with Clinton on Nantucket Island a week ago: “The truth is the president had the best score, but the truth is the president also counts differently.”

On Friday, the president was on his best behavior. He did not hit one “mulligan”--a second shot when an initial drive goes astray--even though Prince Andrew opened with a shot down the fairway and the president’s drive veered to the right. He pleaded: “Don’t go way over there!”

Three hours and 15 minutes later, the storm chased the prince and the president off the course.

Asked how the game had gone, the thoroughly soaked Andrew pulled a crumpled wad of American money from his khaki pants and replied: “I have still got a little money in my pocket.” And the Stars and Stripes flew over the island.

Just about the only recorded dialogue with a member of the public occurred last Sunday, after Clinton attended a birthday party for a member of Mrs. Clinton’s staff. Working the crowd that had gathered outside Balance, a new restaurant in Oak Bluffs backed by Harvey Weinstein, the Miramax mogul, the president encountered Mark O’Connor, who works as a bicycle messenger in Boston and who complained to Clinton that Boston imposes a $100 fine on a cyclist who does not wear a helmet.

In one of the more peculiar presidential rope-line conversations, the president told O’Connor that he had just attended the funeral of a friend who was killed in a bicycle accident and who had not been wearing a helmet, a reference to the death of Democratic fund-raiser and political consultant Dan Dutko several weeks ago.

That was not convincing to O’Connor. He told Clinton that he was careful and rode slowly and that a helmet blocks his view. The president responded: “You may ride slow but the streets are fast.”

Such is the nature of controversy here. Not even a report in the Boston Herald that Clinton had lighted a cigar on the golf course--”Bubba’s big boo-boo,” the tabloid called it--provided a spark.

“I’ve seen the picture; there’s no smoking gun,” Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart said.

Lockhart was the only White House senior aide who came here with Clinton. His expanded duties included that of gatekeeper, determining which papers from Washington would be sent in to the president.