This Detente Is Down to a Tee

It is a delicate diplomatic mission, with emissaries making back-channel inquiries to avoid embarrassment.

The initiative is not about Mideast peace, repairing relations with China or forging a new arms control agreement with Russia’s prime minister.

The goal is getting Bill Clinton into a golf club.

The effort began while the former president still occupied the Oval Office, after he and now-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had purchased a home in Westchester County--a mecca of private courses.

Months later, it is clear that Bill Clinton has a handicap.

Some prestigious clubs such as the Winged Foot Golf Club (site of four U.S. Open championships) and the Westchester Country Club signaled no preferential treatment.

Clinton would have to apply like everyone else. The waiting list at Winged Foot is more than a decade.

Ditto the Mount Kisco Country Club. And at the Whippoorwill Club, closer to the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, N.Y., the reception was equally chilly. No jumping the line.

It’s not just Monica. It’s also the mulligans and the problem of postpresidential protection.

“On the one hand, it is a compliment to a club that the former president would be interested in joining,” said Peter Landau, historian of St. Andrew’s Golf Club in Westchester County and co-author of “Presidential Lies: The Presidential History of White House Golf,” an entertaining history of White House golf.

“There are a lot of nightmares connected with having a president. If they had [security] dogs sniffing in the ball washers, it would not be a particularly pleasant experience.”

Added Chris Hodenfield, editor-in-chief of Golf & Travel Magazine: “People who belong to these clubs don’t like to be told the club is closed off because the president is playing here today. Some presidential interloper comes by with his squadron of walkie-talkies. They just don’t like it.”

George Peper, editor-in-chief of Golf magazine, recalled a round of golf he played with Dan Quayle when Quayle was vice president.

“There were 12 Secret Service people with him,” Peper said. “I finally said: ‘One of those guys is going to play through.’

“I think clubs are concerned not only with the member, but the guests he may bring and the commotion. Clinton doesn’t go anywhere by himself.”

Club admission committees consider many factors when someone--even a former president--applies for membership.

The character not only of the applicant, but of his or her immediate family members, often is weighed, as are the depth of family roots in the community. It helps to have a close and enduring relationship with several current club members.

Being viewed as congenial--and as someone who would use the club regularly--are definite pluses.

“Some people join clubs just as trophies. Most clubs don’t like that,” said one member of an exclusive Westchester golf club, who has served on the admission committee and who asked not to be identified. “They want to know you are invested in the club, dine there and play golf with the fellow members. That it’s part of your life, not that you are a stranger who parachutes in.

“Membership will not turn the place upside down for an ex-president. There is too much nuisance. It’s the same reason cooperative apartment houses in the city reject celebrities.”

Then there is the issue of the former president’s golfing habits.

“When Bill went out to play, they tended to be practice rounds,” Hodenfield noted. “He took mulligans. Some people got a little stiff in the neck about that. They would say, ‘Is he a golf guy?’

“Clinton fatigue figures in as well. When somebody mentions they belong to a club, they want someone to say an important event happened there, like a U.S. Amateur [Championship]. . . . It gets down to prestige. Will he lend prestige to our club?”

The boards of directors at some clubs are aware that discussion of Clinton’s application could cause splits in the membership.

But in the case of the former president, it’s more than the fact that there are lots of Republicans on the links. “I am sure the character issue is part of it,” Peper said.

According to “Presidential Lies,” William McKinley--who entered the White House in 1897--was the first chief executive to play golf. Woodrow Wilson often carried his own bag and played the course with his wife. They got up very early so he could return to the Oval Office by midmorning.

Richard Nixon, who belonged to the Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., before becoming president, at one point in his career sported a 12 handicap. President Eisenhower, who belonged to Augusta National, liked to end the day by practicing his irons on the south lawn of the White House.

John F. Kennedy, who had an athletic, flowing swing, hid the fact that he was a golfer when he sought the Democratic nomination. He recoiled in horror when he almost scored a hole in one. JFK thought voters would be tired of another golfer in the White House.

Of all the presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson may have been the king of mulligans. He could drop as many as eight balls after a single shot and hit them until he was satisfied.

In a November interview with Golf Digest, Clinton sought to mute criticism of his mulligans.

“My mulligans are way overrated,” he said.

The president explained that he lets everyone have an extra shot from the first tee. If someone hits a ball terribly during the round, he will allow another mulligan--and he will give the other players one as well.

But he said one mulligan every nine holes is his limit.

Peper views the issue of extra shots as somewhat irrelevant.

“A lot of people take mulligans at their home club,” he said. “Absent the other factors, I don’t think mulligans would be a problem.”

Golf & Travel last year reported that Clinton’s close friend Vernon E. Jordan Jr. contacted the Manhattan Woods Golf Club in West Nyack, N.Y., on the then-president’s behalf for information regarding membership. The club’s manager mailed packets of information. He hasn’t heard back.

Neither has Joel Berman, who as one of the owners of the Salem Golf Club in North Salem, N.Y., indicated interest this month in having Clinton as a member.

The storm clouds should not come as a surprise. While he was still in the White House, Clinton asked a top Westchester County Democratic official to help him get a tee time the next day at any one of a number of prestigious courses.

The effort failed. Clinton went to the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens, where he watched the U.S. Tennis Open instead.