Barack Obama Adds To The High Cost Of Presidential Golf

A huge reason for the decline in golf participants has been the expense of playing this game.

When it comes to Presidential golf, that number can get out of hand in a hurry.

The Washington Times dug up some interesting numbers from a few years ago when soon-to-be outgoing President Barack Obama decided it would be really cool to spend a weekend in Florida and get in a round of golf with Tiger Woods.

It was February 2013 at the Floridian in Palm City, Florida.  The course was originally owned by former Dolphin owner Wayne Huizenga.  He sold the club to Houston Astros owner Jim Crane back in 2010 and it was Crane who hosted Obama for a weekend at the club.

The Prez got some lessons from Butch Harmon and son Claude III and on the Sunday of that little trip, none other than Eldrick T. Woods showed up to play with POTUS and Crane.

By the time Obama’s weekend foray to Florida had ended, the Times tells us that the bill came to about $3.6 million to us taxpayers.  The Pentagon picked up a tab to the tune of $2.8 million while Homeland Security was kind enough to foot about $767,000 of that tab according to the Times’ arithmetic.

What this tells us is that it really, really expensive to take a sitting president somewhere to play golf.

When you add up the numerous golf outings for Mr. President during his eight years in office, well, it might make General Eisenhower look like he did not spend enough time at Augusta National during his years in office.

Can’t you just hear Butch Harmon:   “Hey, who do I send this bill to?”

No truth to the rumor that Obama told Butch:  “There will be no monetary compensation, but on your death-bed, you will receive total consciousness.”

So Butch has that going for him, which is nice.

Okay, back to the big bucks.

One of the really, really big tabs in all of this is the $200,000 per hour it costs to keep Air Force One aloft.  That would keep most U.S. citizens in high clover for a year and it would be a lifetime of great golf trips for most of us.

One of the ongoing challenges of golf is to overcome the perception that it is an elitist game.  Stuff like this only helps to reinforce that perception with just about everyone.

The worst thing in all of this is that when Obama vacates the White House, he will have plenty of time on his hands to play more expensive rounds of golf.  The good news is he won’t be carted around in Air Force One.  The bad news is he’ll still have plenty of tax-payer charged security details.

More good news for the soon-to-be ex-POTUS is that Tiger Woods has a lot of free time on his hands as well.

The two of them can spend a lot of time together come January 2017 and that’s a match made in heaven.

For sure.