We’re starting to get to the end of George W Bush’s second term as US President, to the point where we may actually have an official democratic candidate before polling day (shock horror I know! I thought for a while we weren’t even going to get there!) It appears that the president is making a number of good willed gestures at the moment including attempting peace in the Middle East by the end of his term, and wait for it.... sacrificing golf while he is president.

My word, give this man a medal right now! No golf in five years? I’m proud of you President Bush, that you acknowledged that more time could be spent on running the United States as opposed to a few casual hours of hitting a ball until you get to the 19^th hole.

The headline that I saw a few days ago absolutely disgusted me; “Bush: I quit golf over Iraq war”, in which the president said in an interview with Yahoo! News “I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal... I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf.”

According to records kept by CBS, Bush’s last game of golf as president was on 13 October 2003. The sad thing is... it made worldwide news headlines four and a half years later.

But as William K Wolfrum points out on his WorldGolf.com blog entry, Mr Bush’s approval rating has almost halved since he stopped playing golf... maybe hitting balls on a golf course was the key to keeping his rating higher... but do we really need to know about his abstinence from sport?

Let’s not forget about the disasters in Burma and China which have happened over the last week or so, but yet somehow through such trying times, we manage to hear about the president’s lack of golf in recent years. Go figure.

Tags: politics