The Fairytale

by H. G. Nelson

  Understandably some of the ‘You’re fired!’ man’s Florida neighbours suggested the new arrangement broke the agreement. The feeling among the residents was that Donald camping out at the Winter White House would attract an unsavoury crowd of yahoos, spivs, late mail merchants and coat-tuggers. The locals saw Trump’s decision as attracting many of the people he pardoned in the dying days of his stint as El Presidente.

  But Donald knows golf and politics have always danced the rhumba cheek to cheek, buttock to buttock. He is the latest in a long line of White House club-swinging stars. JFK looked great out on the fifth in the check slacks with club in hand. His skill in the bunker with the sand wedge is the stuff of legends. Romance, atomic glamour, style and fashion all came together in the Kennedy game. His wife Jackie Kennedy could swing and once knocked in an ace, a hole in one, at Augusta, the home of the Masters.

  Gerald Ford wandered into the White House when President Richard Nixon went for the long goodbye. Tricky Dicky vacated the Big House in a hurry, leaving the gas on. President Ford played a layout he designed himself in the White House grounds next to the rose garden.

  Barrack Obama had a sensational game. He was always keen to get away from the thrust and tribulations of international politics and have a relaxing swing. Bill Clinton, cigar ablaze on the droop from the lower lip, eyes peeled for action, always looked as though he belonged. He often made up a foursome with Fuzzy Zoeller, Duffy Waldorf and the Australian champ Brett Ogle.

  Trump lookalike ‘Big Bill’ Taft demonstrated that bulk is no hindrance to playing a top shot from the beach to save par. George W. Bush and his piano-playing Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, both had great games. The Veep, Dick Cheney, and 2003 Iraq war brains, Donald Rumsfeld, could hold up an end in a team event. Those two loved to have a bet and put something on every hole. Their boss, George W., looked magnificent in Bermuda shorts whenever he backed the Cadillac into his car park alongside the pro shop and pulled a bag of sticks out of the huge Caddy boot. He could destroy a course when he was in the right mood. George was on record as saying, ‘You never remember how completely stuffed the world is while you are playing golf.’

  Lyndon B. Johnson did the deals for the Civil Rights legislation on the back nine of the Whiskey Creek Golf Club. Vice President Dan Quayle played off a handicap of nine. Dan started dragging the bag aged seven. He played well into middle age. A late starter was Joe Biden, who only took up the game when he won the top job, but he now swings a very nice stick.

  By comparison, there have been thirty-nine foreign ministers in Australia’s history and thirty-seven of them have been great golfers. Our politicians always punched well above their weight on those hard-to-par international layouts. Bob Menzies was never lost in the rough, Paul Hasluck, William McMahon, Gough Whitlam, the soufflé Andrew Peacock loved playing from the beach, plodding Bill Hayden could get great length off the tee, and the fishnets and stockings swinger, Alexander Downer, had a great short game. He often played poorly but he always strolled into the nineteenth with tales of great shots he jagged by chance. He described these shots as ‘haunting’. No one really knew what he meant. It was as though an unseen hand had played them for him.

  There was that magnificent swing of Kevin Rudd’s, as smooth as Carnation condensed milk being poured onto a Laminex table; ‘Blinga’ Bishop, who always looked the part and realised early in her time as Foreign Minister that ‘you swing for show, but you putt for dough’. Finally, Marise Payne’s club selection and uncanny understanding of distance was the envy of the foreign ministers’ jet set community for some time.

  Our foreign ministers were all golf crazy and golf literate. After a round they held up an end of the bar. Over a few beers or a tumbler of sweet sherry the international heavyweights discussed the big issues, like British champ Laura Davies, how good was she? Or who was a better player, the Language of Love man, Ernie ‘The Big Easy’ Els, or the Zimbabwean eagle machine, Nick Price? Did Spanish legend Seve Ballesteros have great golfer’s hips?

  Our foreign ministers were all golf crazy and golf literate.

  The go-to person to organise a game or make up the numbers between the ambassadors and foreign ministers of either side of the Pacific was ‘The Shark’, Greg Norman, who had every ambassador’s number in his phone and was willing to set the wheels in motion. With The Shark’s help, our embassy staff are no strangers to the power of golfing diplomacy. But they have trouble selling the concept in Canberra in the current climate where China troubles swamp the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade agenda.

  News Limited and Institute of Public Affairs experts believe recent disagreements over trade and security with China could easily be settled over eighteen holes at any one of the great sand-based layouts around the country. Australia boasts a great variety of courses from the sand, rocks and bush layout at Lightning Ridge to the well-watered, demanding eighteen-hole monster at the Centre of National Golfing Excellence located on the south-west slopes in Young, NSW.

  The failure of embassy staff in Canberra and Beijing to get a foursome of officials who matter out on the course and chatting is a national tragedy. For the sake of our trading future, we have to loosen this log jam. More importantly, no one in Canberra or the Chinese Communist Party wants to commit to breaking the ice or clearing the air by talking about the big issues during a round of golf. The pressing challenge in foreign affairs is to get the politicians together and thinking about a difficult lie and club selection instead of barley, wine, iron ore and heritage cheese futures.

  The failure of embassy staff in Canberra and Beijing to get a foursome of officials who matter out on the course and chatting is a national tragedy.

  There is always another approach. Should DFAT recruit our present and past golfing stars, like Karrie ‘The Funnel’ Webb, Adam Scott, Peter Senior and ‘The Elk’, Steve Elkington, to become our international diplomatic front line? Enrol them in a crash course in trade and international affairs, slip them into a bespoke suit, and ask them to pick up the phone and start inking in dates, teeing up times and courses.

  The Ivanka Response

  What can’t we achieve with the knowledge, memorabilia and traditions of golf?

  With Donald Trump moving to the White House in 2016, a new era teed off with high hopes.

  At the drop of a Twitter post he would down tools and make the numbers in a foursome for an afternoon on the swing. Often after three holes he was wishing he was back in the clubhouse watching his shows, by the ninth he was gnashing his teeth trying to think of places on the planet he could bomb, on the fifteenth he was ringing Fox & Friends, hoping to get put through to the on-air celebrities, and he was so catatonic on the eighteenth that he needed a couple of slices of chocolate cake before he could get the shoes off. But he always lobbed back in the White House later in the day saying he had a great round and felt better than ever.

  There was always extensive media coverage of Donald out in the rough with a sand wedge in hand, and photos of him crouched over the Kool Mint hoping for a good connection that sent the nugget towards the pin were front-page news in the broadsheets.

  The forty-fifth President arrived at the White House with a plan for international golfing domination. His concept involved world leaders, foreign ministers and ambassadors playing golf together and solving the world’s problems. This international peace initiative was called the Ivanka Response (IvaRes). Don and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo imagined a circuit of Trump-owned and -operated golf courses around the world being used for summits and talkfests aimed at creating a greater understanding of the world: gabfests that focused on the interests of non-tax-paying American billionaires.

  The IvaRes concept was tasked to take over all the duties of the United Nations, NATO, the WHO and the WTO. Funds raised from green fees, car parking, catering and club memberships were to be donated to international peace programmes that Jared Kushner was overseeing from the Trump 2024 re-election campaign headquarters. Obviously, adminis
trative and day-to-day running expenses had been taken out by TRUMP International before Jared got his hands on a slimmed down slab of the charity lolly.

  Greg Norman was a great supporter of linking the game to golf and world diplomacy. Greg thought the Ivanka Response was exactly what the world and the world of golf needed. The Shark proposed every nation should appoint a Minister for Golf who would be the official representative of the nation at all these major international meets.

  Trump-controlled courses would be placed at strategic hot spots. All international diplomacy would be conducted on the course with a club in the hand. No decisions could be made without the golf shoes on. Foreign ministers and ambassadors were expected to turn up for a yak, dragging the bag and dressed for eighteen holes of red hot international diplomatic action.

  The original Ivanka Response was linked to providing venues for all the majors from the Australian Open, the USPGA and the British Open at Trump-owned courses. It was hard to imagine the British Open, sponsored by Saudi Arabia, being played in Dubai, but according to the Don that was the new normal. He would bellow at moaners, ‘Buddy, get used to it. Stop whinging, start swingin’.’ Then give the whinger a forty-minute lecture on why the world was lucky to have inspirational international leaders with vision like Trump, D., Johnson, ‘Banjo’, B., Morrison, ‘Sooty’, S.

  Jewels in the Ivanka Response crown included that magnificent Bedminster layout in New Jersey with its five star, all you can eat buffet available at every hole. The golf buggies at Bedminister are classic American cars from the fifties including a full range of Plymouth, Dodge and Desoto. Then there’s the wonderful but challenging Great White Shark–designed eighteen holes in Charlotte, North Carolina. At this golfing experience, every hole is named after an American President or Vice President. The thirteenth hole, The Tricky Dicky Nixon, lives up to its name. Many of the greats, including Tiger Woods and the forgotten man of Australian golf, Mark Hensby, have described the Dick Nixon hole as completely unplayable. Ivanka’s SoCal jewel is located at Lunada Bay. This set-up has a very strong locals-only vibe. Whenever the surf rolls in, police patrol the beach breaking up fights between residents and blow-ins who have bobbed up looking for a surf. The Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles, Rancho Palos Verde, is nearby. The RPV, with its eighteen holes of fun, needs its own police force to keep the riffraff from clod-hopping across the greens and bogging golf buggies in the expansive sand traps.

  Then there are the European twin pillars, the Trump International Scotland and the Trump International Ireland. Not to mention the controversial six-and-a-half-star luxury golf resort, Trump Turnberry in Scotland. This links-style complex on the Firth of Clyde features two courses designed by cack-handed Martin Ebert.

  A great lifestyle was attached to the Response. Ivanka created a special range of international on-course leisure wear for all sexes. The slacks and trousers had room to swing the hips and came in bright florals and moody pastels. Then there were the accessories: the shoes, the head gear, the sunglasses, the bags, the clubs, the buggy and membership were all part of the package.

  Sadly, after the 2020 election, the international mood took a turn for the worse and the IvaRes Dream became a nightmare. Scotland has even gone cold on the whole ‘swing and solve the world’s snags’ concept. The tartan set might even put up a wall and pull up the welcome mat, preventing Donald from playing at the game’s spiritual home, the Royal and Ancient St Andrews layout.

  IvaRes went down the tubes with the forty-fifth President. But Ivanka’s dream is something that DFAT could get right up behind. This international dream would be an excellent addition to national Golf Month. Every year October promotes golf and asks all Australians to step outside and start swinging, for the good of the country.

  Like our trade relations, golf today is at the centre of the swirling climate change debate, battles about sustainability and the extravagant use of shrinking resources like water. Even the very land the eighteen-hole layouts occupy is eyed off greedily by developers with high-rise plans in the hip pocket, and governments are looking to take over public courses for infrastructure needs. Bright sparks in the wealth creation business see golf courses as great locations for fifty-five-storey tower blocks with plenty of parking. Courses are being ploughed-in for housing and cut in half and reduced to nine holes to create park land.

  It’s an old story, and it is not yet time on in the first quarter.

  Australia has 1500 golf courses. This is the third highest number of courses per capita in the world, taking the bronze after Scotland and New Zealand. There is a battle across the nation for the ground the Royal and Ancient stick-and-ball caper is played on. Unless they have the word ‘Anzac’ somewhere in the title, all courses are at serious risk of being buried alive under an avalanche of housing, high-rise, transport infrastructure and football stadiums. Battle-themed names like the Long Tan Golf Course, the Lone Pine Links or the Second Sixth Field Ambulance Memorial Course have a greater chance of survival. The AGM could ram through a name change at this late stage, but even that concession may not secure a future in these weird and changing times.

  Unless they have the word ‘Anzac’ somewhere in the title, all courses are at serious risk of being buried alive under an avalanche of housing, high-rise, transport infrastructure and football stadiums.

  Then there is resistance to the game on the home front. Once upon a time, Australians of all ages would get out of the house any time of the day for a swing around the local eighteen before a few bevvies in the clubhouse after sinking a final putt.

  If a space-consuming eighteen-hole course was a step too far away, there was a lively pitch and putt or an exciting par three within reach of public transport. The pitch-and-putt scene has disappeared into the dust of time like the dodo.

  But the Australian game received a tremendous boost in 2020. The COVID plague year allowed locked-down citizens camping out in certain states to exercise playing golf while maintaining correct social distancing protocols. Golf is a game that is easily COVID compliant. Prior to COVID the game had been in the doldrums. Society was becoming time poor. In the modern age, who had time to spend waddling about swinging when there was a supermarket shopping to do at home and school sport occupied every Saturday and Sunday morning?

  Commentators believe the game needs a makeover to make it relevant to a contemporary time-poor generation. They point to the example of cricket, which collapsed the madness of the five days of Test cricket into the One Day concept, then shrank the shebang even further to the twenty-over hit and run before experimenting with a 100-deliveries game. The jury is uncertain about what improvements can be made to the game of golf. How do you tinker with perfection? Sure, night golf is great, aqua golf is a blast, nude golf satisfies certain boutique sensibilities, but in essence the sport is a ball, a stick and a hole. What more does a sport need?

  The jury is uncertain about what improvements can be made to the game of golf. How do you tinker with perfection?

  Suddenly, the game was back in fashion. Club membership exploded across the nation. There was unprecedented growth. Forty-two thousand bag-draggers signed up to the code, allowing them to get ‘fit’ driving the buggy and relax out of the house in the healing COVID-free green. This was a five per cent rise in membership. What a boost to the sporting economy! It was the sort of boost the clay pigeon shotgun caper had given the GDP in September 2019. The figures were a real blast.

  The inner-city course of Moore Park in Sydney hosted 60,000 rounds. It turned out to be one of the busiest courses on the planet. This one course made an extraordinary contribution to the mental health of the city. Number-crunching boffins calculated the game shaved $131 million off the national health budget. In the COVID months, everyone had time for eighteen holes.

  Ten per cent of the adult population play the game because they love it. Many are playing into their Slow-go and No-go years, retaining membership well into their seventies and eighties. A stroll around the links is o
ften the only exercise they get. In the COVID pandemic, the game got a tremendous boost with media stars like Sam Newman protesting the closure of courses during the long weeks of lockdown across Victoria. Sam waddled about town looking the part dolled up in crazy outfits that screamed, ‘Yes you guessed it, swingers, I’m a golfer. And I love it!’ He was a voice in the wilderness, but he kept at it and he triumphed.

  Australians had not connected Newman with golf until May 2020. People of a certain age would remember Sam as the Geelong Cats super boot who played 300 games and booted 110 goals. Retiring from football in 1980, he pulled up a chair to the table on Channel Nine’s long-running and notorious The Footy Show. The panel chat show began in 1994. It had no vision of the game, but it talked about what had happened last weekend and what was going to happen this weekend. It ground to a halt in 2019; by then, the game and society had moved on. At the death, the show had outlived its usefulness by about three decades.

  Since being elbowed from the starting line-up at Nine, he has taken up the cause of golf at a political level. Many see the reinvented Slammin’ Sam as the Che Guevara of golf. During lockdown he led a chorus of Victorian government critics who complained that Premier Dan Andrews combined the worst features of Pol Pot and Old Joe Stalin. Joe, who played every course in Russia, had a great long game, but he sadly never mastered what he called ‘the thorny mystery of the greens’. He used to joke to firing squads, ‘The world would be a better place if only Karl Marx had written a book about golf!’