Martha's Vineyard Report -- Barack Obama's Golf Obsession

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, Mass. -- With great fanfare Monday morning, deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton announced Barack Obama's one-week vacation reading list: five books weighing in at a collective 2,301 pages. Everything that the president has done since then suggests that this ambitious list (in a word favored by prior administrations) is now "inoperative." Or else, the White House will be trumpeting the details of the same Obama book pile at Christmas and Easter.

While pick-up basketball is Obama's purported game of choice, golf is certainly running a close second. Tuesday morning -- just minutes after naming Ben Bernanke to a second term as Federal Reserve chairman -- Obama arrived at Mink Meadows golf club in Vineyard Haven for a morning nine holes. This follows a five-hour, 18-hole golf outing at Farm Neck in Oak Bluffs on Monday. Unless Obama is the reincarnation of speed-reading guru Evelyn Wood, the books are fast giving way to the lure of the links.

For an island used to Bill Clinton's high-profile golf jaunts with Vernon Jordan and transfixed by inaccurate rumors that the 44th president would be teeing off with Tiger Woods, the Obama Tuesday foursome was decidedly just-guys ordinary. The president is playing with golf buddy Marvin Nicholson, the White House trip director who also was part of Monday's foursome, Marvin Ruemmler from the presidential advance team and Sam Kass, who works in the White House kitchen.

In short, the shocking news from Martha's Vineyard is that real golf seems to have miraculously trumped power golf.

UPDATE: While no scores were reported, Obama was said by fellow golfers and onlookers interviewed by the Associated Press to have played credibly. Though on the second hole, Obama obligingly yelled "Fore" just before his ball hit a tree. Still, the president's shot reportedly landed near the green and a good chip shot plus three putts produced what has been journalistically reckoned as a one-over-par on a par five hole. It certainly beat Obama's attempt at bowling before the Pennsylvania primary.