Gerald Ford may well have been the greatest athlete to ever land in the White House but few Presidents have ever harked back to their sporting prowess with the same regularity as Donald Trump.
Not since Kim Jong Il has a world leader boasted so much about his golfing ability.
Today, at a meeting with a panel of manufacturing CEO's, Trump encouraged Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, to tell everyone present about the time he hit a hole-in-one.
Immelt twigged that flattering the President would be a good idea and told the room and the assembled media how Trump had proclaimed himself "the richest golfer in the world" (a misquote according to Trump, but a wholly forgivable one in the context) and then hit a hole-in-one.
Trump in fact announced that he was the best golfer of all the rich people. The rich people being a category, according to Trump's exacting standards, which doesn't include actual professional golfers.
Either way, this story makes Trump sound reasonably impressive even if he has nothing on Kim Jong Il.
The North Korean dictator once hit an extraordinary 11 hole in ones in a round in Pyongyang, an achievement which should have immediately seen him installed as the world's no. 1 golfer.
Trump just made Jeff Immelt describe the time Trump hit a hole-in-one
Trump: “I actually said I was the best golfer of all the rich people” pic.twitter.com/6yB7oj6WJe
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 23, 2017
But anyone can get a hole-in-one. Is Trump really a good golfer or just, as has often been alleged, a first class cheat.
Last week, Rory McIlroy gave his tenacious band of critics another reason to dislike him by playing 18 holes with the American President. Writing in the Guardian, Marina Hyde said that if McIlroy must play golf Trump then he must come back with scandalous gossip for the rest of us to feast on.
Afterwards, he said that Trump was a pretty good player for a guy in his 70s. This, according to Marina, was not enough. She wanted further revelations about Trump's penchant for cheating.
On the eve of the US Presidential election, sportscaster (might as well use the American lingo) Rich Eisen asked John Daly (a) whether he'd played with Trump and (b) whether the then Republican candidate was any good.
"Donald hits it good. Yeah, he really does. He's a decent player", responded Daly.
Eisen then quizzed Daly on the well known rumour that the best item in Trump's bag is his pencil. "Well that's (Bill) Clinton's," Daly replied.
Daly spent the next minute and a half talking about Clinton's penchant for mulligans. The fairways of the PGA tour have long been a cold house for Democrats. The 1993 Ryder Cup team were famously reluctant to meet Bill Clinton before travelling to the Belfry. Indeed, it almost sparked a mini-revolt until captain Tom Watson made a plea for diplomacy. Not one of the players had voted for Clinton the previous November.
Clinton's scandalous reliance on the mulligan does not help matters.
Needless to say, Daly, like most PGA tour players, supported Trump in 2016.
Sports Illustrated's chief golf writer Michael Bamberger could probably be relied upon to be more impartial on the question of Trump's golfing ability.
"Well, he's a very good golfer. He's not as good as he thinks he is or he says he is but he's a very good golfer. He's probably an 82 shooter if he were playing legitimately and he cites his golf skill as one of his qualifications for the Presidency."
