The White House press corps certainly had their collective knickers in a knot in being denied access to the Barak Obama and Tiger Woods match over the weekend.
The US President visited a public high school on Friday in his hometown of Chicago, where he spoke in personal terms about the need to reduce gun violence and create jobs in the country’s troubled urban areas, and then headed off to Florida for a weekend’s golf.
While his wife and children were skiing in Colorado, Obama spent the weekend locked behind the gates of the Floridian, a lush golf and residential compound off limits to the public. Neither the public outside those gates, nor the media, has seen him since.
President Obama enjoys a weekend with boys playing golf with 14-time Major winning, Tiger Woods.
The Floridian Club is owned by Houston businessman and Obama donor Jim Crane, a near-scratch golfer who also owns the Houston Astros baseball team. Crane held a fundraiser for Obama last March in an upscale shopping and dining complex attached to Minute Maid Park, the Astros home field.
Crane purchased the Floridian, including the golf course designed originally by the legendary SoutOh African golfer Gary Player, in 2010 from former Blockbuster-magnate H. Wayne Huizenga. The course has been reconfigured by noted architect Tom Fazio. The grounds include eight cottages, one of which Obama is using this weekend.
Crane played with Obama on Saturday, and joined the group that included Woods again on Sunday as did Ron Kirk, Obama’s departing U.S. Trade Representative.
With Woods not contesting the Northern Trust Open in L A he was free to play alongside Obama.
However the traveling White House press corps were soon seeing red as they were told strictly no access to Obama on this outing, a guys’ weekend of golf and a cool winter sun.
A small contingent of the White House press corps accompanying Obama had lobbied hard to get access but with little success for more information about where precisely on the Floridian grounds the president is staying, who he is staying with, and how much contact he has with other people on the grounds.
Even a ‘pool’ photo of Obama on the course with Woods was turned down by White House officials.
However, the pool had been permitted just inside the Floridian gates, where reporters used as their “filing center” a mirror-ceilinged party bus while they resided eight miles away at a Holiday Inn Express.
Because the president’s motorcade has not left the compound, White House officials have explained, there is no reason for the pool to track the president’s activities or to know who he is spending time with on a personal vacation.
But the stuffy White House press corps were really seeing red when it became known of the presence of a Golf Channel journalist on the Floridian grounds Sunday.
It prompted a sharp complaint from the White House Correspondents’ Association over the way this trip — and Sunday’s outing, in particular — has been handled by the administration in a way that has rendered it largely hidden from the traveling press.
White House press officials denied those claims, saying the traveling press corps received the first “official” confirmation of the Obama-Woods outing, even though Tim Rosaforte, a writer at Golf World Magazine and a regular contributor to the Golf Channel, broke the story hours earlier.
Rosaforte, who reported from the grounds of the Floridian off limits to the White House press corps, also said Obama and Woods were so enjoying their round that they had decided to play 27 holes, instead of the regular 18.
White House officials declined to provide more information to the pool beyond the names of those playing with Obama.
