Chapter One – Teeing It Up
Today, a team of Secret Service agents would have this responsibility. But on election night in 1952, the assignment fell to a sixty-year-old investment banker. If central casting had been looking for the perfect fit for the role of a small-town undertaker, this would be the guy: slightly above average height, hawk-nosed, bespeckled, large ears, his weight just barely out of the undernourished category, and dark thinning hair combed straight back. His appearance and reserved demeanor gave no hint of his power and influence. He was Clifford Roberts, the commander of a very elite group: the membership of the Augusta National Golf Club.
Roberts was standing guard at the door of a room at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. On the other side of the door, stretched out on a bed catching a few z’s, was an Augusta National member who had just won the presidency of the United States in a landside—General Dwight D. Eisenhower. While they were waiting for Ike’s opponent, Adlai Stevenson, to concede, Roberts had ushered the next president of the United States into one of the unoccupied rooms on the Eisenhower campaign’s floor, so he could get some rest before giving his victory speech.
With Roberts at the point, a small but very powerful group of Augusta National members had provided the key push, both to get Ike into the presidential race and in his campaigns, first for the Republican nomination and then in the general election.
Ike’s first encounter with an Augusta National member had, appropriately enough, taken place at a country club, albeit a heavily bombed one. It occurred during World War II, during the Battle of the Bulge. Augusta member Bill Robinson was the vice president of one of the then leading newspapers in the United States, the New York Herald Tribune. Before France fell to the Germans, the Tribune had published an English-language edition in Paris for 10 years.
Soon after the Allies liberated Paris, Robinson arrived there to set the wheels in motion for the Tribune to resume publishing its Paris edition. He ran up against some regulations that Ike had imposed concerning the do’s and don’ts of doing business in Allied-occupied territory. Robinson requested a meeting with Ike to seek relief from a few of these regulations. The arrangements were worked out for the meeting to take place at Eisenhower’s headquarters, which was in the clubhouse of what was left of a war-torn country club near the town of Rheims, northeast of Paris. But a few days before the meeting was to take place, the Battle of the Bulge began. Robinson expected his appointment to be cancelled. When he inquired about it, he was told it was still on.
When the meeting began, Robinson apologized to Ike for taking up his time while a big battle was taking place. Ike told him not to worry about it. He was confident that his forces would take care of the situation, and he was now developing plans for actions weeks after the current battle. The two men hit it off during the meeting and they became good friends.
In the spring of 1948, shortly after Ike had retired from the military, Robinson invited Ike down to Augusta National for a golf vacation. There to greet them upon their arrival were the club’s co-founders, Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts, and two founding members, Robert W. “Bob” Woodruff, the chairman of the Coca-Cola Company and W. Alton “Pete” Jones, president of the oil and gas giant Cities Service Company (now CITGO).
Soon after the United States had entered World War II, Bobby Jones had enlisted in the Army and served as an intelligence officer. He had met Ike in the spring of 1944 in England, during the preparations for the D-Day invasion. Bob Woodruff had already entertained Ike for a weekend soon after the war ended at his plantation at Callaway Gardens near Atlanta. Ike had done a lot for the Coca-Cola brand during the war. He had pushed for and received portable Coke plants for his troops in Europe, much to the consternation of the other soft-drink makers. He also gave Coca-Cola one of the biggest free endorsements it ever received. On his initial visit back to the States after Germany’s surrender, Ike received an enormous welcome home. His every move was double-covered by the press. At one of his first public appearances, he was asked if there was anything he wanted. He replied, “Could somebody get me a Coke?” One was quickly provided and after he finished it, he said he had another request: “Another Coke.”
Pete Jones, along with Roberts, was meeting Ike for the first time. He had been one of the country’s heroes on the home front during World War II, spearheading the construction of an oil pipeline from Texas to the East Coast that was completed in time to support the D-Day invasion. He was also heavily involved with the building of a secret explosive production facility in Arkansas and the construction of an aviation fuel refinery in Louisiana.
Ike’s visit to Augusta lasted for ten days. After spending his days on the course he and his new friends would gather after dark for what would become the norm for whenever they got together—a full night of bridge. During his early years in the Army, Ike’s prowess at the poker table became well known. He reportedly borrowed the funds to buy his wife Mamie’s wedding ring and then retired the debt through his poker winnings. Legend has it that Ike was concerned that his reputation as a card shark was hurting his career. So he gave up poker and replaced it with bridge. His skills at bridge soon rivaled his poker-playing ability and it became his favorite indoor activity.
Although he had arrived at Augusta National as a guest, Ike departed as a dues-paying member and with Cliff Roberts now handling his personal finances. Soon after leaving Augusta, Ike surprised almost everyone when he chose as his first civilian job the presidency of Columbia University. His new job worked out well for his friends from Augusta National as Cliff Roberts, Bill Robinson, and Pete Jones were all based in New York City, as well as another New York City-based Augusta member who would join the gang, Ellis Slater. They got together regularly just outside the city on Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays for golf at Blind Brook Country Club.
Ellis Slater was the president of Frankfort Distilleries, the makers of Four Roses blended whisky. Once Ike entered the political arena, Slater, being in the spirits business, always kept a low profile when he was with Ike and was particularly careful not to be photographed with him.
Ike had barely gotten his foot in the door at Columbia when President Truman asked him to become a part-time troubleshooter at the Pentagon, in hopes of ending squabbling among the commanders of the individual branches, mainly over the amount of appropriation each would receive. By February 1949 the situation had not improved, so Ike, at Truman’s request, took a short-term leave of absence from Columbia to work full-time at the Pentagon as the temporary chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Several weeks later, Ike became ill in his Washington hotel room with what was diagnosed by his personal physician as a severe case of acute gastroenteritis. On President Truman’s suggestion, Ike was flown, on Truman’s plane, to Key West, Florida, to recuperate. Mr. Truman was Key West’s biggest fan. His first visit there had been made reluctantly in November 1946 at the insistence of his physician, so he could shake a lingering cold. When he arrived, he immediately fell in love with the locale. Over the remaining six years of his presidency, Truman vacationed there as often as he could. While there, he swam, fished, and enjoyed plenty of late-night poker. He also enjoyed long walks on the streets of Key West. In the process, he created a fashion craze in casual wear, with his fondness for wearing very colorful Hawaiian-type shirts on these strolls.
A couple of weeks later, and a few days after Sam Snead won the 1949 Masters, Ike’s doctor placed a call to Cliff Roberts at Augusta National. Ike had shown little improvement at Key West, so his doctor asked Roberts if he could bring Ike up to Augusta National. Roberts’ answer was an emphatic “yes.”
Ike arrived the following day. Roberts described Ike’s arrival in his book, The Augusta National Story:
When I first saw Ike, I was shocked. He was weak to the point of almost trembling. What had happened in the short time since I last saw him in New York was alarming. But just to get a look at the club seemed to lift his spirits. The first day he could do no more than walk a few holes, the next day he was on the practice tee for an hour, and the third day he played nine holes of golf. His ability to recuperate was astonishing.
Ike stayed at Augusta for almost a month. When he departed, he appeared to be as good as new.
Since D-Day there had been ongoing talk about an Eisenhower run for president. Being career military, his political leanings were not clearly discernible. Both major political parties were interested in him as a candidate. But as time went by after he left the Army, it became clear that Ike’s thinking about the direction he believed the country should be taking placed him in line with the Republican Party. There was plenty of excitement about the possibility of him being the party’s candidate for president, especially among the members of Augusta National, a GOP stronghold.
In late 1950, President Truman asked Ike to take over command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), headquartered just outside Paris. Ike agreed to take the position and took another leave of absence from Columbia.
Early in January of 1951, Ike made a quick trip over to Europe to meet with the leaders of the member nations in NATO. He returned to the States to brief President Truman and Congress on those meetings before officially taking command at the NATO Headquarters later that month. After those briefings, Ike flew to Puerto Rico to have a golf outing with Cliff Roberts and several other Augusta National members before heading back to Paris for his new assignment.
Once at NATO Headquarters, it didn’t take long before Ike was a regular on the Paris-area golf courses. He did have to make an adjustment in one aspect of his golfing. He had always been prone to let the “expletives fly” after a bad shot. Since the caddies in France were almost all female, he made an extreme effort, though not always successful, to keep from having those type of outbursts.
According to logs in the Pre-Presidential files at the Eisenhower Library, Ike played 72 rounds of golf during the approximately 14 months he was in charge of NATO. As mentioned in the Introduction, for a third of those rounds in Paris, a member of Augusta National Golf Club was in the group, stoking the coals in hopes of firing up Ike for a presidential run. Cliff Roberts and Bill Robinson made several lengthy visits, while five other Augusta members had shorter stays. Also, Roberts didn’t want Ike to feel left out during Masters Week at Augusta National in 1951, so he placed some money down for him in the club’s gambling pool and kept him apprised on how his wager was doing by telegram each day.
As the 1952 campaign season began to unfold, Ike seemed to be straddling the fence as to whether to enter the race or not. What seemed to tip the scales was when he was shown a film clip of an “Eisenhower for President” rally in Madison Square Garden that drew 15,000 enthusiastic supporters. Shortly after seeing the film, Ike threw his hat into the ring.
It appeared at first that Ike may have waited too long to make his decision. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, the son of former president William Howard Taft, had started his campaigning long before Ike entered the race and appeared to have the inside track for the nomination. But by the time the primary season was over and the two candidates’ forces headed to the party’s convention the first week of July in Chicago, it was a virtual dead heat.
When he would recall covering the 1952 Republican Convention, a gleam would return to the eyes of broadcast news legend Walter Cronkite. It was the kind of old-time, no-holds-barred convention that the current news media would give their eye teeth to cover. This epic struggle for the GOP nomination had it all: political rancor, arm-twisting, fisticuffs, backslapping, deals and rumors of deals, and quiet diplomacy.
All of Ike’s supporters from Augusta National were committed to the fight. The most dauntless member of the Augusta National legion was Bobby Jones. Several months after Ike’s first Augusta visit in 1948, Jones had been diagnosed with a spinal disease that would get progressively worse. Now, almost four years later, the effects of the disease had reached the point where he needed a cane to assist him in walking. But Jones was right up on the front lines in the thick of the battle, calling on delegates who were still up for grabs. His efforts, along with those of the rest of Ike’s forces, ultimately won the day. They came up nine votes short of the nomination on the first ballot. Then it was announced that the Minnesota delegation planned to change its 19 votes to Ike on the second ballot. Since this would give Ike the nomination, other delegations, not wishing to be on the losing side, switched to Ike as well, giving him a huge margin of victory. The next day, Richard Nixon was selected for the number two spot on the ticket.
Two weeks later, the Democratic Party held their convention in Chicago and selected Adlai Stevenson as their nominee and John Sparkman, a United States senator from Alabama, to be his running mate.
Ike held a strong lead in the early polls. The GOP ranks, however, were more than a little anxious about the impact of Ike’s golf on his campaign. And who could blame them, given the experiences of the last two golfing Republican presidents: Taft and Harding.
Theodore Roosevelt had hand-picked William Howard Taft to succeed him as president. Roosevelt believed that Taft had all the tools necessary to keep the country on the right path. But Roosevelt did recommend that he clean up one aspect of his personal life before the 1908 election campaign: He wanted him to dump golf.
The 51-year-old Taft had been a state judge, the Solicitor General of the United States, a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the Governor-General of the Philippines, and President Roosevelt’s Secretary of War. But he had never run for an elective office. On an early campaign swing through the Midwest, Taft created quite a stir when he took a few breaks to play golf. Mail began pouring in to TR at the White House, critical of the preoccupation with the game by his hand-picked candidate.
TR fired off a letter to Taft with a dire warning about his golf. He wrote:
I have received literally hundreds of letters from the West protesting about it. I myself play tennis, but that game is a little more familiar; besides, you never saw a photograph of me playing tennis; photographs on horseback, yes; tennis no. And golf is fatal.
Taft chose to ignore TR’s advice and even turned up the focus on his golf. To a large gathering at a campaign stop in Wosley, South Dakota, he said this:
They said that I have been playing golf this summer, and that it is a rich man’s game, and that it indicated I was out of sympathy with the plain people. I want to state my case before the bar of public opinion on the subject of that game of golf. . . .It is a game for people who are not active enough for baseball or tennis, and yet when a man weighs 295 pounds (he was understating his weight by about 50 pounds) you have to give him some opportunity to make his legs and muscles move, and golf offers that opportunity.
Taft went on to handily defeat his Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan.
To clear the deck for Taft in the public’s eye, TR decided to leave the country for a year to safari in Africa. This action had the reverse effect. The papers covered TR’s exploits in Africa as if he were still the president of the United States. And of course the press coverage was easy to understand because TR’s activities were of more interest to the public than the activities of the current president as it seemed all Taft was doing, while TR was trekking around Africa killing lions, was trekking around golf courses in Washington and at vacation resorts. And the Taft stories were almost always the same. He played golf with a business tycoon, or his golf score for a round was such and such, or he sprained an ankle playing golf. As a result his golf game became an anathema to the press and to the public as well.
By his own admission, Taft was not suited for the presidency and he used golf as an escape. To make matters worse, he did not like dealing with the press. He afforded them very little access to him, which compounded his image problem. One of the favorite lines bantered around about Taft was, “he hardly gets fairly settled down to golf before presidential duties interrupt him.”
By early 1912, Theodore Roosevelt had become so disenchanted with Taft, he decided to challenge him for the Republican Party nomination for that year’s presidential election. Taft managed to defeat Roosevelt’s challenge at the Party’s convention but Roosevelt regrouped and mounted a campaign as a third-party candidate.
It was a very tough campaign featuring the two former allies and the Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson. In the closing weeks of the race, it became apparent that Taft would finish in third place. On the eve of the election, Taft returned to his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, to cast his vote. On Election Day, he played a round of golf and then went to the polling booth to vote. Wilson won easily, taking 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt’s 88 and Taft’s eight.
Twelve years later, during the Republican Party Convention in Chicago, a deal was cut in a smoke-filled hotel room in the wee hours of the morning that gave the party’s 1920 nomination for president to Warren G. Harding, a United States senator from Ohio.
Mere weeks after the convention, Harding’s campaign was in a tailspin and an urgent call for assistance was placed to Chicago. Harding wasn’t calling the party bosses; he was far beyond their help. He needed the Chicago Cubs!
Harding had ingested a huge dose of political poison; he had allowed himself to be filmed playing golf by a crew from a newsreel service. In 1920, golf was gaining steam in its popularity, particularly in certain pockets of the country, but its image with the overall population was very negative, as it was generally viewed as a game for the privileged.
As soon as the newsreel footage began to roll in movie houses around the country, the Harding campaign was inundated with negative reaction. One United States senator who was backing Harding fueled the campaign’s mounting dismay. He stated that he had been in a packed theater where the newsreel, which showed Harding teeing off and putting in fancy knickers, was shown. He reported that there was not one applauding set of hands in the entire place.
Harding’s team feverishly put together a plan to stage an event that they believed would be the perfect antidote for the golf film. They were going to put Harding back in front of the cameras enjoying a game that was as mainstream American as you could get—baseball. The owner of the Chicago Cubs was a Harding backer and arrangements were made with him to bring the Cubs to the candidate’s hometown of Marion, Ohio, for a game against a team of locals.
The campaign ran stories a few days before the game about Harding’s love for baseball. The pieces chronicled Harding’s playing days as a bare-handed first baseman, and detailed how he was once a major stockholder in a professional team in the Ohio State League. Despite the low-grade opponent for the Cubs, a crowd of 7000 packed the small Marion ballpark.
Harding arrived at the game to a rousing welcome. With the cameras rolling, he went straight onto the field and warmed up the Cubs’ pitcher, future Hall of Famer Grover Cleveland Alexander. After the warm-up session, Harding made a few brief remarks to the crowd, threw out the game’s ceremonial first ball, and then whooped it up in the grandstand like the contest was the seventh game of the World Series. The Cubs won the game 3-1 but Harding was the real winner. When this newsreel footage hit theaters, it more than cancelled out his golfing gaffe.
Harding golfed in secret for the rest of the campaign and defeated his Democratic Party opponent James Cox by a huge margin. Shortly after the victory, Harding took off for a lengthy golf vacation in Florida.
Cliff Roberts took the point in handling Ike’s golf during the general election campaign.
Outside of his own hometown of Abilene, Kansas, nowhere was Ike’s popularity any greater than in Denver, Colorado. His wife, Mamie, was a member of one of the city’s most prominent families, and the Mile High City had welcomed with great enthusiasm Ike’s placing his campaign headquarters there for his quest for the Republican nomination. Next to Augusta, the Cherry Hills Golf Club in Denver, the host of a number of golf’s major championships over the years, was Ike’s favorite. It was there he had played his first round of golf in 1925, while he was temporarily assigned to the Denver area as an Army recruiting officer.
Shortly after Ike had secured the Republican nomination, he received an invitation to play in a golf tournament at Cherry Hills called the Hillydilly. Although its name sounded rinky-dink, that was far from the case. Held in the late summer, it was the equivalent of the Masters for a select group of rich and powerful golfers from across the country and the stakes and the wagering were high. When Roberts got wind of the invitation, he advised Ike to decline it. He further advised Ike if he did play any golf not to wager any money but to play for golf balls instead. He was concerned that an alert photographer might get a picture of Ike paying off or collecting a wager after a round.
Roberts also advised Ike that he did not believe his membership in Augusta National would have any ramifications during the campaign, since he had been a member for four years before he entered the political arena. Also, it was Robert’s thinking that although Augusta was an exclusive club, the popularity of Bobby Jones and the Masters Tournament offset that angle.
By no means was Roberts’ advice limited to golf. He gave Ike his views on religion, scheduling, and fundraising. In terms of religion, Ike had been brought up a devout member of the Brethren in Christ Church, a denomination whose teachings focused on personal responsibility, the importance of discipleship and obedience, and the separation of church and state. In most cases, they often did not have a formal church building and met for worship in the homes of their members. In adulthood, Ike had considered himself a non-sectarian Christian. Roberts was getting rumblings from Ike’s backers over the fact that their nominee had no formal religious affiliation and they wanted him to join a church. Roberts made Ike aware of theses concerns but suggested they be ignored, as he was of the opinion that not having a religious affiliation was more of an asset than a liability in the campaign. Two weeks after his inauguration, Ike became a Presbyterian. His baptism took place in a private ceremony in the nation’s capital at the Washington National Presbyterian Church.
In terms of scheduling, Roberts did not want Ike to stretch himself too thin with speeches and public appearances. With television now in the mix with radio, Roberts believed it was more important how well Ike performed in his speeches, not how many he gave.
Regarding fundraising, Roberts voiced his concerns to Ike about the fact that too many of his campaign donations during the primary had come from big contributors in the northeast and he wanted to see a push for smaller donations from a larger, more geographically diversified group.
Ironically, it was through Roberts and fellow Augusta National member Alton “Pete” Jones efforts that funds poured into the Ike campaign in the Northeast for the primaries and for the general election. So much so that when the campaign ended, unused funds were returned to contributors. The success and resultant power of both these two men belied their humble beginnings.
Pete Jones was born in Webb City, Missouri. One of the first jobs he had as a youth was working in the local bookstore. The proprietor became upset one day over Jones’ timidity when he assisted a prominent resident of the community with a purchase and gave him this advice: “Never let any man overawe you.”
After high school, Jones enrolled in Vanderbilt University, but he had to drop out after one year because his mother became ill. He took a job as a meter reader for the local gas company and began studying bookkeeping through a correspondence school. He soon was working in the office as a clerk. After a short while, Jones was promoted to the position of auditor.
Nine years later, Jones’ hard work and a series of acquisitions and mergers eventually landed him an executive position in New York City with the Cities Service Company, one of the country’s leading companies in the natural gas and petroleum industry. Six years later, in 1927, at the age of 36, he took over day-to-day operations of the company. Two years after that, the company’s stock price hit a high of $68 a share, but shortly after achieving that mark, the company was rocked to its core by the stock market crash of 1929. The stock price eventually plummeted to just 75 cents a share. Jones successfully guided the company through the Depression. It emerged from those financially turbulent times as one of the most solid companies in the nation, and Jones became one of the country’s highest-paid executives.
Not only was Jones a founding member at Augusta National, he also purchased memberships for four of his friends, which was typical of his generosity. He never let anyone else pick up a restaurant check. When improvements were needed at Augusta National, he would offer to underwrite the whole project.
For a very wealthy man, Jones had some peculiar idiosyncrasies. When he traveled, he often carried in excess of $50,000 in cash with him. He refused to buy golf tees and would send his caddie foraging for some while he negotiated for strokes on the first tee. He also liked to see how many shaves he could get out of a razor. When he went on a trip, he would carry a large metal block to sharpen his razor.
Cliff Roberts’s journey to wealth and power also began in a small town in America’s heartland. He was born in Morning Sun, Iowa. His mother was a distant cousin of Frances Scott Key, the writer of the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner. His father was a real estate salesman who always wanted to see what was on the other side of the next hill, so consequently the family moved frequently and eventually ended up in Texas.
Cliff never finished high school and took to the road selling men’s clothing when he was about 16, and he did quite well at it. After several years, he decided New York City was where he needed to make his fortune. After one failed assault on the Big Apple, Roberts regrouped and tried again, but World War I got in the way. He went into the Army and ironically received his first exposure to Augusta, Georgia, as a result when he was sent to Fort Hancock, located just outside the city, for training. After completing his training, he was shipped over to the war’s front in France and served as an ambulance driver.
Following the war, Roberts was able to get a foothold within the New York financial scene, despite his lack of formal education. He endured many ups and downs, including taking a beating in the crash of 1929. He persevered, however, and eventually forged a very successful place for himself on Wall Street, becoming a partner with the prestigious brokerage firm of Reynolds and Company.
In an extensive interview with the Columbia University Oral History Project after Ike’s death in 1969, Cliff detailed how he had handled a situation during the 1952 presidential campaign that had the potential to be very damaging to the Eisenhower campaign.
On the late afternoon of June 5, 1944, Ike was driven down to the staging area of the 101st Airborne Division. In a few hours these paratroopers would be taking off to start the D-Day invasion with a night drop well behind the Germans’ coastline defenses. The planners of the attack were projecting their casualty rate might be as high as 70 percent. When Ike stepped out of his car, he ordered the four-star license plate on his vehicle be covered and allowed only one staff officer to accompany him. Despite his attempted low-key approach, he was immediately recognized, and the airborne troops quickly began yelling and cheering. Ike told the troops they could break ranks and forget about military formalities. He worked his way over the huge area. As he made his way from group to group, a new round of cheers would erupt. The troops told Ike not to worry about them, their confidence was high.
Ike stayed at the field until the last plane was airborne. He then turned to his driver with tears in his eyes and said, “Well, it’s on.” Then he looked up at the sky filled with planes and added, “No one can stop it now.”
Ike’s driver was Kay Summersby, a shapely divorced former fashion model in her mid-thirties. She was a member of the British Army’s Mechanised Transport Corps and had been assigned as Ike’s driver shortly after he arrived in England to lead the Allied effort. She had been with him in North Africa, Egypt, and Sicily and she would be with him through the war’s end. Throughout the time Kay was on Ike’s staff, there were persistent rumors the two were romantically involved.
After the war ended, Kay moved to New York City. In 1947, she wrote a book about her experiences with Ike entitled Eisenhower Was My Boss. The book was certainly not a tell-all, nor did it produce the type of financial success Summersby had envisioned. Since the book produced no new fuel about a Kay/Ike affair, talk about their war-time relationship moved to the back burner of the rumor stove.
Five years later and just as Ike’s presidential campaign had begun, Kay popped up on the radar screen. According to Roberts, Kay had been in contact with close acquaintances of Ike about her personal situation. She was now down and out, working as a sales clerk at a department store in New York City. She also let it be known she was considering responding to recent overtures she had received about doing some more writing about her and Ike.
In the midst of Ike’s run for the presidency was certainly not the time for more speculation about his war-time relationship with Kay to be on the front burner again. Roberts took care of the problem by sending Kay cash. The money was provided under the premise it was to be used to underwrite her expenses while she tried her hand at writing a play. Kay’s desire to be a playwright quickly waned. Roberts then arranged for her to obtain employment at the New York City office of another Augusta National member. She soon became romantically linked to a successful stockbroker and dropped off the campaign’s radar screen.
As the general election campaign unfolded, Ike consistently held a five- to seven-point lead in the polls. Six weeks before Election Day, Cliff was so confident of victory that he wrote the membership of Augusta National and advised them their access to the club would be restricted the two weeks immediately following the election. Because Ike was going to take a working vacation there as soon as the race was over.
Ike’s victory was bigger than anyone had expected. On election night Stevenson was dragging his feet when it came to conceding defeat. This really irritated Ike. He did not want to take the stage for his victory speech until Stevenson had conceded. Ike’s legendary temper was about to get the best of him. It was at this point Cliff decided Ike needed a time out. He ushered him into one of the campaign’s unoccupied rooms to cool down and grab a few moments of rest. While Ike got in a quick snooze, Roberts assumed sentry duties just outside the door. About an hour later, word came that Stevenson had conceded and Cliff went in and woke up the President-Elect of the United States and escorted him down to Waldorf’s ballroom to give his victory speech. When the final vote was tallied, Ike had won 55 percent to 44 percent and in the Electoral College the count was Eisenhower 442 and Stevenson 89.
The election returns that night had also been very good for three other Republican golfers. Swept into office with Ike was a single-digit handicapper named Barry Goldwater. He won election to the United States Senate from Arizona, upsetting veteran Democrat and Senate majority leader Ernest McFarland. In Connecticut, Prescott Bush, a two-time president of the United States Golf Association and the father of future president George Herbert Walker Bush and the grandfather of another president, George W. Bush, also won election to the United States Senate.
Last, but by no means least, in this trio was Jack Westland, the reigning United States Amateur Champion. He won in the state of Washington’s House of Representatives Second District race, a seat that had been held by the Democrats for two decades.
In Chicago in 1931, at the age of 26, Westland had lost in the finals of the U.S. Amateur to Francis Ouimet, whose stunning upset of British golf legends Harry Vardon and Ted Ray 18 years earlier in a playoff in the 1913 United States Open had ignited the fuse for a golf explosion in America. The 1952 U.S. Amateur Championship took place in Seattle, Washington in late August. With the event being held practically in his backyard, Westland, now 47, decided to take a week off from his campaign in the Republican Primary to take another shot at winning the title. No one was any more surprised about his performance than Westland. He fought his way into the finals and then defeated a player who was 25 years his junior to claim the crown. In doing so, he became the oldest player ever to win the event.
Winning the Amateur gave Westland’s primary campaign a big boost and he won the race in a convincing fashion. In the General Election Ike came to Westland’s district and campaigned for him. To show his appreciation, Westland gave Ike the putter he used to win the Amateur.
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