Opinion: Remember his 37 bowling score? Obama is awful at golf, too

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Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is, of course, back on the campaign trail today, pitching his economic plans, as word leaks out about the wonderfully mundane weekend he enjoyed with his family for a change in Chicago.

Just don’t ask about the golf game, please.

On his first weekend as the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee -- and as Sen. Hillary Clinton surrendered her onetime front-runner’s campaign to the inevitable delegate math of Obama’s victory and endorsed her competitor with all the right words -- Obama headed out for the golf course.

Never mind.

All right, so the media asked. They had to after seeing the Illinois senator heading out of his South Side Chicago house Saturday with a golf bag over his shoulder just as Clinton was preparing to speak in Washington, D.C. So we can now add golf to the list of recreational sports that Obama has not mastered, the list that started with his 37 score bowling in Pennsylvania. Actually, that may win him some votes from sympathetic dufus duffers.

Asked about the senator’s weekend of rest and relaxation after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, his spokesman had this to say about a golf outing:

‘They went to a golf course, and they swung golf clubs,’ said spokesman Robert Gibbs, ‘but I don’t think it was real pretty.’

The senator, Gibbs said, also parented ‘a slumber party for his new 7-year-old,’’ and added that Obama also ‘went for a bike ride with his wife and kids and some neighbors. ... He had a nice, relaxing weekend.’’

For more on the Gibbs interview, click here.

-- Andrew Malcolm