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(possibly from a riding accident). He never played without pain again.
    John Tyler was quite proficient at the violin and preferred American folk tunes. His favorite playing partner was his wife, Julia, who occasionally accompanied him on the guitar. Their White House was more musical than most, and she started the tradition of having the Marine Band play “Hail to the Chief” at official events. 26
    Nearly every president owned a personal piano, save for Gerald Ford and the Bushes, but few played. Undoubtedly the most proficient among them was the humble Harry Truman, who as a youth grumbled at being forced to rise at dawn to practice for hours and traveling up to twice a week into Kansas City for professional lessons. He was partial to Beethoven, Chopin, and Mozart, and he played often while in office. For a poor speaker and plain dresser, he was far more in tune with the fine arts that the regaled Kennedy or Reagan, neither of whom cared at all for haute couture in any form. 27
    Many presidents took pleasure in simply listening. McKinley was fond of the opera, Taft and Wilson liked musicals, and the swarthy Harding occasionally attended a Washington burlesque show. Perhaps the least musical of all was U. S. Grant. He claimed to only know two songs. “One was Yankee Doodle,” said the general, “the other wasn’t.” 28
Music may have saved the lives of John and Julia Tyler. Riding the gunship Princeton down the Potomac, the presidential couple went belowdecks to listen to celebratory songs, while guests above watched a large naval cannon shoot rounds. One of the firings burst the breech, killing eight onlookers, including Julia’s father.
    9 . GOLF
    The pinnacle pastime of the business class, golf is centuries old, but it did not catch on in the United States until the late 1800s. The first chief executive to fully embrace the game was portly William Howard Taft. He was roundly criticized for spending time on the links, yet at the same time his high profile caused a surge in the game’s popularity.
    On doctor’s orders, Wilson took up golf and had a hard time liking it. He described the game as “an ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adapted to the purpose.” Even on a good day, he was unable to crack a score of one hundred. His successor shot in the nineties, but Harding preferred to be a spectator. 29
    Golf and Eisenhower were almost synonymous in the 1950s, a fair assessment considering he played up to 150 rounds a year. He also installed a putting green near the Rose Garden and enjoyed hitting irons shots off the White House lawn. Some of his longer hits strayed outside of the grounds. On the links, he shot in the eighties consistently. 30
    Despite a bad back, Kennedy played better than Ike. A former member of the Harvard team, he was amazingly strong off the tee, and he occasionally shot in the high seventies. But he knew the public-relations risk of spending long hours on the links, having witnessed the public ire waged against Eisenhower, so Jack normally played in secret. 31
    Barack Obama hit the links nearly one hundred times in his first three years. Nixon golfed but was a better bowler, having a lane installed in the Executive Mansion, upon which he averaged a respectable 175. Often viewed as clumsy, Gerald Ford may have been the finest athlete ever to be president. A former football MVP at Michigan, he lifted weights in the presidential study, skied, loved water sports, and played tennis, but he never quite mastered golf, playing with an eighteen handicap. A self-deprecating man, Ford was famous for saying, “I know I’m playing better golf because I’m hitting fewer spectators.” 32

    William Howard Taft tees one up at Hot Springs, Virginia, during his first year as president.
Both of the Bushes were avid golfers, and they came from a long line of club men. George Herbert Walker, George H. W. Bush’s grandfather, was president of the U.S. Golf