The debate was so bad the candidates ended up arguing about their golf handicaps. Golf's big lesson? Don't double-down on mistakes

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The most interesting fact I heard in last Thursday’s presidential debate was Joe Biden saying that when he was vice-president he got his golf handicap down to six. At last, the purpose of the vice-presidency revealed! Better golf scores.

Some presidents also play regularly. Barack Obama played 333 times in eight years. Dwight Eisenhower got in an estimated 800 rounds in his two terms. Until it was severely damaged by an ice storm in 2014 there was even an Eisenhower Tree on the 17th hole at Augusta National, where they play the Master’s and where Eisenhower was a member. The president hit it so many times he requested at a club meeting in 1956 that it be removed. It wasn’t. Presidential power had real limits then.

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After first saying his handicap was six, Biden more or less immediately changed it to eight — to avoid subsequent fact-checking, I guess. As usual, Trump avoided precise numbers. He didn’t mention that Kim Jung-Il, father of his good friend Kim Jung-un, had five holes-in-one the first round he played.

Your golf handicap tells you how many strokes above par you’ll score if you play to your potential, based on the........

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