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If it's a sunny weekend in Washington, chances are a motorcade will be leaving the White House for the golf course. President Obama typically golfs with the same small circle of friends and aides. One of his rules for a day on the course: No talking politics.
That changes Saturday. House Speaker John Boehner is joining the president for 18 holes. Vice President Biden and Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio are also coming along, turning this particular game into a much anticipated "golf summit."
Horse racing may be the "sport of kings," but when it comes to presidents, they play golf.
"It is the most popular sport that presidents play. Fifteen of the last 18 American presidents were golfers, starting with William Howard Taft," New York Times correspondent Don Van Natta Jr. says. He wrote a book about presidential golfers called First Off the Tee.
"I think presidents love the camaraderie they find out on the links," Van Natta says. "They also like the fact that they can leave the press and the public behind on the first tee — and they don't have to see them again until the 18th green."
A Game Of Politics
Occasionally a president doesn't leave the press behind, sometimes with disastrous results.
President George W. Bush no doubt wishes he could take a mulligan on a moment from 2002, after a suicide bombing in Israel.
"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive," he said, thwacking the ball.
Years later, Bush told an interviewer that he gave up golf during his presidency. He said during a war it sends the wrong signal.
Obama has not had the same concern. Still, Van Natta says, this president is less avid on the course than other wartime commanders in chief.

In this photo taken Jan. 10, 2011, Myanmar officials take part in Manaw festival (Kachin's traditional New Year) with Kachin ethnic tribe people in Kachin state, northern Myanmar. Government troops in Myanmar have attacked Kachin forces, one of the country's powerful northern militias, with artillery in a bid to force rebel fighters from a strategic region where China is constructing major hydropower plants.
BANGKOK (AP) — Government troops in Myanmar have attacked one of the country's powerful northern militias with artillery trying to force rebel fighters from a strategic region where China is building major hydropower plants.
The fighting has killed at least four people and forced 2,000 more to flee since it started Thursday, according to the U.S. Campaign for Burma.
The violence is some of the most serious in Myanmar since its military junta handed power in March to a civilian government critics say is simply a proxy for continued military rule. The new government has said it wants to improve ties with ethnic minorities that have waged rebellions along the border, but the latest fighting underscores the deep tension that remains.
The rebels involved in the most recent clashes belong to the Kachin, one of Myanmar's sizable ethnic minorities. Their decades of struggles for more autonomy have routinely been met by military suppression.
Kachin military commander Gwan Maw told U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia on Monday that the fighting in northern Myanmar's Momauk region, near the Chinese border, could spread and possibly escalate into civil war if the government refused to negotiate an end to it with the Kachin Independence Organization.
Though the fighting could worsen, it is unlikely to engulf the repressive nation.
The 8,000-strong Kachin militia reached a peace deal with the country's former ruling junta in 1994, but the truce broke down last year after the militia rejected a call by the government to become border guards under army leadership. The junta made the appeal ahead of last November's elections, Myanmar's first in 20 years, which introduced the nominally civilian government now in power.
The Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based lobbying group that uses Myanmar's former name in its title, said hundreds of Myanmar government troops deployed to the northern region to force out Kachin forces after they refused to abandon a strategic base. The base is located near a major hydropower project that being built by China's state-owned China Datang Corporation, the group said.
A three-hour gunbattle Thursday killed three soldiers and one rebel fighter, who was allegedly captured and beaten to death by government troops, the group said.
Skirmishes erupted again Saturday and lasted until at least Monday, with government forces shelling the area with artillery, Maw said. There were no immediate reports of fighting on Tuesday.