All the President’s men

Former US President Bill Clinton has been clicking through the gears on the global news cycle for the past 24 hours. He showed up, as you’ll know, in North Korea in a surprise mission and left on his private jet with two American journalists, freed after being sentenced to 12 years hard labour by the rogue state.

In what smacked of a Hollywood action movie sequel, Clinton got the old gang together – in his entourage were his former White House chief of staff, John Podesta, and Clinton’s personal physician, Roger Band, while former Vice President Al Gore welcomed them home.

Clinton had a meeting with Kim Jong Il for an hour and 15 minutes and a dinner with the Dear Leader that lasted about two hours. They may have talked about golf.

Certainly, I had my only meeting with POTUS on the fairways. Yes, my friends, if I was detained in Pyongyang for five months, facing a lifetime of misery in a country existing in a shadowy Orwellian reality, and William Jefferson Clinton parachuted though the ceiling of the Great Hall, knocking Kim unconscious before carrying me up the steps of Air Force One like Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman, then frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’d expect it.

I was lucky enough to walk inside the ropes on the Sunday of the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club in Kildare, following the emotional final round from Darren Clarke. So too was the 42nd President of the United States.

On a day when I managed to piss off childhood hero Boris Becker and screamed like a bobbysockser at Michael Jordan, I contrived not to embarrass myself with Clinton. He was however walking the course with Rick Reilly – then of Sports Illustrated, now ESPN.

Check out what happened when Clinton and Reilly first shared a gold course in the award-winning feature here.