THE STORY OF A GOLF PRO, A PRESIDENT AND A SET OF IKE’S CLUBS THAT WERE A COLLECTION’S CROWN JEWEL FOR MORE THAN 60 YEARS
By Robert Wilonsky
Steve Tobash was not the likeliest candidate to befriend presidents.
He was born in April 1931 in the small, rural borough of Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, which today boasts only a few thousand population. It was founded in 1750 by a Quaker who built his barn along the Schuylkill River, then was joined five years later by a German who constructed, among other things, a distillery along the river. Tobash was the sixth of nine children. As his family now tells it, he grew up with two choices: work the farm or get out. He chose the latter.
That’s because, at an early age, Tobash fell in love with golf – first as a caddy, then at a driving range. He left home with a few dollars in his pocket, headed first to Florida, where he served as an apprentice caddy, then to Baltimore. He was a great golfer; Tobash coulda been a contender.
Steve Tobash (left) on the golf course with President Dwight D. Eisenhower (center)
Eisenhower stands next to the set of golf clubs he gifted to Tobash in 1957.
But like many men of fighting age in the 1950s, Tobash enlisted in the Army. He expected to be shipped to Korea and was assigned to Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. Instead, officials were so impressed with Tobash’s prowess on the course that they placed him in charge of golf operations.
And there he remained even after his discharge, eventually serving as the golf pro at Fort Meade – some 30 miles from the White House, which, in the 1950s, was home to the man who helped make golf a postwar pastime: President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Tobash arranged countless rounds for Ike, with whom he walked countless miles along the verdant Bermuda fairways – and was rewarded with, among other things, a Spalding bag full of the president’s golf clubs.
Eisenhower’s personally used Spalding golf clubs, given to Tobash when he was the golf pro at Maryland’s Fort Meade, are open for bidding in Heritage’s August 23-25 Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction.
There is no doubt to whom they belonged. The red-and-blue bag and each club (10 irons, five drivers) – now available in Heritage’s August 23-25 Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction – all bear Eisenhower’s facsimile signature and five stars befitting his rank. The assemblage is so impressive they almost demand you stand at attention.
“Dad never used the clubs,” says Tobash’s daughter, Leigh Sherwood. “They became part of his collection. They were his crown jewel. It was something he deeply, deeply treasured.”
A close-up view of the president’s facsimile signature on the side of the golf bag
Eisenhower’s impact on golf’s popularity can’t be underestimated. He was so enamored of the sport that in 1954, he enlisted the United States Golf Association to install a 3,000-square-foot putting green just outside the Oval Office for when he couldn’t hit the links. “Supposedly,” the Smithsonian Magazine wrote a few years ago, “the hardwood floors of the office still bear marks from his golf spikes.”
The five-star-general-turned-34th-president was an early convert to the sport long before his friendship with Arnold Palmer. In 1953, he wrote that golf “is a sport in which the whole family can participate. … It offers healthy respite from daily toil, refreshment of body and mind.”
Eventually, in 2009, Eisenhower became the first president inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. As the USGA notes, he was the sport’s “ultimate ambassador.”
“Not only did Eisenhower bring golf to the White House, he brought the White House to the golf course,” the USGA wrote in its 2016 history lesson. “He often played with celebrities, golf professionals and high-ranking politicians, such as Bob Hope, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Sen. Robert Taft, and Gen. Omar Bradley. To create a relaxed atmosphere and increase cooperation, Eisenhower would use the golf course as a place to build relationships with representatives from both political parties. Ike even wrote his 1953 State of the Union Address in the clubhouse at Augusta National, where he was a longtime member.”
Eisenhower’s facsimile signature also appears on all 10 irons and five drivers in the set of clubs he gave to Tobash.
Tobash was discharged from the Army in 1954 – when he was also elected to the Professional Golfers’ Association – but remained at Fort Meade for five more years as the golf pro. After a short stint at a private course in Maryland, he was selected as the PGA Head Professional at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, Virginia, only 10 minutes from the White House.
Eisenhower was Tobash’s first president, but not his last: During his time at Army Navy, he hosted every president through Bill Clinton. When Tobash retired in 2001, his collection of keepsakes was vast: Signed balls, bags and shoes filled his office stuffed with autographed photos.
Over the years, Tobash would display Eisenhower’s golf bag and clubs at the Army Navy Country Club. But more often than not they moved from his home’s basement to the attic to a spare bedroom and back again – a major keepsake that became, over time, difficult to maintain and display. The “crown jewel” demanded more.
Before his death in August 2021, Tobash told his family it might be time to find a collector who could better care for the clubs – someone who could polish the jewels rather than shuffle them from one storage space to another. His daughter concurred with his belief that we are all but temporary custodians of even history’s most prized artifacts.
“He wanted to sell them so someone could appreciate and preserve them,” Sherwood says. “We want to see them preserved, because they were his favorite thing.”
ROBERT WILONSKY is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.