Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice became one of two women to be offered membership at Augusta National golf club Monday. South Carolina business executive Darla Moore joined Rice as the first two women to join Augusta.
Rice took a minute Monday morning to email the news to her golf coach at Stanford University, Russ Vander Sluis, who has been working with her for four years since she returned to its faculty. Vander Sluis tells Yeas & Nays that the secretary is a terrific student.
“She was pretty new at the game at the time,” Vander Sluis said of his pupil. “She was so busy in Washington, she had started playing, but she couldn’t play very much until then.” Rice told Golf Digest in 2011 that her handicap was 16.4; Vander Sluis puts it at 14 today.
“She’s a fabulous student,” he said. “Incredibly good balance. She uses a lot of that athleticism that she got from skating.”
Vander Sluis caddied for Rice while she competed in the Northern Trust Open in California and says the secretary is “extremely good under pressure.”
“She’s very unflappable,” he said. “She actually plays better under pressure.”
Rice’s best shots? “She hits her driver really well,” he said. “She’s also good with a hybrid.”
She “sometimes” talks politics on the golf course, but “not very often,” Vander Sluis said. He declined to comment on Rice’s typical golf banter, but said she definitely does not lose her cool while playing: “She’s never thrown a club or anything.”
Vander Sluis is thrilled that Rice, whom he considers a good friend as well as a student, is joining Augusta, a course he has never played. “Hopefully she’ll take me up there sometime soon,” he said.
