Golf loses a great friend

Gerald Ford, hailed as the US's most athletic president following his death at 93 this week, had a special passion for football and golf. But his ability to play the two sports differed as widely as the sports themselves. At grid-iron football he was an acknowledged star and it was largely due to his feats in this sport that prompted Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian, to describe him as "our great athlete-president". Gerald Ford played top-quality football at Michigan and after two years as a substitute on the university's Rose Bowl teams, he earned a starting place from where went on to be voted the team's most valuable player and to be invited to play in two national all-star games. The Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers liked him enough to both offer him pro football contracts, but he declined them and instead took up the position of boxing coach and assistant football coach at Yale where he went to earn his law degree.

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