President Obama said Wednesday that his weekend golf game with future hall of fame pro Tiger Woods was like playing with someone "on another planet."
"He plays a different game than I do. He’s on another planet," Obama said in an interview with San Francisco's ABC affiliate.
Still, Obama said he enjoyed — and wasn't nervous about — hitting the links with Woods.
"I don’t think either party was nervous. He knew that I wasn’t a big threat to his world ranking and I knew that I better keep my day job," Obama said.
On Tuesday, Woods described the outing as "pretty cool" and said he and the president teamed up for a win against a pairing of U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Houston Astros owner Jim Crane.
"He's just a wonderful person to be around. And we won," Woods said at a press conference ahead of the Match Play Championship, according to Sports Illustrated.
Obama's comments come amid a brewing controversy over access for the White House press corps to Obama's Presidents' Day vacation in Florida. Reporters were not allowed on to the golf course during the game, drawing complaints from the White House press corps.
"Speaking on behalf of the White House Correspondents' Association, I can say a broad cross section of our members from print, radio, online and TV have today expressed extreme frustration to me about having absolutely no access to the president of the United States this entire weekend," White House Correspondents' Association president and Fox News reporter Ed Henry said in a statement. "There is a very simple but important principle we will continue to fight for today and in the days ahead: transparency."
Press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that he was "completely sympathetic" to complaints from reporters, having covered the White House himself for Time magazine. But Carney said the lack of access to the Woods-Obama game was similar to other presidential golf outings.
"I mean, the president had some downtime, he was playing golf," Carney said. "You know, I understand that there was a desire to have access or a photograph of that, but the president was having [a vacation]."
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