Ice storm zaps Ike's storm

The seventeenth fairway at Augusta National will never be the same, after global warming(?) destroys what a POTUS could not;

The loblolly pine, which sat about 210 yards off the left of the 17th fairway, was among the most famous trees in golf. Players either had to hit over the 65-foot tree to keep the ball in the fairway, or try to shape the ball from right-to-left to avoid it.

And it infuriated one of the club members after whom the tree eventually was named — former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, an Augusta member from 1948 until his death in 1969, was said to have hit the tree so often on his tee shot that he campaigned to have it removed and proposed during an Augusta National governors' meeting that it be cut down. This was in 1956, when Eisenhower was finishing the first of his two terms as president. Clifford Roberts, the club chairman and co-founder, overruled the president and adjourned the meeting.

It has been known as Eisenhower's Tree ever since.

Better to be known to history as a poor golfer than a health care disaster, we say.