Clinton Sets Aside Troubles on UPS for Trouble on Links

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — Putting aside such concerns as the United Parcel Service strike, President Clinton plunged into a three-week vacation Monday with a round of golf that showed his game got a bit rusty during his recovery from knee surgery.

Playing on Martha’s Vineyard, a resort island off the Massachusetts coast, Clinton stiffly drove his first shot into a sand trap and followed that with two more drives that were little better than his first.

“Not warmed up. We didn’t go to the practice tee,” he groaned to a foursome that included Washington lawyer Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and two officials of the Farm Neck Golf Club, which Clinton frequented during Martha’s Vineyard vacations in 1993 and 1994.

Clinton, who turns 51 today, stopped his 18-hole march briefly between the 9th and 10th holes to hear a small group of onlookers sing “Happy Birthday” to him.

The president is trying to catch up on the golf he missed in the last five months since he tore a tendon in his right knee in March in a late-night stumble at the Florida home of professional golfer Greg Norman. The accident forced Clinton to undergo surgery.

A White House spokesman said the president is leaving it to aides to monitor efforts to settle a labor dispute between the UPS delivery firm and its Teamsters Union workers.

White House Deputy Counsel Bruce Lindsey, who is with Clinton on Martha’s Vineyard, was “in pretty continuous touch” with Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman in Washington, said White House spokesman Barry Toiv. She is directing the administration’s drive to try to end the UPS strike.