WASHINGTON — What is it about golf that attracts political scandal?

Sure, lots of Americans take free shots and fudge their scores. As Will Rogers said, only the income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

But put a politician near a golf course, especially if it's expensive and there's a lobbyist lurking nearby, and prospects for trouble grow faster than when you find yourself facing a 650-yard par 5.

"Golf is one of two activities that bring out the worst in politicians," Hollywood writer Peter Mehlman said. "The other is politics."

As if to remind us, last week Ohio Gov. Bob Taft trudged into court and was found guilty of violating state ethics laws for failing to report that he'd accepted dozens of pricey golf outings with corporate executives. He became the first governor in Ohio history convicted of a crime.

However, he was hardly the first public servant to get caught in the nexus of golf and politics.

Take House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who likes to play some of the most exclusive courses in the world.

DeLay rarely picks up the tab, and he's under fire for failing to accurately report that lobbyists paid for his trips to posh golf courses. He says he didn't know the lobbyists he was playing with were paying.

In 1997, DeLay and lobbyist Jack Abramoff stayed at the Moscow Country Club, the most exclusive golf club in Russia. DeLay reported that the National Center for Public Policy, a nonprofit group, paid for the trip. That's allowed under House ethics rules. But NBC News reported that a lobbyist and a Russian businessman put the $3,300 bill on their credit cards.

In 2000, DeLay went to St. Andrew's in Scotland, the revered birthplace of the game. His lawyer said later that DeLay paid for two rounds himself and understood that two more rounds were included in his hotel package, which the same National Center for Public Policy paid for. But the National Journal reported that lobbyists paid the hotel bill.

Sometimes the lust to live the pampered golf life rubs off on people around the politicians.

In the Clinton White House, for example, it was widely known the president was a golf nut. He played frequently and took so many uncounted re-shots, known as mulligans (or, to purists, as "cheating"), that some sarcastic duffers came to call them "Clintons."

David Watkins, Clinton's White House aide, apparently liked the game, too. One day in May 1994, he and another aide "borrowed" the Marine One presidential helicopter to go to a Maryland country club.

After a photographer snapped him leaving the chopper, golf bag over his shoulder, Watkins explained the $13,000 copter ride was necessary so he could familiarize himself and the crew with the golf course near the presidential retreat at Camp David. He was fired.

Then there's Dan Quayle, the first President Bush's vice president, who while still serving in the House was embarrassed by a 1980 golf outing to the Atlantis Country Club in Florida.

It was revealed that Quayle, as well as fellow Reps. Thomas Evans, R-Del., and Tom Railsback, R-Ill., shared the weekend with lobbyist Paula Parkinson, who had posed for Playboy.

Railsback denied any hanky-panky. Evans apologized for even the appearance of impropriety, but constituents defeated him in 1982. Quayle said he'd gone to play golf and had shared his room with a male lobbyist from the Tobacco Institute. "If you want to make anything of the trip," he joked, "I guess you might try to make something homosexual out of it."

It was Quayle's wife who came up with the best — or worst — possible defense. "Anyone who knows Dan Quayle," Marilyn Quayle said, "knows he'd rather play golf than have sex any day."