Obama tees up new bid to court Republicans

US President Barack Obama (R) stands alongside Senator Mark Udall as they play golf on the first hole
at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, on May 6, 2013. (AFP/Saul Loeb)

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama took to the golf course to woo his political foes Monday -- and his courtship at last teed up a tangible result: a hole-in-one for a veteran Republican senator.

Obama had tried intimate dinners and meetings on Capitol Hill to try to budge his opponents on budgets, gun laws, and immigration reform amid signs his second term agenda could be foundering.

On Monday, he entrusted golf with breaking the ice -- taking on Republicans Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, with the help of Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado.

It was the Republicans who walked off the winners at the course inside the gates of Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, helped by Chambliss's ace at the 11th hole.

"The president enjoyed the chance to spend some time on the golf course with the senators," a White House official said.

"Most of the talk centred on the round of golf and not the latest round of legislative negotiations in Congress."

Unusually, and keen to push Obama's bipartisan outreach, the White House allowed reporters a glimpse of the president on the links, as the foursome played the first hole.

The president, an avid golfer, who uses the game to escape the cares of office for a few hours, was seen chipping on to the green, and then missed his first putt.

Obama sparked a widely mocked showdown with the White House press corps earlier this year when the media was excluded from the president's first round with 14-times major champion Tiger Woods during a trip to Florida.

Monday's bipartisan foursome represented Obama's latest public effort to court Republicans in the Senate as he seeks to unpick the ugly political standoff in the chamber and pilot his second term agenda into law.

But he has also hit out repeatedly and sarcastically at the delays and political games plaguing his initiatives in Congress and became furious when the Senate blocked his plan for increased background checks for gun owners.

Obama is looking for support to broker a deal with Republicans on debt and deficit reduction -- a particular cause of Corker, and is pushing for support for a comprehensive effort to reform immigration laws.

Chambliss is not running for re-election, so is seen by Democrats as a Republican who may be insulated from conservative fury over a plan portrayed by critics as offering "amnesty" to illegal immigrants.

Obama's political enemies frequently lambast the president's golf games as an unnecessary indulgence in tough times.

He normally tees it up only on weekends, and even though he was traveling on official business at the weekend -- in Costa Rica on Saturday and Ohio on Sunday -- it is unlikely he would have ventured onto the links Monday without some cover by Republican partners.

The game took place as lawmakers from both parties head back to Washington from a short recess with a packed agenda.