Just when it seemed the final months of George W. Bush’s presidency were headed toward farcical irrelevance, a drift into complete self-parody, our president surprised us with the kind of emotional commitment that we might have thought beyond him.

He gave up golf.

OK, so it’s not exactly on a par with giving up a vital organ or taking a vow of poverty. But for this president, so committed to the kind of clubby brotherhood that has its roots deep in the 19th hole, this is apparently a very significant sacrifice.

For golf, as it is most often played, is a reflection of life as President Bush appears to live it. It is a game that promises instant redemption from complete personal failure.

A 20-foot chip that skims to the other side of the green and off into the weeds? A seven iron to the green that lands in a bunker? A mighty swing with your new adjustable-head driver that ends up sending the ball 10 feet dead right?

Forget about it. Just put the offending club in the bag and pull out its replacement, the one that will do the same thing it did three weeks before when you hit that absolutely perfect arcing shot over the badlands and onto the green.

Hit a shot like that and you might want to hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner from nearby trees. Hit a shot like that and you might want to announce there’s been a real “surge” in your game.

There is always another shot at glory. One good shot outweighs a dozen bad ones. And those could be mottos for the Bush presidency, where disaster is just another word for “wait until tomorrow.”

Actually, the president didn’t give up golf this week. He gave it up years ago, but his decision to surrender the clubs was only recently made public. He said he made the decision in 2003 out of respect for U.S. soldiers killed in combat. He said he didn’t want parents who had lost children in the wars seeing the commander in chief on the golf course.

It seems a noble sentiment, a matter of appearances in heart-wrenching times: There’ll be no public fun for this president while Americans are fighting and dying.

Personally, I think it’s a mistake. I think the president should have a way of decompressing, of showing us that he can get away from the burdens of his office and not be constantly carrying the humbling weight of war and other misadventures. The people might have good reason to worry about the president’s stability if he took no time to ease up and kick back.

Truth in column writing requires that I admit to playing golf, or trying to. I started late, after dismissing it for years by saying I’m not old enough. Then I caught the disease, drawn back to the agony again and again with that faint memory of a club head slicing deftly through the grass and lifting my ball toward where I actually wanted it to go.

So I have some small sense of what the president is giving up. I have absolutely no sense of why he thinks it matters.

Golf is spectacularly silly. It is the only game in which the incurable hacker can, at a given moment, hit a shot that will match that of the best player in the world. Golf shops have become toy stores for older people. You can buy a fuzzy tiger to cover your three-wood, a GPS gizmo to find the hole.

The president should get back to the tee. It shows no disrespect to the troops or their families. That he thinks it might is as silly as the game itself.

It’s as silly as if he puffed up his cheeks and vowed to hold his breath until the troops come home.

bkerr@projo.com