Trump cheating on golf?
A new book released in the United States claims this, but it's something that many players have been repeating for several years
Donald Trump loves to play golf. Very. According to the Trumpgolfcount website, since he was elected president of the United States he has visited a golf course 165 times, including 77 times playing a game, with an average of one visit every 4.9 days. With its Trump Organization it has 17 golf courses around the world, 12 of which in the United States. His favorite is the one at the Mar a Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he's been 87 times since he's president, but when he's in Washington DC he often settles for a camp in Sterling, Florida. Virginia, about 40 kilometers from the White House. Those who have played with him (like Tiger Woods, one of the strongest golfers of all time) call him a good golfer, especially considering he is a 72-year-old man, but his performances have long been suspicious.
According to the Golf Handicap and Information Network, the system that tracks the scores of golfers in the United States, Trump would have a handicap of 2.8. In golf, the handicap indicates the number of extra strokes a player has available for each par, that is, for the maximum number of strokes to complete a particular golf tournament, an 18-hole round or a single hole. It's a way to give amateur players an edge and allow them to compete on equal terms with the pros, who always start with a zero handicap. So, in essence, the closer the handicap is to zero, the better that player is. A handicap of 2.8 like Trump's is an achievement that would be exceptional for a professional player of any age, and even more so for him.
According to a recently published book, however, this result would be the result of constant cheating during the games played by Trump. "If Trump has a handicap of 2.8, Queen Elizabeth is a pole vault," Rick Reilly, former Sports Illustrated columnist, wrote in "Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump". In the book, excerpts of which were published in the New York Post, Reilly, who has played with Trump in the past and who has spoken to many people - amateurs and non-amateurs - who have played with him, recounts several episodes in which the president of the United States has blatantly cheated by playing golf. "Saying Donald Trump cheats is like saying Michael Phelps swims," Reilly wrote.
Brad Faxon, a former professional golfer, told Reilly that during a game played with Trump shortly after taking office, he first threw a ball into the water and then, pretending nothing, threw another: even the finished one. in water. At that point he simply went to where the ball should have fallen and he placed it there, with his hands. A similar story was told by actor Samuel L. Jackson, according to which, after Trump threw a ball into the water, his caddy claimed to have found it on the grass.
Trump's cheating would not just improve his performance, according to Reilly, but also make his opponents worse. In a game in which sports journalist Mike Tirico also took part, the latter had made a great shot of more than 200 meters, sending the ball directly onto the green, the ground where the hole is located. Once there, however, he found the ball in a sandy area, about 15 meters from the hole. Later Trump's caddy approached him and confessed that the ball had landed just over 3 meters from the hole, and that it was Trump who threw it in the sand.
It is not the first time that Trump's misconduct on golf courses has been talked about, and already in the past several had expressed doubts about the veracity of his handicap. In 2015, Mark Mulvoy, former editor of Sports Illustrated, told the Washington Post that he once saw Trump adjusting a ball to his liking near the hole in the 1990s. When he pointed this out, Trump replied, “Ah, the ones I play with are cheating all the time. I have to cheat too to keep up with them. '
When the article came out, Trump replied by denying having ever played with Mulvoy, and even knowing him: "I don't move the balls," he said. “I don't need it. There are very few people who can beat me in golf. ' Other similar stories had been told in the past by several other people, such as boxer Oscar De La Hoya, singer Alice Cooper and golfer Suzann Pettersen, who last year told the Norwegian newspaper VG that Trump is "cheating to death".
«Bara at the highest level. He cheats when they look at him, and he cheats when they don't look at him. Coffin whether you like it or not. Cheat because that's how he plays golf. If you go to golf with him, he cheats, ”Reilly said in her book, adding that Trump's improprieties aren't just about the game. Trump, says Reilly, also constantly violates the rules of conduct that should be kept on golf courses, for example by not taking off his hat or when shaking hands with opponents at the end of the games, nor when he enters the headquarters of a club (perhaps worried sweat ruined his precarious hairstyle), and crossing the green with the cart: which is a bit like "hanging the laundry in the Sistine Chapel," says Reilly.
The improprieties also concern the way in which he manages the fields owned by him, which he would have made to have exaggerated evaluations. In the field of Bedminster, New Jersey, he had a plaque put up with a phrase from architect Tom Fazio that reads "This is the best project he has ever done". But even in this case it is an exaggeration: "I don't think I said it exactly that way," said Fazio. In the course located in Virginia, however, between the 14th and 15th holes there is a monument in memory of the Civil War, which reminds golfers who pass by all the soldiers who died exactly at that point. Too bad there is no historical evidence of battles that took place there.
