Donald’s Trump’s boast about winning 18 club championships is a lie that’s so over-the-top Crazytown it loses all credibility among golfers the second it’s out of his mouth. To double check, I called the only guy who could come close: George “Buddy” Marucci, of Philadelphia. Like Trump, Marucci belongs to more clubs than you can fit in your bag. Like Trump, he’s in the right age bracket, at six years younger than Trump. Like Trump, he’s got all the money he needs to play as many club championships as he can fly to. Unlike Trump, he’s as fine a golfing businessman as you can find. Marucci took 19-year-old Tiger Woods – 24 years his junior – to the last hole of the 1995 US Amateur before finally losing.
So, Buddy Marucci, do YOU have 18 club championships?
“Ha!” he laughed. “No way. I have a few, but nowhere near that many. It’s hard to win a club championship. I might have eight. Tops.”
This is a guy who’s been breaking par for the past 45 years. He belongs to nearly every creamy course in the world – Winged Foot, Seminole, Pine Valley, Cypress Point. If it’s on a top 10 in the world list, Marucci probably has a locker there.
When Trump told Gary Player he’d won 18 championships, Player scoffed. “I told him that if anyone beats him, he kicks them out. So, he had to win.”
Was Trump’s name on the wall of any clubs he didn’t own? Nope. Was it on the walls at Trump Washington in Virginia, a course that was already up and running when he bought it? Nope. Or Trump Jupiter, which was a Ritz Carlton course when he bought it? Nope. Was it on the wall at any of his own courses he’d opened? Oh, yes.
Trump International in West Palm Beach, Florida, has a plaque on the wall that lists all the men who’ve won the men’s club championship. Trump appears three times: 1999, 2001, and 2009. But hold on. The course wasn’t even open in 1999. Turns out, then White House spokesperson Hope Hicks admitted to the Washington Post, Trump played in a “soft opening” round on 1 November of that year with “a group of the early members,” and declared it the club championship.
Congratulations?
On 17 March 17 2013, Trump tweeted he’d won the club championship again at Trump International. But the plaque for that year lists the winner as “Tom Roush.” The catch? It wasn’t really the club championship at all. Trump won the “Super Seniors Club Championship,” which at most clubs is reserved for players 60 and older. Something to be proud of, sure, but not within a Super Walmart of beating the best young players in the club. The difference between “Club Champion” and “Super Senior Club Champion” is the difference between Vanna White and Betty White.
“I remember Melania used to ask us ‘What is this ‘Super Seniors’?’” recalls former Trump Westchester exec Ian Gillule. “And Mr Trump would say, ‘Oh, Super Seniors is better than just a regular club championship, honey.’ He was saying it tongue in cheek but she didn’t know the difference.”
At Trump Bedminster in New Jersey, Trump once won a senior club championship from 87 miles away. He’d declared that the club should start having senior club championships for those 50 and up, but he forgot that one of the best players at the club had just turned 50. Having zero chance at beating the guy, he went up to his Trump Philadelphia course on the day of the tournament and played with a friend there. Afterward, according to a source inside the Bedminster club, he called the Bedminster pro shop and announced he’d shot 73 and should be declared the winner. The pro, wanting to stay employed, agreed. His name went up on the plaque. “But then,” says the source, “somebody talked to the caddy up in Philly and asked him what Trump shot that day. The caddy goes, ‘Maybe 82. And that might be generous.’ He pulls that kind of shit all the time around here.”
More than one source described another time when Trump happened to walk into the Bedminster clubhouse just as a worker was putting up the name of the newly crowned senior club championship winner on a wooden plaque. Trump had been out of town and hadn’t played in the tournament, but when he saw the player’s name, he stopped the employee. “Hey, I beat that guy all the time. Put my name up there instead.”
Of the 18 club championship “wins” that Trump listed for Golf Digest, 12 are actually senior or super senior club championships. So that leaves six real club championships. One of the six he lists was Trump Westchester 2001, when the club wasn’t officially open yet. That leaves five. The next was Westchester 2002, when the club was only nine holes. If it really happened, you can’t count that. That leaves four, one of them being Westchester in 2004. Could he have actually won that?
“Well, no, I know for a fact that’s not true,” Gillule says. “He never won any in the eight years I worked there. I mean, I loved working for Mr Trump, but you know, some people take a certain license with the truth.”
We do know that Trump played in the 2007 Westchester Men’s Club Championship and was knocked out in the first round by a 15-year-old named Adam Levin. Trump was four-up with five holes to play, helped greatly by the 60-year-old calling two ticky-tack rule violations on the kid, one for accidentally touching the grass inside a hazard and one for fixing a small ball mark off the green, both loss-of-hole penalties.
That’s when, according to Levin, Trump said to the small gallery, “The kid put up a good fight, didn’t he?” A small bonfire lit under Levin, who wound up winning hole after hole, tying Trump up through 18 and then winning on the second playoff hole.
“He didn’t even say ‘Congratulations’ or ‘Good match,’” remembers Levin, now a data analyst. “He didn’t look me in the eye. He just shook my hand and walked off. He’d kind of been a dick the whole day. We were together for five or six hours, so there was plenty of time for conversation with me or my parents, but all he ever said was, ‘Isn’t this course fantastic?’ and ‘Aren’t these facilities the best?’ He’s a total asshole with no character.”
That leaves three possible club championship wins, all at one course – Trump International in West Palm Beach. But we already know the 1999 win there is a lie, since the course wasn’t open. That leaves two. Of those two – 2001 and 2009 – I have never seen a signed scorecard or spoken to any objective person who remembers him winning or not winning.
Final score on the “18 club championships”: Lies 16, Incompletes 2, Confirms 0. By this time, Trump’s nose has grown so long he could putt with it.
The whole thing bugged me so much I started to itch. I wasn’t offended as a voter. I was offended as a golfer. For golfers, the stain of cheating is so much graver than winning or losing that we live in mortal fear of being called a cheater. Tom Watson accused Gary Player of illegally moving a leaf away from his ball at the Skins Game in 1983 and they’ve hardly spoken since. One leaf.
So here was Trump caterwauling about 18 golf championships that were faker than Cheez Whiz, and it started to make me think. How much of what Trump says about his golf brilliance does the country believe? During the campaign, when Trump stood up in front of 30,000 red hats and bloviated, “When it comes to golf, very few people can beat me,” did people buy that? Because 50 guys at every course in America can beat him.
When Trump held endless 18-hole meetings at his Florida courses with this prime minister and that emperor, were these leaders returning home to laugh at OUR president the way they laughed at him at the United Nations? Would they think all Americans cheat at golf?
It got me thinking …
Somebody should point out that the way Trump does golf is sort of the way he does a presidency, which is to operate as though the rules are for other people.
Somebody should explain that facts and truth are to Trump what golf scores and crowd sizes are—“feelings”—malleable and negotiable, flitting this way and that like a car-lot balloon man.
Somebody should write that the way Trump cheats at golf, lies about his courses, and stiffs his golf contractors isn’t that far from how he cheats on his wives, lies about his misdeeds, and stiffs the world on agreements America has already made on everything from Iran to climate change.
“Golf is like bicycle shorts,” I once wrote. “It reveals a lot about a man.”
You could write a book about what Trump’s golf reveals about him.
Here it is.
- This is an edited extract from Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Reilly. © 2019. Available from Hachette Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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I started caddying at 10 years old in 1959. I was taught by a golf pro with a Scottish accent : “You must schlap the guuund” (slap the ground). The game demanded honesty. We worshiped the story about Bobby Jones who called a penalty on himself from the woods where no one else saw the infraction but him during the U. S. Open. You were expected to umpire yourself as if in the presence of God. It taught us honor (more white privilege). Alas, it was a time gone with the wind.
Anyone who cheats in tournament play needs to be bludgeoned to death with a mashie-niblick on the spot.
I hung around a few golfers and played in some best ball tournaments, enough to admit there is a certain classy element to being on the greens on a lovely spring day and you expect very few to fudge or lie. It does seem to be a game where one feels watched by one’s own integrity.
However, the title of the article should say Breaking News: Trump is a bloviating braggart and ho hum.
Yes, he is. A blowhard if ever there lived one. And I’ve seen his swing. NFW it’s a 2 handicap swing. I’d say a 14-tops. If he and Bubba Clinton played a round you’d need a super computer to document all the lies. But they both scored well in the pussy league, another reason women shouldn’t have the right to vote.
I think, unless you’re a pro on tour, everyone at one time or another cheats at golf. Ever hear of the old term “foot wedge”?
Why the hell don’t these fucktard’s just die. I am so sick of this shit – who cares? Why would someone take their time to write this drivel?
Because our President is a dishonest sack of shit, Dutch. His drift from reality is worrisome to those of us who value the truth.
Hey – get a life.
Anon, the reality is clearly that more people know Obama’s promise of “you can keep your doctor” is a incomprehensible lie compared to Orangeman’s claim to golfing skills.
Go play with yourself.
455,
it sounds like anon has already played w/himself so much that it has blinded him to reality–
He takes tips from Korea Kim who among other boasts, scored 11 holes in one, and eagles and birdies on the other 7.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/kim-jong-il-made-11-holes-in-one-north-koreas-most-insane-claims-about-its-leaders.html/
Surprise!
I don’t care if Trump’s certifiably insane. It’s better than having Hillary as POTUS.
Trump is bankrupting the country. Just as Oblama and warmongering Bush before him. That is all that matters. Forget the wall. Forget the supreme court. When the country defaults or enters an inevitable period of hyerinflation, all these other issues will fall by the wayside. Debt. That is the issue that weighs supreme. And trump is no different than those that preceded him. This isn’s rocket science guys. Put your party affiliations away. Its all theatre. You’ve been suckered. I know. It’s difficult to swallow.
So, your answer is?
Rename the Republicans the Washington Generals.
Jesus, we’re on a terminal downward spiral. The rate of descent is slightly less with Trump v Hillary. But make no mistake, the entrenched PTB will not be driven out. Their madness will only increase. If you’re not taking this brief respite to further prepare for whatever form the next turning appears as and instead you’re bloviating about the Bad Orange Man, just do us all a favor and put one in your ear.
Can’t say there were any surprises in this article. It’s a shame that our choices in the last election were between two of the biggest liars in the world. Does anyone expect 2020 to be any different? I certainly don’t.
It appears that the number one qualifier to become president is to be a sociopath, and there are plenty of those available. What can we expect when character and integrity are only for losers in the current culture?
rick reilly,columnist 4 sports illustrated,later 4 espn,neither organization has ever had an agenda,have they?
Rick Reilly has always been a POS so fuck him. As for Trump cheating in golf, that’s just not cool if true. But cheating in any sport isn’t cool.
I love playing tennis. Great sport(to watch too). If there’s ever any doubt on an in or out on my side of the net, I always give the benefit to my opponent. I love winning and will play my ass off to cream someone but winning, even in tournaments, which I also love to play, by fudging just ain’t worth it.
Speaking of tournaments, fuck do I hate sandbaggers. Guys that drop down into my class just so they can notch a win. Real PsOS.
Coming from the Guardian that is rich…