Trump and golf – batting and trading over 18 holes

Mick Mulvaney thinks he beat Donald Trump. Mulvaney has three holes left as the president and his White House Chief of Staff play golf at Trump’s Bedminster Club in 2019.

Mulvani told the BBC: “I patted him on the shoulder and joked with him, ‘I got you today, old man.’ “He looked at me, half smiling, half laughing, just laughing. ”

The president took out two of the two holes in the next three holes and defeated Mulvani by two.

Mulvaney, who has worked in Trump’s White House for three years, said he played golf with the president, or played golf behind the president, about 40 times, never defeated his elders at the age of 21. His description is “just harsh”.

For many modern American presidents Who is in Scotland this weekend To open up the new Trump course near Balmedie, Aberdeenshire.

For presidents like Barack Obama and George W Bush, golf appears to be a transfer from the office burden. However, for the current president, golf is a business, a social opportunity, a fiercely competitive cause, as Mulvaney said. On the fairway and the Greens, the president focused on the game and was barely tolerant of shooting or slow games.

“In fact, if you’re slow, you won’t be invited back and may be thrown into the course,” Mulvani said.

British golf journalist Kevin Brown experienced this experience while playing with Trump in 2012 in a Balmedie class. He said he was enjoying the scenery on the second hole when one of his four players told him that Trump asked if he could “keep going.”

“He’s more focused, downward, heading towards us,” Brown said. “Most of the time, he’s just playing his own game, obviously thinking about what he has to do.”

However, after the round, Brown talked with Trump about his connection to golf for nearly an hour. He said the enthusiasm of the future president is obvious.

“He’s crazy about playing golf,” he said. “He knows the background and history of the game. It’s impressive.”

Trump is a real estate developer-turned politician who has been playing golf since college and bought his first golf property in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1999. Trump Golf currently has 11 courses in the U.S., 3 courses in the UK, and manages several other courses, and offers plans for new resorts in Oman City in Indonesia, Vietnam and Qatar.

Golf clubs are Trump’s precious property – not always a profitable club. According to documents to the UK government, Trump’s Balmedi course lost $1.83 million (£1.35 million) in 2023, its 11th deficit. Turnberry, on the other hand, reported about $5 million in profits.

Trump sometimes clashes with local authorities over land use and tries to limit the construction of wind turbines on the coast of his Balmedie property.

Despite his US courses hosting major professional competitions, he has long hoped to visit Turnberry this weekend to be the venue for future British Open Champions. The historic course hosts four prestigious competitions, but has not had a single competition since Trump purchased the property in 2014.

According to Brown, Trump is attracted by the fascinating golf property because of the prestige they offer.

“He just likes quality and blood,” he said. “It’s about attracting the right people – i.e. dirty wealthy businessmen with very deep pockets.”

For example, a round of golf on Turnberry costs about $1,350.

Golf has long been an automatic enjoyment by elites, where the rich and the strong can operate and connect in exclusive and until recently white and male environments.

For Trump’s businessman, it’s a path to this connection that builds his real estate empire to help. It provided him with a means to connect with American politicians and foreign leaders—even if he did guarantee in 2016 that he “will not have time to play golf” if he was elected to the White House.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave Trump a golden golf club early in his first presidency. The two will later play five rounds together – building a friendship until Abe is assassinated in 2022.

Trump’s regular golf partners include South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Republicans with whom he seeks to make new connections, such as Republicans such as 2016 Kentucky presidential rival Rand Paul.

“He’s a little better than me in my golf, but we had a great time,” Paul said after a 2017 round with the president.

Trump played a golf match with Finnish President Alexander Stubb in West Palm Beach in March, and Trump participated in the club championship, saying the two men won the victory. Stubb later said they talked about wars on Ukraine, Russia and global security.

“In Finnish history, few Finnish presidents have spent a lot of time with the president of the United States in physical or telephone or messaging,” Stubb told CBC News.

It is this opportunity and influence that Trump has brought coveted awards to those seeking a presidential audience.

Professor David Cay Johnston of Rochester Polytechnic Institute said: “Anyone who deals with Donald will quickly learn that everything about him is a deal.”

“If you are the head of a company or a head of a country, you either try to minimize any potential damage he may cause to you by buttering his cream or make him scale him in uncertain circumstances.”

Even when returning to the White House, foreign leaders tried to tie the golf connection into a friendly reception. When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the Oval Office in May, he gave the president an illustrated South African golf book and included golf professionals Ernie Els and Retief Go in his national delegation.

However, as the conference evolved Extended confrontation of South Africa’s land confiscation policy.

Although the play takes place in front of gathering news and live TV cameras, Trump may benefit from his more secretive golf outing, as it provides him with a chance to stand out from the peeping eyes of journalists.

Journalists accompanied Trump to all his public sports, but they stayed away when the president was on the golf course.

“He has time to deal with other people,” Johnston said. “Of course, those companies or state leaders will take advantage of the opportunity to get rid of any spotlight, too.”

The president’s preference for privacy on the link also means a lot of conflicting claims about the true situation of golfer Trump. He has the titles that have won dozens of club titles – all in the courses he has – with only five courses this year.

Sports journalist Rick Reilly wrote in his 2019 Cheating Commander: How Golf Explains Trump , that Trump’s title proposition is so “super” that he lost all his credibility.

He elaborated on what he said was Trump’s preference for cheating, including moving the ball to a better court and picking up multiple Murimans – custom, in which case allows players to replay strokes without punishment after misfortune.

“He’s a notorious cheat,” Johnston said. “I talked to a guy who used to play golf with him and he told me he’s already taken six Murimans in a hole.”

Mulvaney said he said he had never seen Trump cheat and that the president could use golf as a contact information, but the 18 holes with the president were not commercial, government or political.

“It’s golf,” he said. “While that sounds sharp, golfers know what I mean. Trump is a golfer, long before he was president. He will be long after that.”