Trump Is a Golf Cheat Because, Of Course

One story you’d maybe write it off. Two and you might start to think about it, but we’re at four ridiculous “Trump Cheats at Golf” stories now, and there are probably far more. You can’t explain that many cheating anecdotes away and it tells you everything you need to know about this President of the United States.

English author, P.G. Wodehouse once said: “to find a man’s true character, play golf with him.” Truer words have never been spoken. Golf is a sport of honor, one where you call penalties on yourself. It’s a sport where adherence to the rules means more than the score you shoot on any given day. The code of ethics in golf is sacred to those who play it and that is why it is so unseemly to watch someone betray the code so openly and indiscriminately.

To wit, I remember playing $1 skins with a friend of a friend several years ago and the guy cheated. And he did so in such an obvious way. He double-bogeyed a hole and reported it to my friend and me as a bogey when we asked for his score. In fact, we both asked him separately if he was sure and each time he responded in the affirmative. We paid him the money and I never forgot the moment whenever I saw the guy. You just don’t cheat at golf.

Before the 2016 election, Oscar De La Hoya famously said that he wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump because he watched him cheat at golf. Then there was the time that Mike Tirico hit a spectacular shot only to have Trump throw his ball into a bunker, unbeknownst to Tirico. With Samuel L. Jackson, Trump not only cheated at golf, he tried to cheat him out of his money with a phony golf membership.

But this last story I came across was the worst. Some guy won the club championship at one of Trump’s courses. At some later date, now President Trump found the guy and told him that he didn’t really win because Trump himself wasn’t there to play in the tournament. Trump insisted on playing the last six holes with the man and his young son (10 or 11 years old per the report) and said the winner would be the club champion. On a par 3, the man and his son hit their balls on the green. Trump dumped his in the water, then stole the kid’s ball, replaced it with his own, sank the putt, and declared himself the club champion.

Golf doesn’t just build character, it reveals it. If you’re a golfer, you know the sentiment all too well. Every single one of us has wanted to take a mulligan on a missed three-footer or that duck-hooked drive in the middle of an otherwise great round. But none of us takes the mulligan because . . . golf. You don’t cheat the game. Nothing is worse than a great score marred by a cheating moment, even one as small or innocuous as say having your ball move when you’re lining up and then failing to score the penalty. A legitimate golf score is the only golf score and that’s what makes the President of the United States’ behavior all the more vile. He didn’t just cheat a kid. He cheated him at golf. I can’t imagine a worse example being set for today’s youth.

Arnold Palmer once said that success at golf “depends less on strength of body than strength of mind and character.” That may explain why Trump is such a bad golfer and perhaps all of these stories help to explain what a morally bankrupt man we have sitting in the highest office in the land. Trump cheats at golf. Need I say more?