Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump made an incredible claim—literally incredible, as in impossible to believe. He said he had won his 43rd golf championship. All of these “championships” have been “won” at clubs owned by the “victor,” Trump.
In the most recent case, Trump said he had won the senior championship at Trump National Golf Club, in Bedminster, New Jersey. He announced his achievement in his trademark fashion:
“I won with a score of 70, and am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I’m given very little time to practice, because I’m focused on many other things. It’s called TALENT, and I have it, and they don’t!”
A score of 70 would be two under par. That is, again, incredible. As Rick Reilly commented, “No 80-year-old on earth with a pancake swing and the chip yips has ever shot TEN SHOTS under his age.”
Reilly is a veteran golf writer who in 2019 published a book about Trump and golf: Commander in Cheat.
You thought a 70 was good, how about a 67? That’s what Trump claimed to have shot in 2023, to win that same championship. He wrote, “Now, some people will think that sounds low, but there is no hanky/lanky [sic].”
Trump is a specialist in hanky/lanky. Reilly, in his book, reports that caddies nicknamed him “Pelé”—for his habit of kicking his ball out of the rough and into the fairway.
Bill Clinton was no stranger to hanky/lanky, on and off the golf course. In 1996, Byron York published a long, detailed piece on that president and his golf in The American Spectator: “Clinton’s Bad Lie.”
Falstaff says, “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” Trump has an amazing ability to co-opt others in his grievances, boasts, and fabrications. Last week, I wrote about the late Senator Lindsey Graham, and his embrace of Trump after the 2016 election. In 2017, Graham claimed that Trump had shot a round of 73 with him.
That told me more about Graham than about Trump’s golf.
In 1994, Kim Jong-il, the late North Korean dictator, played his first round of golf. He had a score of 34—over 18 holes. His round included 11 holes-in-one. If you don’t believe that, you can take it up with North Korean state media.
Fidel Castro was not one for golf—although there are some famous, goofy photos of him as a young dictator with his comrade Che Guevara, on the golf course. They are wearing military fatigues and combat boots. Castro effectively banned golf in Cuba, condemning it as a “bourgeois” pursuit.
But his son Antonio managed to play. He was sometimes depicted as a golf champion, as well as a fishing champion. Also, he was an official in national and international baseball federations.
Dictators’ sons like to involve themselves in sports. (I have a number of stories about this in a book, Children of Monsters.) Vassily Stalin was the boss of several Soviet teams. He punished them ruthlessly when they did not succeed. In Iraq, Uday Hussein did the same thing. He was the head of the national soccer federation and the Olympic committee.
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Muhammad Qaddafi headed Libya’s Olympic committee. His brother Saadi headed the soccer federation. He was also a player—the captain of the national team, in fact. Referees never crossed him, and broadcasters were not allowed to mention any other player’s name. They referred to Saadi by name. All the other players, they referred to by their numbers.
Saadi bought his way onto the European circuit for a while. He signed with teams in Italy. The joke in Libya went, “Other players are paid to play, but Saadi pays to play.”
At the end of 2021, an interesting hockey match took place in St. Petersburg, Russia. On one team were Vladimir Putin and the dictator from Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko. Also present on the ice were retired Russian hockey stars. The dictators’ team won 18 to 7.
Putin scored seven goals—as many as the other team altogether. Lukashenko scored a measly two goals. But his 17-year-old son redeemed the family honor, scoring four.
It’s easy to laugh at dictators and their pretensions. But shouldn’t Americans be embarrassed when their president claims to have won his 43rd golf championship? By shooting two under par? Maybe that is not as outlandish and outrageous as Kim Jong-il’s 34, but—come on.
In 2016, a colleague of mine, on his way to being a full-time Trump booster, said, “Trump isn’t a liar, he’s a bullshitter.” In the years since, I have not really detected the difference.
Golf is a game of honor. It is a revealer of character. The subtitle of Byron York’s 1996 piece about Clinton was, “The way he plays golf tells you more about his character than any special prosecutor ever will.” The subtitle of Rick Reilly’s 2019 book is “How Golf Explains Trump.”
When I spoke of these issues on social media, a tweeter named Jas Easterly responded with a quote: “If you aren’t playing by the rules, it’s not golf.” He then said that his grandfather Harry had despised cheats. Harry Easterly was the president of the United States Golf Association and a steward and champion of the rules.
A couple of weeks ago, I podcasted with Gabriel Sterling, an elections official in Georgia. He was one of the Republicans who refused to falsify the 2020 presidential election, despite great pressure from Trump & Co. I told a favorite story about Bobby Jones.
In the 1925 US Open, he called a penalty on himself—two strokes—and wound up losing the Open by a stroke. When people praised him for his sportsmanship and honesty, he would have none of it. “Sooner praise a man for not robbing a bank,” said Jones.
Yes. But when bank robbery is in vogue and encouraged—not participating in it is commendable.
Gabe Sterling made an interesting point. The rules of golf are written down, but you have to carry them out. You have to abide by them. Otherwise, they are irrelevant words on paper. And our government functions in much the same manner.
We have “parchment barriers” aplenty, but there’s no substitute for honorable men and women in public life, and in life at large.
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