Donald Trump was never comfortable with golf.
Not as president of the United States, a polarizing position long before the advent of Twitter or any other form of social media. Not even when he combined his love of golf with his ambition to provide rich people at his hotels and golf courses.
The star of any elite-level golf tournament is usually the player or the course. Unless it was on his course, and then Trump made it over him.
And now it’s coming to an end if it’s not there yet.
He was effectively fired.
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Trump has been silenced on Twitter and is being charged with ‘inciting insurgency’ stemming from his supporters who invaded the country’s Capitol last week. On a much smaller scale – it must be anyway – he suffered a loss when the 2022 PGA Championship was taken away from his golf club in New Jersey.
The PGA of America voted Sunday night to end the contract. More than being the right thing, it was the only thing.
“We are in a political situation that has not come to fruition,” Seth Waugh, chief executive of the PGA of America, told the Associated Press.
The contract with Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, was signed in 2014, when Trump’s platform was reality TV and not the White House. A year later, Trump announced that he would seek the Republican nomination for president, and then he really started making golf feel uncomfortable about the relationship with him.
His derogatory remarks about Mexican immigrants when he announced his candidacy in June 2015 forced golf organizations to enter politics uncomfortably. The setback was still strong when Trump went to the Golf Channel and said the golf industry supported him because “they know I’m right.”
The PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, PGA of America and USGA have issued a statement saying he was wrong. And a week later, the PGA Grand Slam of Golf was canceled in its Trump National Los Angeles.
It wasn’t just tournaments on his golf courses.
Trump said in an interview with Golf Digest in 2014 that golf had it all wrong by making the game accessible to the masses. “I would make golf aspiring instead of trying to get everyone into golf that they would never be there anyway,” he said.
Waugh thought the PGA of America would be criticized in some quarters for taking four days to determine the obvious. This would not be the first time that golf has been accused of slow motion. In this case, he said there are procedures to be followed, and undoubtedly a contract to analyze in case of a lawsuit.
“Our decision was not about speed and timing,” Waugh said. “The most important thing for our management and leadership is the protection of our brand and reputation, and the ability of our members to lead the growth of the game, which they do through so many powerful programs in their communities.”
The R&A has been evading questions about the return of the British Open to Turnberry since Trump bought the scenic links to Scotland’s Ayrshire coast in 2014. It finally came out on Monday morning with a statement that he would not return there “until we are convinced the focus will be on the championship, the players and the track itself.”
“And we do not believe it is feasible in the current circumstances,” said Martin Slumbers, R&A chief.
What other golf course is there?
Along with the U.S. Women’s Open in Bedminster and the Senior PGA Championship at Trump National in Sterling, Virginia, Trump Courses once hosted two PGA tournaments (Doral and Puerto Rico), and the first major tournament on one of its tracks. was the LPGA tournament. by Trump International in West Palm Beach, Florida. He made sure every player had a BMW as a court car. He invited them to his Mar-A-Lago resort.
And he makes sure he’s the program and the leader.
One year, Karrie Webb hit a shot on the par-3 seventh hole, which seemed to roll into the water again until it was held through the rough. That night, Trump said Webb was happy because the shot should have gone into the water. Why was the grass not cut tighter in the slope? In the evening he had his crew shaved off the shore and it was scratched so tightly that green spray paint was needed to cover the dirt.
It was in the middle of a tournament.
At the Doral World Golf Championships in 2015, Rory McIlroy was so disgusted by his shot at the par-3 eight that he threw his 3-iron into the lake. It happens in a sport that can be even the most annoying. Trump seized the moment by appointing divers to reclaim the club, and he made a spectacle of returning the club to McIlroy back on the track before the final round. No matter, McIlroy already had a replacement.
“He’s never someone who misses an opportunity,” McIlroy said.
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This is one of the reasons why Doral, a major part of the Florida swing since 1962, last hosted a PGA Tour event in March 2016.
It was not about politics. It was about Trump. The tour could not find a sponsor willing to raise about $ 12 million a year, knowing he would share the stage with Trump. The tournament went to all places in Mexico.
At the time, the relationship that golf had with Trump was complicated by his ego and his elitism. It is now about the threat to democracy, violence and destruction that killed five people, including a Capitol police officer.
There is no relationship with Trump and tournament golf, no more.
Golf can not make that happen again.