Donald Trump's Golf Course Behavior Is Said To Be Worse Than We All Thought

Claims of Donald Trump misbehaving on golf courses have surfaced from multiple sources over the years. In 2019, sports writer Rick Reilly wrote a book about the former president being liberal with the rules while golfing titled "Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump." Reilly relayed quotes from golf analyst Brad Faxon, who recalled playing a round with Trump, Tiger Woods, and Dustin Johnson where the former commander-in-chief blatantly cheated. Faxon told a story about Trump hitting his ball in the water during the round. "Hey, throw me another ball; they weren't looking," he remembered Trump saying. Later, the book's author revealed Trump's cheating strategies were even more outrageous than previously reported.

During an interview with MSNBC on March 26, 2024, Reilly said Trump would go to extreme measures to win rounds of golf, including "kicking opponents balls into the bunkers." Reilly played 18 holes with the former POTUS, and it went as he had expected. "[H]e took seven mulligans," the writer told MSNBC. Reilly also explained how Trump has won so many tournament championships. "What he does [is] he just calls in and goes, 'I usually beat that guy, give me the trophy,'" the sportswriter said.

These claims were refuted by Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, who issued a strongly worded statement. "Rick fantasizes about having a golf game as good as President Trump," Cheung told People on March 27. However, previous instances backed up Reilly's claims, as Trump's boasts about his own golf course have landed him in trouble.

Speaking about Donald Trump's sneaky golf cheating tactics, Rick Reilly claimed the former host of "The Apprentice" had a tricky workaround for being a champion. On March 26, Reilly told MSNBC that Trump has once said to him, "Anytime I buy a new course, I play the first round all by myself, and then I declare myself the club champion."

Trump has made multiple boasts about his achievements on his golf courses. He announced himself as the winner of the Senior Club Championship at Trump International Golf Club in January 2023. "You need strength and stamina to WIN, & I have strength & stamina – most others don't. You also need strength & stamina to GOVERN!," he wrote on Truth Social at the time. Later, Trump's claims on his own golf course led to a political spat with Joe Biden.

A year after announcing his club dominance at Trump International Golf Club, Trump once again spoke about his great play on the links on March 24. According to a post on Truth Social, the one-time president said he had taken home the course's championship and senior club trophies. "I won both!" he wrote. President Biden noticed the post and took it to X, formerly Twitter, to offer a wry response. "Congratulations, Donald. Quite the accomplishment," Biden wrote alongside a screenshot of Trump's Truth Social post. Discussions about Trump doing anything for the upper hand on the golf course have been long-running and even included an LPGA player.

LPGA golfer Suzann Pettersen unintentionally gained national media attention in January 2018 when she was quoted in an interview with the Norwegian paper Verdens Gang, claiming that Donald Trump cheated at golf. "He cheats like hell," Pettersen was quoted as telling the outlet (via USA Today). "I don't quite know how he is in business. They say that if you cheat at golf, you cheat at business." The golf pro also added that Trump's caddie ensured his drives wound up "in the middle of the fairway." The story was aggregated by several outlets and became front-page news. 

Perhaps not wanting to upset the then-president, Pettersen issued a statement on Facebook saying she was misquoted by the Norwegian paper. "Not true at all, and this has been taken WAY out of context," she wrote (via USA Today). "With a big smile on my face, what I said was that he most likely paid his caddy well because every time he found his ball, it was in the fairway," Pettersen added. After the LPGA golfer denounced the interview, Robert Simso, the reporter who worked on the piece for Verdens Gang, issued a statement of his own. "We, of course, stand by all the quotes in the story," he told Golf.com in an email while mentioning that the interview with Pettersen had been recorded.

Of course, that was only one of many Trump-related golf cheating scandals the public has learned of.