Former President Donald Trump won both his golf “club championship trophy” and the senior club championship trophy, an accomplishment he celebrated with golf legend and MAGA adherent Jack Nicklaus at a Mar-a-Lago Awards ceremony. “I WON BOTH!” Trump wrote in his customary all-caps style.
Trump’s boast about his golfing prowess, made on his Truth Social, became more broadly seen after President Joe Biden amplified it with a droll, trolling, tongue-in-cheek congratulations. “Quite the accomplishment,” wrote the President.
Congratulations, Donald. Quite the accomplishment. pic.twitter.com/nyDivqPwoI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) March 25, 2024
That Trump can still win, at age 77, a club championship in what he described as a “GREAT and difficult course” against a “large and golfing talented membership” brought questions to mind for many, probably including Nicklaus who, when he won his last major championship in 1986 at the advanced age of 46, was already considered too old to reasonably compete. (He remains the oldest Masters champion to this day.)
So how did Trump do it? If indeed he did do it? Speculation on the subject surfaced the 2019 book by Sports Illustrated author Rick Reilly called Commander in Cheat. Reilly exposed a number of rumors surrounding Trump’s purported mastery of the game, enough to give the book its damning title.
The best known is a nickname that caddies at the prestigious Winged Foot Golf Club reportedly had for Trump. Reilly writes that the caddies called Trump “Pele” — after the Brazilian soccer legend — for his habit of kicking the ball into a better hitting position. (In golf this cheat is commonly called the “foot wedge.”)
Commentators online, where nothing is ever forgotten, are hitting back at Trump’s “club championship trophy” boast with the Reilly rumors.
— Rick G. Rosner (@dumbassgenius) March 25, 2024
More relevant to Trump news today — a day when he is due to put up a surety bond to forestall collection actions while he appeals a decision in his business fraud trial — is another piece of Reilly’s reporting. The requirement to post a bond comes from a finding that Trump and the Trump Organization routinely overvalued his properties to get favorable loans and other advantages. Reilly reports in his 2019 book a situation that will sound familiar to anyone following the case.
As Golf Digest reported in its review of Reilly’s book: “Trump valued the Trump Westchester course, and every course he owned, at $50 million. However, Trump is currently suing the town of Ossining for its $11 million tax valuation of Westchester, as Trump’s lawyers insist the course was only worth $1.4 million.”
#DonPoorleone cheats at golf – ALL THE TIME.
— Debra (@DLJ583) March 25, 2024
A blurb for Reilly’s book contends: “Reilly pokes more holes in Trump’s claims than there are sand traps on all of his courses combined. It is by turns amusing and alarming.”