Donald Trump Sucks At Golf Too

This take got me suspended from TikTok and has ultimately led me to abandon the platform nearly altogether. Apparently questioning Donald Trump's golf mythology crosses a line for some people. That's unfortunate because the evidence is overwhelming.

Now look, in the grand scheme of things this is trivial. In the web of lies surrounding Donald Trump, most people would rightfully consider his golf game pretty irrelevant. But as a sports guy and someone who genuinely loves golf, I think it's important that Donald Trump does not go down in history as the greatest golfing president because he clearly is not.

For many people, lying about golf is almost part of the culture. Guys fluff scores, improve lies, take gimmies they shouldn't take, and exaggerate how well they played. Most of it is harmless ego stuff among weekend golfers. But it's a mistake for the game itself if Trump gets away with turning complete fabrication into accepted history.

Donald Trump is widely described across the internet as the greatest golfing president ever. That's nonsense.

It's branding. It's marketing. It's the same thing as slapping his name on the Kennedy Center and pretending it automatically elevates the institution. Trump has spent decades carefully cultivating the image of himself as an elite golfer, and millions of people simply accept it because they assume wealthy country club guys must be good at golf. The actual evidence says otherwise.

First off, the "club championships" are largely bogus. Many were held at his own properties where he either didn't play the full event, entered late, or somehow magically emerged as champion. Multiple reports over the years have documented suspicious scorekeeping, altered rounds, and bizarre tournament circumstances. That's not competitive golf. That's ego management.

Then there's the cheating. Rick Reilly, one of the most respected golf writers in America, dedicated major portions of Commander in Cheat to documenting Trump's golf behavior. Reilly described him as someone who cheats "like a three-card monte dealer." That's not coming from a random political critic. That's coming from someone deeply tied to the golf world who spent years speaking with people who actually played with Trump.

The stories are endless: balls kicked from the rough into the fairway, mulligans counted as official shots, caddies tossing balls back into play after drives sail out of bounds, carts driven directly onto greens, and putts mysteriously never needing to be finished. Golf is built around honesty and self-policing. Trump treats it like a carnival hustle.

And let's be honest about something else: he isn't physically capable of walking a golf course anymore. That's fine. Plenty of older golfers ride in carts. But the mythology surrounding Trump paints him as this tireless athlete dominating championship-level golf. The reality is very different.

The funniest part is that the few times he was required to participate in relatively legitimate public golf events, such as the celebrity tournament in Lake Tahoe at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course, he never finished in the top half of the field. That's the closest thing we have to actual evidence of Trump competing under relatively normal conditions instead of at his own clubs with his own scorekeeping culture.

I've played Edgewood Tahoe. It isn't an easy course, especially with tournament pressure and mountain conditions. And when it comes to Donald Trump, I'm absolutely certain I could beat him there right now playing actual golf by actual rules.

Now financially, I can't make a meaningful bet with Donald Trump because I haven't scammed people out of tens of billions of dollars. But I would absolutely be willing to make this wager: if anyone can prove Trump could beat me in a legitimate round of golf today, I'll shut up and never criticize anything about the man again.

Obviously, he can't.

And let's be clear, I'm no Tiger Woods. I'm a 12 handicap. Donald Trump claims to be a low single-digit handicap golfer, but as we all know by now, the man lies constantly. Everyone with any real familiarity with golf understands exactly what's going on here.

A legitimate low single-digit golfer doesn't need caddies throwing balls back into the fairway. A legitimate low single-digit golfer doesn't drive carts onto greens, refuse to putt out, invent club championships, or avoid actual competitive environments. A legitimate low single-digit golfer can go play publicly under real conditions and produce real scores.

Trump never has.

That's why the Lake Tahoe celebrity event matters. It was one of the few environments where there were cameras, public scoring, and relatively normal tournament conditions. And despite all the mythology surrounding Trump's golf game, he never even finished in the top half of the field.

People who actually know golf understand the difference between someone who can occasionally hit a decent shot and someone who can consistently score. Those are two very different things.

Sure, Trump still has plenty of sycophants insisting he can stripe the ball. These are often the same people who insist he was a brilliant businessman and a great president. Trump has always surrounded himself with people willing to reinforce whatever image he wants projected into the world. That doesn't make it real.

Donald Trump isn't a serious golfer. He's a guy who uses golf the same way he uses everything else: as part of a carefully managed image built around exaggeration, ego, and people being too intimidated or too tribal to call obvious nonsense what it is.