How Trump made golf a tool of diplomacy

In 1969, one of the great acts of sportsmanship occurred at Royal Birkdale golf club in Southport, England, when the Ryder Cup came down to the last green. Britain’s Tony Jacklin had a three-foot putt to halve the final match with Jack Nicklaus and make the score 16-16, but the American picked up Jacklin’s marker and said he was happy to share the spoils. “I don’t think you would have missed,” he said, “but I didn’t want to give you the chance.”

The gesture was immortalized in the naming of a Florida golf course, the Concession, which has just been awarded the next three senior PGA Championships, one of the majors. I suspect that Donald Trump, who owns three courses in that state, might regard Nicklaus as a loser. The coat of arms for Trump’s latest course in Scotland has the motto Numquam Concedere (“never let them have a gimme,” to paraphrase) and the emblem of an eagle clutching two balls. Subtle.

One thing about Trump’s visit to Aberdeenshire is that he will have a GREAT opening round

Police and protestors are ready for Trump’s visit to Aberdeenshire this weekend, where he will open the course at Menie, which is due to be named the MacLeod after his mother and has, the family boasts, “the largest sand dunes in Scotland”. That might trigger environmentalists, since the ancient links has lost its Site of Special Scientific Interest status as a result of Trump’s development.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to travel north during the visit to bend a knee and watch Trump drive, since the way to the President’s heart is by admiring his swing. One of the things Trump would most like Starmer to bring as a gift is the right to host the Open Championship, which was held last week at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland. When Trump bought the Turnberry course in Ayrshire, Scotland in 2014, it was with the expectation that the Open would follow.

The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, Scotland (R&A), which organizes the Open, initially made positive noises and it is believed the course had been earmarked to host the tournament in 2020. Turnberry is undeniably a magnificent course, rated the eighth finest outside the US by Golf Digest, and it has hosted four excellent Opens including in 1977, when Nicklaus slugged it out for four days with Tom Watson, and the Open in 2009, when Watson almost won again at the age of 59. It would be a more than worthy venue.

Then Trump decided to become president, and his controversial comments made people feel uneasy. In 2015, Peter Dawson, the outgoing chief executive of the R&A, said that a bit of time should pass before returning to Turnberry.

His successor, Martin Slumbers, took a harder line, saying it could not be held there because the focus would be on the course’s owner rather than the golfers. This came after the PGA of America removed the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump’s Bedminster course in New Jersey following the attack on the Capitol in 2021.

Since then, the position against giving Trump an Open has become more nuanced. Mark Darbon, the new R&A chief executive, says he would “love” the Open to return to Turnberry but while he has discussed it recently with Eric Trump, Donald’s son, there are “logistical challenges”. The course is in the middle of nowhere and the transport links and hotel accommodation can’t cope. Only 120,000 could attend Turnberry in 2009, while 280,000 came to Portrush. Sorry Donald, nothing personal.

A feasibility study, that old favorite for kicking things into the long grass (and the rough can be very long at the Open), has been commissioned to ease the political pressure. If that fails, they can fall back on simple bureaucratic inertia. The next two Opens have been allocated – Birkdale in 2026 and St Andrews in 2027 – and it is believed that Muirfield in East Lothian, Scotland, which last hosted an Open in 2013, will be given 2028 as the reward for agreeing to allow women members. The last time three successive Opens were held in Scotland was 1893, so that means we’re looking at 2030, when Trump will be 84 and (presumably) no longer in the White House.

This may be nudged back even further if there are difficult scenes at the Ryder Cup in late September, to be held in Bethpage, New York, where the fans are notoriously raucous. Trump will surely be there on the tee, a week after his state visit to Britain, having missed the chance to host a Ryder Cup in his first term. It was to be at Whistling Straits, Wisconsin, in 2020, a few weeks before he fought re-election, but was postponed by the pandemic. A US win might have swayed the election for him. He will not miss this Ryder Cup but if it is a rowdy one – expect no sporting concessions this time – the R&A may find a new reason to delay a decision.

One thing that is certain about Trump’s visit to Scotland is that he will have a GREAT opening round. He is a more than decent golfer to judge by footage (though his declared handicap of 2.8 raises eyebrows), but he has never knowingly played badly, certainly not at a club he owns. Two weeks ago, he won the members’ championship at Bedminster yet again, while in 2023 he won a two-day competition at his West Palm Beach course, despite being 600 miles away on the first day. Trump explained that he’d had a brilliant practice round two days before and so submitted that as his Saturday scorecard in absentia, meaning the field began Sunday five strokes behind.

This performance, Trump declared, proved that he had the “strength and stamina” to deserve a second term. He certainly has the sneakiness and chutzpah, though he falls a long way behind Kim Jong-il, the Eternal Scratch Champion of Pyong-yang, who famously once had five holes-in-one during a round that was 38 under par. Trump and Kim’s sporting prowess matches that of Vladimir Putin, who has scored eight goals in an ice hockey match three times, and Mao Zedong, who was said to have swum ten miles of the Yangtze in just over an hour.

It was ever thus with vain leaders, whose sporting boasts are rarely challenged. The Emperor Nero competed at the Olympics in the race for four-horse chariots, steering a vehicle pulled by ten horses. The excessive horsepower meant Nero crashed at the first corner, but he successfully persuaded the judges to award him the laurels since he should have won.

Trump’s latest visit to Bedminster put him within sight of Barack Obama in the list of golf enthusiast presidents. Obama played 306 rounds while in office, and Trump is now up to 304 after six months of his second term. During the 2016 election, Trump claimed he would be too busy to play golf as president. He then squeezed in 11 rounds in his first eight weeks. This term, he was back on the course on Day 6. And again on Day 7.

Trump is also not far behind Bill Clinton, the only president whose handicap went down in the White House – but he has some way to go to beat the top two. Dwight Eisenhower notched up 800 rounds in office, some quite iffy. Bob Hope quipped: “If Eisenhower slices the budget like he slices a golf ball, the nation has nothing to worry about.”

Way out in front is Woodrow Wilson, who played every other day during the first world war, including at the Versailles peace conference, but he remained mediocre. As a presidential duffer, he comes behind William Taft, who once recorded a 27 on one hole, including 17 to get out of a bunker, but believed that it was gentlemanly to be honest. “There is nothing which furnishes a greater test of character and self-restraint than golf,” Taft said.

Trump takes a different view, which is why it is unsurprising that world leaders now see golf as a tool of diplomacy. Shinzo Abe, the deceased former prime minister of Japan, played five rounds with Trump and in 2016 gave him a $3,700 golden driver. Abe did so well out of this that Yoon Suk Yeol, the President of South Korea, took up the sport to help his own diplomatic game. Nigel Farage’s close friendship with Trump may in part be due to this shared interest – the Reform UK leader says he almost took up a US college golf scholarship – though Farage’s bad back doesn’t allow him to play any more.

When Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House in May, the South African President took with him a pair of major-winning golfers, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen, in the hope that it would impress Trump. Alexander Stubb, the Finnish President and a former college golfer in South Carolina, negotiated the purchase by the US of some Finnish icebreakers after he played (and won) a tournament in Palm Beach with Trump as his partner in March.

That will be the challenge for Starmer when he pays homage. Unlike David Cameron, who rewarded Obama for his Brexit intervention in 2016 with a round at the Grove in Hertfordshire, Starmer can’t fake an interest in golf. He was the first prime minister to reject honorary membership of the Ellesborough golf club near Chequers – the grace-and-favor countryside residence of Britain’s prime ministers. Perhaps he will bring a star golfer like Sir Nick Faldo with him to swing for Britain.

Starmer did have a professional golfer in his party’s ranks in Brian Leishman, Member of Parliament for Alloa and Grangemouth, but the Socialist Campaign Group (a left-wing caucus within Britain’s Labour Party) member, who recently lost the whip for rebelling, will surely not play ball. How about the Paymaster General? Nick Thomas-Symonds’s skill with a mashie niblick is unknown, but he was named Nicklaus by a golf-obsessed father. For diplomatic reasons, Starmer may want to allow Trump to say that his course was blessed by a British Nicklaus. Just don’t expect the President to concede any short putts.