When former US president Donald Trump announced that he shot 67 to win the senior championship at his eponymous club in Bedminster, New Jersey last week, he was aware enough to point out that this wondrous feat was witnessed by many neutral observers, including his security detail. As if anybody would otherwise doubt the veracity of this totally believable feat.
“Not much you can do, even if you wanted to,” he wrote, just in case cynical naysayers or left-wing commies might suspect some foul play was afoot. “And I don’t. For some reason, I am just a good golfer/athlete – I have won many Club championships and it is a great honour.”
The honour is all ours. As his adoring public marvelled at this, according to his latest police booking, 6ft 3 ins, 215lb orange Adonis, somehow, at 77, managing to go eight shots better than multiple big winner Phil Mickelson at the same course two weeks ago, Don Van Natta Jr tweeted an interesting response. An investigative journalist with a long-standing pedigree at ESPN and the New York Times, Van Natta Jr posted about his own experience playing 18 holes with a previous Mulligan-addicted incumbent of the White House.
“Clinton took nearly 200 shots but carded an 82,” he wrote of a round they played as part of Van Natta Jr’s research for a book about American presidents and their love of the sport. “And we were surrounded by Secret Service agents. No agent said a single word or even seemed surprised. So ...”
That two politicians who enjoy famously uneasy relationships with the truth might alter their golf scores shouldn’t surprise anyone. From Kim Jong il snagging an admittedly impressive 11 holes-in-one during his debut round to Idi Amin supposedly being the undefeated heavyweight boxing champion of Uganda for nine years, narcissistic leaders always want to exaggerate their sporting ability.
Witness Joe Biden on the campaign trail in Ohio back in the day, bragging about the time he played gridiron there for the University of Delaware against the local Bobcats. Great story but complete fiction. He never played college football.
Among the plentiful entertaining yarns in Rick Reilly’s Commander-in-Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, an entire book chronicling one man’s serial abuse of the rules of the game, there’s the explanation of how caddies at Winged Foot in New York nicknamed the future president “Pele” due to his propensity for kicking his ball out of bad lies when nobody was looking.
A scurrilous accusation against a stand-up guy who has previously claimed to have been the best high school baseball player in the state, somebody so gifted he didn’t bother to play in college and just chose a career in real estate over the major leagues because the money was better.
Sure, those nitpicking nabobs at the Washington Post catalogued this very man delivering 30,573 untruths (many of so much greater importance than golf) during four years in the Oval Office but brazenly claiming to have shot 67 is the type of boast plenty of his followers will identify with and relish. It’s truly remarkable how many middle-aged fellas you meet in these parts who break 80 when playing famous courses on faraway vacations when nobody is around to verify.
For the average American male, braggadocio often comes as standard and lying about sporting achievements, especially those in their youth, is woven into their DNA.
Yes, we’ve all encountered the pub bore in Ireland who was robbed of county minor glory by injury or a selector with a grudge, but it’s almost an article of faith in this country that every superannuated jock must endlessly crow about how good they once were, how near they came to making it all the way to the show, how they can still bench press with the best of them. There’s a little Trump in all of these lads.
The disturbing thing is that, exactly like Trump, most of the deluded fools peddle ridiculously far-fetched lies that are, in the internet age, easy to disprove
Spend any time on the sidelines of children’s sports and you will meet an astonishing number of fathers and coaches who will wistfully assure you they “coulda been a contender”. Who nearly made it to the top. Who got so close to stardom. In their dreams.
The lad who might have played quarterback for the New York Giants except he broke his throwing arm. When he was nine. The fellah who really would and should have been drafted into the NBA. If only he hadn’t stopped growing at 14 and become disillusioned.
The disturbing thing is that, exactly like Trump, most of the deluded fools peddle ridiculously far-fetched lies that are, in the internet age, easy to disprove. In a nation where local media afford high school sports blanket coverage, anybody purporting to have been a teen prospect will be exposed the moment you run their name through the local newspaper archive. Yet something in their troubled psychs still compels them to inflate and invent.
At a graduation party earlier this summer, a fellow guest segued smoothly from lamenting the parlous state of the local baseball clubs to recounting how he was once on the radar of the New York Yankees’ scouts. A high school pitching phenom, apparently, destined for the Bronx Bombers until he blew out his elbow.
I listened. I smiled. The practised reflex response. I knew he was lying. They always are. Paunchy Walter Mittys spinning spurious yarns about imaginary brushes with sporting greatness are as plentiful around here as former presidents falsifying golf scores.
