8
YOUR DAY IN TRUMPLAND
He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.
—MICKEY MANTLE
REALLY? YOU HAVE A tee time with the President of the Freaking United States?
Okay, brace yourself, because what you’re about to experience isn’t really golf. It’s more of a para-military heavily armed exercise with odd-shaped sticks, using a vague set of rules that requires you to lose, and it will all be over very quickly so put your memory on “save.”
First of all, you’ll play at one of Trump’s courses—since he’s been president, he’s played only at his own courses. He hasn’t played once anywhere else, even at the only un-Trump course where he’s a member: Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, New York.
Me, I’d rent a car. Yours could get egged by protesters. With Trump spending so much time at his courses, thousands of Trump resisters have come to realize it’s a great place to remind him how much they loathe him. As a result, the police blotters in Trump golf towns make fabulous Cheerios reading. For instance:
• A woman wrote a Spanish slur in lipstick on the entrance sign to Trump Los Angeles. The man she was with peed on it.
• About 200 activists laid down on the front lawn of Trump Los Angeles and formed a human-body message reading: “RESIST!”
• A woman took a cornfield near Trump Bedminster and carved into it the words “VOTE” and “TRUTH” in letters 60 feet high and 75 feet wide.
• Video posted by the Washington Post appeared to show at least four individuals in dark clothing using gardening tools to carve six-foot-tall letters into the green at Trump Los Angeles spelling out: “NO MORE TIGERS, NO MORE WOODS.”
• A 61-year-old man named Cliff Tillotson, owner of a successful construction firm in Hawaii, was charged with turning Trump golf greens into a kind of giant message board. At four different Trump courses, Tillotson allegedly used a chemical to write into dozens of greens things like, “If Jesus came back tomorrow he wouldn’t be an evangelical,” “Product of too much Propecia” (a slap at Trump’s use of a hair-loss drug), and an entire soliloquy from Macbeth. Personally, I’ve never had a putt over an entire Shakespearian soliloquy, but it has to be a bitch to read.
Every Saturday, the “People’s Motorcade,” as they call themselves, drives up and down outside the Bedminster gates carrying on with all kinds of anti-Trump signs and hijinks. There’s the truck with an effigy of Trump in the back complete with a Pinocchio nose. Oh, and for the trips when Trump choppers in, they’ve laid out a giant “FU45” near the landing pad for his viewing pleasure.
Because Trump once planned to build a family mausoleum on his Bedminster property (he now wants to be buried at Mar-a-Lago), protesters are dying all over the place. One day, at a major intersection near the front gates, about 30 people held a “die in,” laying on the ground, holding tombstones labeled with pre-existing conditions. A group called INDECLINE built an elaborate and extraordinary “Trump Cemetery” with realistic tombstones marking the deaths of “Decency,” “The American Dream,” and “The Last Snowman.”
Anyway, I hope you get to play Trump Bedminster, in New Jersey, because there’s nothing quite like it. Just to become a member can cost you up to $300,000. It was once the country estate of car tycoon John DeLorean, who would let his friend Jackie O ride her horse there among the pastoral hither and yon. It’s 45 minutes from Manhattan and 10 exits past the fanciest place you’ve ever been. Its two courses are pretty good, the service is immaculate, and the interiors are just slightly more lavish than a sultan’s dream. Enjoy the one-mile tree-lined driveway that takes you to a place that’s a cross between Augusta National and the Paris Ritz, only with sniper towers.
It’s literally true. When the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open finished at Trump Bedminster that summer, Fox started dismantling its camera towers. Hold on, the Secret Service said. We’d like to buy that tower. Now, whenever Trump is at Bedminster, there are two snipers in that tower, one looking out toward the course, the other watching over the swanky compound that includes Trump’s cottage (read: mansion), Ivanka’s cottage (ditto), and eight other actual rental cottages (luxurious), all surrounding a fabulous pool, lounge, and, one imagines, people in togas peeling grapes for you.
Bedminster might be Trump’s favorite place in the world. It has 36 holes, and unlike Mar-a-Lago, he doesn’t have to drag the 10 SUVs, the Beast presidential limo, and the SWAT team over to Trump International to play. It’s all right outside his front door. Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner spend lots of weekends at their cottage for the same reason. On Shabbat, they can simply walk the 100 yards to dinner without driving. Trump Bedminster is one of three official residences of the president—along with Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago—which means Congress allotted $41 million in 2017 to its official protection. His 17-day vacation there in August of 2018 cost taxpayers over $3 million.
“Gotta be 300 Secret Service, Marines, SWAT, everything,” the Bedminster car valet told me. “You know he’s coming because you hear the choppers. There’s always three—Marine One, Marine Two, and a Blackhawk—so nobody knows which one he’s in. They land right over there.” He pointed to a helicopter pad near the compound.
Q: Why doesn’t Trump ever go to the legendary Camp David in Maryland, traditionally the summer getaway spot for presidents and a place pre-set for security?
A: Because Camp David is for suckers. “Camp David is very rustic, it’s nice, you’d like it,” Trump said in an interview with a European journalist in 2017. “You know how long you’d like it? For about 30 minutes.”
Okay, you’re here. You’ll be directed to the locker room to change shoes. With golf carts, almost nobody sweats anymore playing golf, so golf locker rooms are pointless except as a way to feel rich, and Trump very much wants you to feel rich. Trump locker rooms are spectacular. When you walk, the marble squeaks under your feet. Drink the Trump coffee (out of business) or the Trump vodka (out of business) or the Trump water (out of business). Sink deeply into the leather couches and eat some Trump nuts (out of business). Go find his locker. At every American Trump course I visited, he had one, sometimes full size, sometimes half, always locked. Sometimes, the clubhouse guys get so sick of guests taking selfies in front of it, they tape over the nameplate.
Now it’s time to go hit a few warm-up shots on the practice range. This is where you’ll see Trump for the first time. He’ll greet you like a nephew greets his Lotto-winning uncle. He’ll give you the big 20-second, pull-you-in handshake. The left hand will be on your right shoulder. He’ll make you feel like a visiting king.
Trump is not big on practice. He’ll whack a few and want to go to the first tee. If you’re playing the Old Course at Bedminster, check out the cool plaque there. It reads:
Turns out the plaque misquoted him. “I don’t believe I said it exactly like that,” Fazio texted me. “It’s kinda like him calling you the publisher of Sports Illustrated. Sounds better.”
Bring your A game because you’ll be playing with decent golfers. Trump doesn’t suffer hacks. They take too long. If there’s a politician in the group, he will almost certainly be a Republican. Through 2018, Trump hadn’t played with a single Democratic member of Congress or state governor, despite reaming out Obama in a 2012 tweet for the same thing:
Obama should play golf with Republicans & opponents rather than his small group of friends. That way maybe the terrible gridlock would end.
You will not believe the security around you. There can be as many as 60 Secret Service agents, six SWAT guys, and 30 carts following along as you play, holding, among other things:
• The nuclear football
• The assistant chief of staff
• A doctor with vials of Trump’s blood
• A communications staff member
• The secure satellite phone
• The one-man portable bomb shelter
• An entire supply of gas masks, machine guns, and weapons
• A small missile, which really speeds up play
“I couldn’t believe what has to happen to get him around the course,” says 1989 Open Championship winner Mark Calcavecchia, who was teeing off one day at Trump International in Florida around the same time as Trump. “Just in front of the club, there was a fire truck, an ambulance, 10 black SUVs, police cars, dogs, everything. On the course, there were at least two Secret Service guys and at least one cart on every hole.
“Anyway, we finally teed off and he was about two or three groups behind us. We’ve got four holes left and now here he is, coming through us. They basically strip-searched us in the middle of the fairway. We all got patted down in case we had a gun out there. Anyway, we go into the dining room after. He was in there eating. I had to go through two or three detectors just to get to the dining room. I’m like, ‘Hey, man, we were just searched on the course. What do you think happened in five holes?’”
The story goes that one day when Trump was playing Bedminster, a member hit an unspeakable hook not just deep into the woods but bound for I-78. As the caddy was looking for it, he suddenly found four machine gun barrels in his face, all held by camouflaged Marines. So, the perimeter is covered, in case you were wondering.
Yes, other groups can still play when the president is playing, as long as they’re willing to stand down when he comes through, and he will come through. Trump plays breathtakingly fast—“When you pick up every putt within six feet, you can do that,” says one caddy—and it means the vanguard of the Secret Service has to work faster. You’ll be playing along at Bedminster when two Secret Service golf carts will come up quickly and stop you mid-6 iron.
“Gentlemen,” the agent will say. “Will you please step to the side of the fairway? The president is coming through.”
PLAYER: Sure. What hole is he on?
AGENT: 8.
PLAYER: But we’re on 11.
AGENT, LOUDER: Yes. Will you please stand aside?
You won’t have to wait long. Soon enough, Trump will come barreling through, charming and friendly, shaking everybody’s hand, thanking them for waiting, asking them how their round is going. He’ll even take pictures with you. “Just don’t post it on social media,” he’ll say, and they’ve almost all complied.
Okay, time to quiet the knocking of your knees and hit that first shot. Not to worry, Trump will make it fun. Playing with Trump, everybody has fun. He’ll pay attention to you. He’ll ask a thousand questions. How’s business? How much you pay for that putter? You wanna sell it? He’ll give you tips and he’ll know what he’s talking about. You gotta come more from underneath, like this! You’ll be answering his questions and working on his lesson and trying to keep up, and it will all be a big bowl of crazy.
Bill Clinton once said, “I love playing with him. He outdrives me on every single hole, but I forgive him.”
Don’t expect a lot of in-depth conversation with the president, though. Trump’s golf conversations go about 7,000 yards long and one inch deep. Often, Trump and his caddy ride in their own cart and will always be way ahead of you, the better to kick, foozle, or throw his ball out of the cabbage.
“It’s like a roller coaster ride,” says author James Patterson, who belongs to both Trump Westchester and Trump International in West Palm Beach. “He’s a good golfer. He’s a real golfer. But we rushed around more than I would’ve loved. We were playing through people all the time. I hate playing through people. You’re like, ‘Sorry about this. Won’t be but a minute. Excuse me.’ I don’t play well doing that.”
Eruzione got to play with him on the day of Barbara Bush’s funeral, the one Trump was or wasn’t invited to, depending on which network you watch. Eruzione was just standing around the pro shop at Trump Jupiter when the president called up looking to see which celebrities might be hanging around. Trump loves playing with celebrities. David Trout, the Jupiter pro, named Eruzione. “Great!” Trump said.
Eruzione had a ball. “It was great. We played fairly quickly. We went through five or six foursomes.” I’ve been playing golf 45 years and have never played through more than two foursomes in one round in my life. So five or six groups is triple warp speed.
Three and a half hours later—sometimes less—the round will be over and you’ll have no idea what he shot or you shot but it’ll be fun. I asked Eruzione how Trump played the day he played with him. “I don’t really know. We only putted out on a few holes. He had a couple of presidential mulligans. He said that was his right. He picked up putts. He’s the president; he can do whatever he wants to do. We really played fast and then he left. He had to get right out of there and go watch the Barbara Bush service. So I have no idea what he shot. He’d play four or five holes even, then make a double bogey and then he’d pick up. His tee ball was a little erratic that day. He’d push it to the right. He’s pretty good, though.”
Now he’ll invite you to the grill room for lunch. I wasn’t with Trump, though, the day I played Bedminster, so I skipped lunch and went straight to the caddyshack.
It’s actually not a shack at all, but a stately white one-story cottage near the first tee that’s a doppelganger for the Eisenhower cottage at Augusta. Trump hasn’t been invited to join Augusta, so perhaps this is his reasonable facsimile. Inside, a dozen guys in white overalls (also very Augusta) were watching a huge TV and eating free cheeseburgers whipped up by the resident caddy/cook, Scotty.
I love caddies because caddies will tell you the truth and use very few words doing it. A buddy of mine played awful one day in Ireland. He hit it all over the map. At the end of 18, he said to his caddy, “What do I owe you?” The caddy scowled at him and said, “A fucking apology.”
I sat at the Bedminster caddy house kitchen table and threw out a question to nobody and everybody:
So what’s it like working for Trump?
That sat them straight up in their seats.
“No cheating stories!” one caddy hollered out and everybody laughed.
“Mr. Trump is really generous,” one caddy began. “Every time he comes in here, [he asks] how we’re all doing, are we doing good, stuff like that. And he hands everybody a $100. Guys who aren’t here are always like, ‘Damn! I missed that?’”
A caddy over by the fridge wrinkled his nose.
FRIDGE CADDY: “Wait. You’re saying every single time he comes in here he hands everybody hundreds? Because I’ve never once seen that.”
FIRST CADDY: “Well, okay, not every time.”
FRIDGE CADDY: “I mean, how many times has he even been in here?”
FIRST CADDY: “Well, at least once.”
Everybody agreed Trump was a good player, an “8 or 9,” they all said, knowing full well that he tells the world he’s a 3.
Does he cheat?
There was a lot of sudden interest in birds out the window. One caddy held his hand up while looking me right in the eye. His expression was flat, but his eyes were very wide, like he was about to give me a clue on Password.
“Donald Trump never cheats,” he said, slowly and sternly.
He stared at me.
Blink. Stare. Blink.
“Ohhh!” I said. “His caddy cheats FOR him?”
The entire room howled. What followed was a dozen or so stories about just HOW he cheats.
• “He’s always got four balls in his pocket, if that tells you anything.”
• “He foozles his ball on every hole. All 18. I promise you. Every hole.”
• “He wants you to throw it out of the woods, kick it out of the rough, fluff up his lie. We all know the deal.”
Most of them said they didn’t mind doing it but felt a little bad when there was money on the line or a tournament going on.
“I have a friend at his course in Palm Beach,” one caddy said, “a really, really good player. He’s a +3 or +4 [that means he averages three or four strokes under par]. It kills him to do what you gotta do when you caddy for Trump. It absolutely kills him.”
All the cheating Trump’s caddies do for him actually hurts Trump’s game. His only real weakness, besides the ethics bypass he seems to have undergone, is chipping around the greens, where he’s just awful. That’s why his caddies fluff up nasty lies, take his balls out of bunkers, and kick his ball onto the green out of the cabbage. But if you never have those lies, you never learn how to hit them. “Because of the caddies, he never gets to practice those hard shots around the green,” says Ned Scherer, who has played with Trump at least 10 times and belongs to both Trump D.C. and Trump Jupiter. “Golf is all about practice, but he never even gets to try them.”
Trump’s caddy at Bedminster is almost always a very friendly Jamaican gentleman. People like to tell about the time Trump hit one in the pond. Everybody saw it splash a good 30 feet from shore. The Jamaican gentleman was forecaddying. When the group got up to the pond, the caddy says, “Boss, your ball is right here.” It was sitting safely on grass. Somebody in the group yelled at the caddy, “What did you do with your mask and flippers?”
Like so much of what happens with Trump, the caddies were revolted by the immorality of the cheating but impressed by the genius of it.
“For a while he kept a can of red spray paint in his cart,” one caddy said. “Whenever his ball hit a tree that he didn’t think was fair, he’d go up and paint a big X on it. The next day, it was gone.”
“That’s true!” somebody else yelled. “It’s like the mafia with him. You get the red X, you’re dead.”
It’s a great gig, caddying at Bedminster, and none of them want to wreck it, which is why they’re smart enough to keep their names out of this. They’re also smart enough to keep up with the main two Trump caddy rules.
1. If you’re caddying for Trump, keep the hell up.
The caddies say his golf cart—the #1—is rigged to go twice as fast as the rest. Keep up with him or put in your application at Chili’s. “You gotta run. I mean you gotta sprint. Especially if you’re forecaddying. We used to have this guy, he’d come in from 18 with Mr. Trump, run straight into that bathroom, and throw up. But he always made it.”
2. If you’re caddying against Trump, lose.
“Mr. Trump always takes the best caddy,” an older caddy explained, “and he makes sure the guy he’s playing against gets a shitty caddy or a brand-new caddy. We had this one guy, it was his first week, and it was a match with Mr. Trump and one of our best players versus these two guys from another club. The visitors got the new kid. But somehow, this kid got them around pretty good and it’s all tied going into 18. Now, Mr. Trump is fuming. The kid has no idea he’s about to get fired. No clue he’s got a noose around his neck. But Mr. Trump’s partner pulls it out and they end up winning, but, man, that kid came close.”
Funny, though, the best Trump story I heard wasn’t from a caddy but from a member who came up to me as I was looking at the tournament plaques on the locker room wall. Trump was listed as winner of the “Super Seniors Club Championship” three times, which, naturally, Trump counts in his 18 club championships. Super Seniors is usually defined as age 60 and over. He was also listed as the winner of the “Senior Club Championship” one time—50 and over. But on the regular “Club Championship” plaque, he wasn’t listed at all. But there was another plaque, the “Bedminster Member-Member,” and Trump’s name was on that three times. A “member-member” is a two-man team tournament. It’s usually a one-day deal, the team with the lowest best-ball score wins.
Anyway, this barrel-chested guy came up to me.
“You know how Donald got one of those?” he said.
No, but I’d sure like to.
“Okay, you’ll love this. One year we were playing the Member-Member on the Old Course. But Trump wasn’t in it. He and his buddy were just playing by themselves at the New Course. When they were done, he came in to the pro shop and asked what score won the Member-Member. They told him some number, net 61 or something. Whatever. And Trump goes, ‘Oh, me and so-and-so played better than that today. So we actually won.’ And the pro is like, ‘I’m sorry?’ And Trump tells them that he and his buddy should be the winners and the guy should put their names on the plaque instead. And that’s how he won one of those Member-Members. Can you believe that?”
Yes. Yes, I can.
But you? You should definitely go to lunch with him, because it’s the most unforgettable burger you’ll ever have.
Take his lunches at Trump Washington. According to a waiter I spoke to there, the Secret Service always puts him at the corner table, a six-top. There are agents everywhere. There’s an agent standing in each corner of the grill, too, with more scattered around the restaurant. There’s even one with the chef, all morning, to watch where he gets the food and how he cooks it. “Mr. Trump always has a burger, every time,” the waiter said. “He also likes to come for breakfast before his round.”
Trump will order up a ton of fries, cheeseburgers, maybe some hot dogs, and lots of Diet Cokes. Anybody can come up and sit down. Yes, you heard that right. Anybody can come up to the president’s table and have a seat, ask questions, shoot the breeze. Is this a great country or what?
Keep your ears open, because Trump will say nearly anything. It was at a post-round lunch early in his presidency when Trump told a group of Bedminster members the White House was “a fucking dump,” a quote that made it into Alan Shipnuck’s story on Trump in Sports Illustrated, caused a bit of a dustup, and was renounced by Trump in a tweet:
I love the White House, one of the most beautiful buildings (homes) I have ever seen. But Fake News said I called it a dump—TOTALLY UNTRUE
But a source inside Bedminster corroborates it. “This was just after he’d been elected,” the source said. “He was having lunch and pontificating on this and that, about Paris (climate change) and how he’d kicked Hillary’s ass and just everything. And then he goes, ‘I can’t believe I gotta live in the White House. What a fucking dump.’”
Keep your head on a swivel, too, because there’s always insanity that comes with Trump on a golf day. Remember when Trump greeted 180 Harley Davidson cyclists as part of a bizarre pro-Trump anti-Harley Davidson rally? That happened outside the clubhouse at Bedminster. Remember that whole incident when a Breitbart reporter alleged that Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbed her violently by the arm while she was trying to ask Trump a question? That happened at Trump Jupiter. Remember all those Cabinet-post interviewees who kept pouring in and out of meetings with Trump? That happened a lob wedge away from the first tee at Trump Bedminster.
Also, as long as you’re on property, would you keep an eye out for the famous painting?
It’s of Trump. It’s six feet tall and was won by Melania at a charity auction for $20,000 (outbidding LPGA star Paula Creamer). It was one of those speed paintings. You know, it takes the guy six minutes and you think he’s terrible and then he flips it right side up and there’s—Jimi Hendrix! Except this one, painted in September of 2016 by Michael Israel, was of Trump. The problem was Trump paid for it with $10,000 out of the Trump Foundation, according to the New York Attorney General’s office, which is very illegal. If you buy a painting with charity money, it has to be used for charitable purposes—like for the wall of a hospital. But Melania bought it and hung it at Doral, according to the New York Attorney General’s office.
There’s another famous Trump painting that was never painted at all but still caused some teeth gnashing. After Trump won the election, three members of Winged Foot—where Trump has belonged since 1969—wanted to honor their member/president with a huge painting, to be hung in the clubhouse. “Three members out of 900, by the way,” says Thomas Leslie, Winged Foot’s president. “They wrote a letter to me saying they thought it was appropriate that the club put up a painting of Mr. Trump now that he was president.” Leslie said thanks but no thanks. “I said that without taking any kind of political view on this, we only hang pictures of golfers who’ve won major championships here or those who were pros here.” Left unsaid was that with the Men’s U.S. Open coming to Winged Foot in 2020, the less ammo you can give the protesters, the better.
Okay. It’s time to say goodbye. But before you go, look around for the famous American Academy of Hospitality Sciences Five-Star Diamond Award plaques every Trump club usually has. I’ve probably seen them at five different Trump courses.
These plaques are quite a rare honor—“another feather in our cap,” as Trump told Mar-a-Lago members in an email once. Except the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences isn’t really an academy and it isn’t a science. It’s just a guy named Joey (No Socks) Cinque and his secretary/girlfriend (No Nylons?) working out of Joey’s apartment in New York.
Joey No Socks is quite a character. New York magazine says he survived a mob hit and was friends with mob capo John Gotti. New York police nabbed him selling stolen paintings and sculpture, to which Joey pleaded guilty but served no time. After his conviction, Joey bounced around until he came up with this academy beauty and started handing out these awards. Lo and behold, he struck up a friendship with Trump. Along the way, Trump has been named as a trustee, along with three Trump staffers, Trump’s two sons, plus Joey’s gal, and labor leader Ed Malloy, according to the Chicago Tribune. That could win you a lot of five-star diamond awards.
JOEY NO SOCKS: OK, this meeting will come to order. First item of business: who should get our famed American Academy of Hospitality Sciences Five-Star Diamond Award this month? The chair recognizes Mr. Trump.
TRUMP: I name Mr. Donald Trump!
DONALD JR.: I second it!
JOEY NO SOCKS: Done!
As of November 2017, former White House press secretary Anthony Scaramucci and Trump Bedminster General Manager David Schutzenhofer were still listed as “trustees.”
Joey No Socks even stood next to Trump at his big 2017 New Year’s Eve election-win party at Mar-a-Lago. “There’s nobody like him,” Trump said back in 2009. “He’s a special guy.”
When asked about socializing with a convicted mobster, Trump said, “Hey, if a guy’s going to give you an award, you take it. You don’t tend to look up his whole life story.”
Right. Why would a president want to do that?
Anyway, now it’s really time for you to go. Hope you didn’t steal anything. That’s Joey No Socks in your rearview mirror.