16

THE STAIN

Remember, Ricky, golf is a gentleman’s sport.

—JACK REILLY

WHEN JAPAN SURRENDERED AT the end of World War II, my Army lieutenant dad was assigned to duty in Tokyo. He’d heard that Emperor Hirohito played golf. So he went to the Imperial Palace and knocked on the guard house door. When they asked what he wanted, he said, “Well, I wondered if the emperor might like to play golf with me this afternoon.”

That’s how it’s always been in my family. Golf solves everything. Our very bones are made of balata. The whole family golfs—nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, nearly every single one of us. I can remember, when I was six years old, my mom, dad, and brother being on the pages of the sports section because they all were playing in the same tournament. I have an aunt who still wins her flight and she’s 91. We have a giant nine-hole family tournament every year—The Reilly Roundup—and everybody wears a yellow shirt, just like the one we buried my dad in.

So when a man like President Donald Trump pees all over the game I love, lies about it, cheats at it, and literally drives tire tracks all over it, it digs a divot in my soul and makes me want to march into the Oval Office, grab him by that long red tie, and yell, “Stop it!”

You can think Trump has made America great again. You can think Trump has made America hate again. But there’s one thing I know: He’s made golf terrible again.

We were just getting past the stereotype of golf being a game for fat, blowhard, rich white guys playing on fenced-off courses while people of color push lawnmowers behind them—and along comes Trump.

We were just getting people out of their stupid golf carts and back to walking, the way golf is best—when along comes Trump, a man who believes exercise only leads to death, who never walks when he plays, even in defiance of his walk-only rules at Turnberry and Aberdeen.

We were just getting millennials to think golf was cool again with stylish, athletic players like Tiger and Jordan Spieth and Lexi Thompson—when along comes Trump in his 1990 Dockers ready to bust at the seam playing overwatered, gold-doorknob golf courses with all his cronies, making golf about as cool as Depends and leaving a big orange stain on the game we may never get out.

Trump treats golf like it’s some sort of reward for being rich. In fact, that’s exactly what he thinks. “I’d like to see golf be an aspirational game,” he has said more than once, “where you aspire to join a club someday, you want to play, you go out and become successful. That’s the way I feel.”

Enjoy bowling, poor people! Sucks to be you.

He said it to a Golf Digest reporter once, and the reporter was flabbergasted. He replied, “So you’d like [golf] to be an elitist activity?”

Trump: “It was always meant to be, and people get there through success.”

No, that’s never what it was meant to be. It was a game invented in Scotland by shepherds. In Scotland, it’s still a game of the people. It’s available and affordable to everybody from the blue bloods who live in the stately mansions to the rough hands who laid the bricks. At most golf clubs in Scotland, you finish your round, tip your caddy, then drink with him at the bar afterward. He’s a member.

Golf in America isn’t the least bit Trumpy, either. The average price of four hours of fresh-air fun in America is $35, according to the National Golf Foundation. It’s too wonderful a game to confine to any one set of people. Ninety percent of golfers play primarily at public courses. Golf is for everybody of any age, race, or bank account. So what’s wrong with that? Okay, they’ll never have white Rolls-Royces or solid-gold telescopes, but why can’t they have golf?

“Any golf, any place, any time is going to do a soul good,” Ben Crenshaw once told me. “It’s not just for the rich. Golf is for everybody. Golf makes a difference in people’s lives. It doesn’t matter who you are, young and old, rich or poor, it’s a game that you can stay with the rest of your life. There aren’t many games like that.”

Golf should be aspirational? That’s not what Arnold Palmer thought. The son of a club pro, Arnie brought golf to the plumbers and the typists.

Golf is a reward for making money? That’s not what Tiger Woods thinks, either. The son of a Vietnam vet, the first black winner of the Masters, he’s opened up the game to hundreds of millions of people.

Golf is a reward for success? That’s not what The First Tee thinks. It gives low-income kids a chance to learn golf’s gifts of skill, manners, and friendship, for free. Ask Tom Watson. You go to his house and his trophy cases are mostly empty. They’re on loan to The First Tee.

If golf was only for country club kids, the world would’ve never known Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Arnie, Seve Ballesteros, Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie, and 100 other great players.

But here’s where Trump is killing my game: Only 8.5% of Americans play golf, which means 91.5% don’t really know what it’s about. They don’t get the jubilation of watching a little ball that was just sitting there a few seconds ago rocket off against a bright blue sky to a target 300 yards away no wider than a broomstick. They don’t get that 18 briskly walked holes carrying your bag is a joyous way to work out. They’ve never known the feeling of laughing with three friends all afternoon so hard that you just gotta go an emergency 9. How many of that 91.5% won’t even try the game now because of Trump? How many more will listen to his blowhard golf bragging and hear about his shameless cheating and avoid golf like bed bugs?

Most people want to grow the game. Double Down wants to shrink it. “It shouldn’t be a game for all strata of society,” he once said. “It should be aspirational. By getting away from it, it actually hurt golf.”

No, what’s hurting golf is Trump.

You might be thinking, “What does golf have to do with being president? What does it matter that he cheats at it? What’s it got to do with leading the country?”

Everything.

If you’ll cheat to win at golf, is it that much further to cheat to win an election? To turn a Congressional vote? To stop an investigation?

If you’ll lie about every aspect of the game, is it that much further to lie about your taxes, your relationship with Russians, your groping of women?

If you’re adamant that that the poor don’t deserve golf, is it that much further to think they don’t deserve health care, clean air, safe schools?

I’m glad my dad didn’t live to see a Commander in Cheat like Trump. It would’ve turned his stomach. Somebody who wins club championships from the next state is not a gentleman. Somebody who makes his caddies cheat for him to earn their tip is not a gentleman. Somebody who bullies and manipulates and yells that his courses are the best in the world when that world absolutely knows otherwise is not a gentleman.

I feel sorry for Donald Trump. I feel sorry for someone who has to juggle that many spinning lies, who has to fight that many endless feuds, who has to cheat and lie and insult so many good people just to stand on a rickety first-place podium that never stops needing rebuilding. How exhausting must that be?

The truth is, the person in golf Donald Trump cheats the most is himself. He’s cheating himself of the joy, the endless challenge, golf brings. Every golfer who loves the game loves it for the battle it brings within himself—Can I rise up to be as good as I want to be today? In life, we’re defined by the obstacles we overcome. That’s the stuff we hang on our inner wall. But if you cheat to get around those obstacles, you never know the thrill of actually beating them.

It’s like buying a trophy in a pawn shop. You can shine it up and show it off and pretend you won it, but when you get close to it, it only reflects the face of a loser.