“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”-George Orwell.
For previous entries, click here.
Via The Daily Beast: Golf Author Calls Out ‘F***ing Cheat’ Trump Over New Viral Course Video.
If I am being fair (more fair than Trump ever is), I will admit that while it looks like he is dragging the ball into the hole (the shorter of the two motions in the video), it is unclear to me from the video clip if that is for sure what he was doing. Riley has a stronger point about the caddy dropping the ball. Indeed, I am not sure what in the world is going on there. Assuming the ball was previously marked, Trump needed to return the ball to the marker to putt.
I will say this: most golfers are pretty anal about the rules (golf is very much a collection of often byzantine and frustrating rules). This is especially true in tournaments (even just ones at the local course) and/or if money is on the line.*
The only reason any of the above caught my attention is this.
Not only is this some North Korea nonsense (the official White House feed should not be boosting the President’s ego), but I simply don’t believe it. I am willing to believe a person who owns their own golf courses and has been playing their whole lives might be a good golfer. But the notion that he is that good at 79 years of age, not to mention that much better than the field of competitors, simply boggles the mind.
Especially when there was this video from last week in Scotland, where we see some unambiguous, no-doubt-about-it cheating.
Also, this.
If he is going to cheat like that in a casual round, there is no doubt in my mind that he would cheat at a tournament at his own course.
And, there’s Riley’s book, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, which is an account of Riley playing with Trump and interviewing others who also played with him.
Prophetically, Riley tweeted this before the Bedminster tournament.
To be clear: I recognize that there are so many examples of the poor quality of Trump’s character that this may seem small potatoes. For example, I think that cheating on all of his spouses is worse. I think that his mountain of lies is worse. Indeed, I could go on (and on and on and on). But I do think that things like this can be clarifying for some people. But even beyond that, and why it seems worth noting for this specific series of posts, is that I think we shouldn’t allow ourselves to become inured to even his petty behavior, because this kind of utterly unnecessary, self-aggrandizing public dishonesty provides real, direct, and unfiltered evidence of his character.
I think, too, if you are a golfer, you know exactly how gross this is. I played yesterday. In full disclosure, I carded a 112. I am not very good. This included a stroke wherein I had a truly terrible lie, and my first attempt to dislodge the ball on the ridge of a steep hill resulted in the ball popping up and falling back down in almost the same location. But it was a stroke, and I counted it. I am not playing against the people I am playing with; I am playing against myself more than anything else.
Update: Let me put it this way. A person is free to play the game however they wish. If, for example, Trump’s age and health mean he wants the caddy to do more than he should, fine. If he wants to improve his lie because it enhances his enjoyment of the game, have at. But what you can’t do as a golfer is cheat and then brag about your score (let alone tout your tournament wins to the world). One of my sons recently played with some folks who talked about how they scored in the low 90s, but then he found out that they never counted anything over a double-bogie** and that they had very generous parameters for gimmee putts (if you play golf, you know what that means, and it means fraudulent scores). If I played like that, I would score in the 90s as well. You can play the rules loosely, or you can brag about your score. You cannot do both.
Indeed, when I look at various responses on Twitter to Riley and other’s comments on this, what I see are a lot of people who have never played golf, don’t know or understand the culture around game (especially at expensive clubs), nor do they understand how rare it is for an amature to score sub-70 in a round, let alone two in a row (correction: I misread the card, that is his gross score and then adjusted net, but the basic point stands).
What all this shows is that Trump is not interested in real winning. He is not interested in real accomplishments. He is interested in appearing to win. He is interested in faux dominance.
This should be remembered the next time he fires someone because he doesn’t like the numbers, or, more importantly, the next time he is sitting next to a world leader pretending like he just made the best deal ever.
He continues to be a fake and a phony who preens, blusters, and bullies, but at the end of the day, is still just a reality TV star who produces his own show.
I would hasten to add that that doesn’t mean he isn’t doing a lot of damage, because he is.
*My youngest son and I were playing a month or so ago on a public course one Sunday morning, and there was a group of four guys clearly playing for money. Some rules questions led to the biggest shouting match I have ever seen on a golf course, and later, we noticed the group had split into two pairs. The issue was one of sequencing, and not about an actual shot. It was purely a rules issue, not a skill one. If non-golfers don’t believe me about how rules are important to serious golfers, go to a golf forum and watch people debate these things.
**If you double-bogie every hole, you score 108. So if you manage a couple of pars and five bogies, you break 100. And if you are getting free putts from 10 feet out, you are likely getting more than two pars and maybe even a birdie or two. I can guarantee that under those parameters, I would have easily broken 100 yesterday, as my poor score was largely the result of several blow-up holes (8s, 9s, and a 10).
