President Donald Trump veered off the fairway into the rough after being asked during a Thanksgiving call with troops just how good he is at golf.
In a livestreamed call Thursday with troops from bases around the world, Trump was asked his true golf handicap and if he and former President Joe Biden are ever going to play a match.
Trump claimed he had invited Biden, but he never showed up, but dodged the question about his own golf handicap except to suggest it was far better than his predecessor’s. In an extended brag, he also insisted that his dozens of tournament wins were all “legitimate.”
Trump has gone golfing on nearly 25 percent of the days he’s been back in office, according to a website that tracks his time on the green.
He golfed through it over the summer while his administration was taking heat from his own supporters for failing to release the Jeffrey Epstein files and again this fall during the record-long government shutdown.
Asked about his handicap during the Thanksgiving call—after bluntly breaking the news that a National Guard member shot near the White House had died—Trump rambled off into a defense of his golfing record.
“I know a lot about golf. I’ve won 38 club championships, and I don’t get to practice much. I won one last year,” he said. “I won a club championship at a big club, beating a 27-year-old kid. I said, ‘You know, I’m decades older than you.’ But I said, ‘The fairway doesn’t know how old you are as you walk up the middle and he’s in the rough.’ And, uh, I’ve been a good golfer over the years.”
He didn’t say what his handicap is, describing it only as “very low.”
The president has been dogged for years by accusations that he cheats at his favorite pastime by kicking balls from the rough into the fairway, instructing his caddies to throw opponents’ balls into bunkers, and awarding himself numerous “gimme putts,” according to The Times of London.
He also regularly claims to “win” tournaments at his own clubs, including competitions where he has skipped rounds or where nobody has seen him play, The Palm Beach Post reported.
During his Thanksgiving call, Trump insisted that all of his tournament wins had been “legitimate” and then launched into a rant about Biden.
“A lot of people talk, but they can’t play, like Biden. Biden can’t hit a ball 30 yards. I’m telling you, I looked at his swing. He cannot hit a ball 30 yards. He said he was a 6-handicapped. He said—that was the only thing that made me angry during the debate with him—he said he was a 6. I said, ‘You’re not a 6.’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m an 8.’ I said, ‘That was quick. I picked up 2.’ But he’s not 100.”
During the 2024 debate, Trump and Biden sparred over the former president’s golf handicap, which Biden said was previously an 8 but that he’d gotten down to a 6 while he was serving as vice president under Barack Obama.
Golf pros who analyzed footage of Trump’s swing told the Daily Beast in August that Trump’s game was above average and impressive for a man in his late seventies, but that it wasn’t champion-level play.
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