When my friends Mick and Chuck and I started playing golf in the mid ’90s, we played on a second-rate public course in Los Angeles County.
As a threesome in those days, we were often asked to add a single to complete a foursome. Some of them were nice guys, others weren’t.
It was all a matter of luck.
Then we learned that someone who occasionally showed up at this course was famous murderer O.J. Simpson, looking to join a threesome and play a round. We never actually saw him. We only played there once or twice a month, but the three of us discussed how we would react if he did want to play with us.
Two of us said we would refuse, one said he would play with him.
All I will say is that wasn’t me.
Of course, there was one person who would be even worse than Simpson. At least O.J. didn’t cheat (at golf).
Now let’s be fair. Donald Trump doesn’t play on public courses, and he doesn’t play in Georgia. But I recently finished reading Rick Reilly’s wonderful book, “Commander in Cheat,” and it does indeed tell, as Reilly says, how golf explains Trump.
You’ve doubtless heard the stories about how Daddy Fred Trump was so obsessive about telling Little Don (back when he was less than huge) that the worst thing in life was to be a loser. If Daddy was going to love Little Don, the kid had to win at any cost. So the kid Daddy Fred called the “grouchy little homo” learned to cheat, cheat, cheat.
The real shame of it is that golf is the one sport that makes honor a big part of the game. There are plenty of cases in which professional golfers called penalties on themselves that no one else even noticed.
Not our Don.
Read Reilly’s book. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so horrifying. All sorts of cases where balls Don hit into the rough and the balls got kicked out into the fairway. Or putts on which he called “gimmies” that were anything but.
Of course there are other reasons you wouldn’t want to be around him. A 78-year-old man who is morbidly obese and who eats all the wrong stuff might have, well, gas problems.
Then there are the stories — with photographic proof — of Don driving his golf cart ONTO the green.
To be fair, when he gets called on it, he reminds the complainant that he owns the course.
Of course, ordinary people like me and my two friends never play on courses like Trump’s and we never play with people like Don. In fact, it has been 13 years and 2,400 miles since I played with either of my friends. It has actually been five years since I played at all.
Regardless, I wouldn’t want to play with Don or the Juice.
Although it might be fun to see Trump make a wrong turn at a water hazard.
