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Trump Implies He Could Win the US Open Golf Tournament and Now He’s a Laughing Stock on Twitter

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President Donald Trump is well-known for his outlandish bragging, and he doesn’t limit that to just politics. Appearing on Fox Sports Thursday morning, he bragged about his golfing prowess at Winged Foot Golf Club in  New York, where he happens to be a member. And where the U.S. Open is being held this week.

The layout at this golf club is notoriously challenging, but Trump told host Clay Travis that he often scores well enough that he probably should have entered the tournament, Mediaite reports. So Travis decided to ask him what his best score was.

“Low 70s, quite a bit,” Trump answered. “I’ve been a member there a long time. I could do pretty well.”

Par for this extremely difficult golf course is set at 70. Geoff Ogilvy, winner of the U.S. Open at Winged Foot in 2006, scored rounds of 71, 70, 72, and 72 to win the tournament at +5. People who know golf (which is not me. I know golf about as well as I know geometry, which is to say not at all) say they expect the winning scores to be about the same in this year’s tournament. That means Trump would have to score four rounds in the low 70s to be a contender to win the tournament.

Mediaite’s Joe DePaolo notes that Trump didn’t claim he could shoot in the low 70s this week. That’s noteworthy, he writes, because there’s a big difference between the way the golf course is set up for members and the way it’s set up for the U.S. Open. Which is just another way of saying it’s made considerably more difficult for the pro golfers.

Even so, Trump has been documented bragging about his game more than a few times and likes to boast that he has a 2.8 handicap, which is just a fancy way of saying he averages 2.8 strokes over par per round. Whatever that means. He’d be able to qualify for the Open if his handicap was 1.4.

But at least one veteran sportswriter, who wrote a book on Trump’s golf, said he thinks the president’s bragging is a bunch of hooey.

“If Trump is a 2.8, Queen Elizabeth is a pole vaulter,” Rick Reilly wrote in his book, Commander-in-Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.

Reilly reported numerous instances of Trump cheating when he hit the links.

“He cheats like a mafia accountant,” Reilly told CNN. “He cheats crazy. He cheats whether you’re watching or not. He cheats whether you like it or not.”

Which of course means that Trump’s bragging about golf, or anything else he constantly boasts about, should be viewed with a heavy dose of skepticism.

But then, really, when it comes to this man, what else is new?

Twitter had a field day:

Megan Hamilton
meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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