Trump is desperate to host the Open – but faces one big handicap
Sir Keir Starmer is attempting to grease the wheels for Trump’s Turnberry course to host the 2028 Open Championship, writes Lawrence Ostlere, but it will not be easy for the president to engineer this scorecard
There are some entertaining tales of Donald Trump’s cheating on the golf course. Samuel L Jackson tells a story of playing with the US president at Trump National in New Jersey and watching Trump’s ball hook into a lake with a splash, only for his caddie to mysteriously discover it safely on dry land. The American sportswriter Rick Reilly published a book on the subject – Commander in Cheat – in which he wrote: “At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: Pele.”
Whether or not Trump lies about his score and falsely claims to have won tournaments he didn’t win – he vehemently denies all – what cannot be in doubt is his passion for the game. He played an estimated 261 rounds of golf during his first presidency, according to The Washington Post, spending the equivalent of nearly nine months of his four-year term on the course.
The sport has become entwined in his political life. Finnish president Alexander Stubb spent several hours playing with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and came away with a bumper economic deal, including the lucrative sale of icebreaker ships to the US. Golf might be the diplomatic channel through which Trump is most susceptible to persuasion.
So perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised by reports this week that Keir Starmer is trying to leverage the game for British gain. Ever since buying Turnberry in 2014, Trump has been desperate for The Open Championship to return to the Scottish course, where it has been staged four times over the past 50 years but not since 2009. Such is the US president’s love of golf that the UK government believes holding the prestigious tournament on Trump property could help smooth any wrinkles in talks over an economic deal in the coming months.
Turnberry sits on a stunning slice of rugged Ayrshire coastline, with a championship course which dates back more than a century wrapping around the imposing white-walled hotel which looks out over the Firth of Clyde. The views from the elevated sixth tee are breathtaking and it has laid the stage for some golfing history, most famously when Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson battled for the Claret Jug in 1977, which later became the subject of a documentary titled Duel in the Sun.
When Trump bought the course he was not yet president, still just an eccentric real estate mogul, egotistical and brash but perceived as relatively harmless. The greatest concern was that he might do something vulgar like replacing Turnberry’s famous lighthouse with a statue of himself.
Instead Trump vowed to respect the history of the course and heaped praise on the R&A, which organises The Open. In response, the R&A sounded positive noises about Trump’s $200m investment in the historic site and hinted that Turnberry was overdue the right to host.
Sport has long been wielded as a tool of soft power in politics, stretching back to the dawn of the Olympic Games when Greece showed off its sporting prowess in the face of neighbouring countries. Adolf Hitler used the 1936 Olympics to promote Germany’s image and hide Nazi horrors, while Vladimir Putin used the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi as cover to invade Crimea during his own Games.
Trump has already been gifted two of sport’s greatest jewels to buff his fragile ego during his second term. The 2026 World Cup will be shared with old friends Mexico and Canada, although the majority of matches – including the final – will be played in the United States. The 2028 LA Olympics follows two years later, and Trump will no doubt hijack both events for his own ends.
But The Open offers something different, something more subtle than a grand show of global power. Golf’s long history and tradition gives Trump a veneer of respectability that can’t be found in the casinos of Atlantic City, and there is no greater tradition than The Open, first played in 1860. The clue is in the name R&A – Royal and Ancient – and it is much the same reason Trump likes rubbing shoulders with the Royal Family.
Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr run the money-losing SLC Turnberry which manages the course, and in return for being gifted the right to host, they have promised “the greatest Open of all time”. But the reality of staging it at Turnberry is more complicated.
The tournament is a vital money-spinner for the R&A and in recent years it has sold a quarter of a million tickets over The Open week. That number of spectators would make Turnberry creak, not just in its on-course infrastructure but due to the lack of suitable transport links and accommodation in the local area. The last time The Open was held there it received less than half the fans the R&A would expect now.
The other problem is Trump himself. Last month red paint was daubed across the Turnberry Hotel’s white walls by pro-Palestinian protesters, one of many protests to have taken place on the property during his presidency. Trump’s presence would loom large over the event and golf would no doubt be lost in the shadows.
The previous R&A chief executive, Martin Slumbers, said in the wake of the 2021 attack on the US Capitol that The Open would not return to Turnberry “until we are convinced the focus will be on the Championship, the players and the course itself, and we do not believe that is achievable in the current circumstances”. But his successor Mark Darbon has sounded more positive notes, saying he “would love” to see The Open back there one day. After enquiries from the UK government, the R&A is now conducting a feasibility study into whether Turnberry could play host to The Open in 2028.
Ultimately it is the R&A’s decision, and money may talk louder than politics. The government insists it is not trying to twist arms here, but in its efforts to woo Trump it has a genuine ace card in The Open, a prize that touches the president personally, and few leaders around the world can say that. Meanwhile Trump will continue to drop not-so-subtle hints, pulling at the willing lever that is the UK prime minister. This is one round of golf he would dearly love to fix.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments