Table of contents for Trump 2017 in Golf Digest

THIS INTERVIEW, published in September 2015, was conducted in Donald Trump’s office on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The day before, the PGA of America had canceled that year’s Grand Slam of Golf (later discontinuing the event), which had been scheduled to be played at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles but was moved from that venue after Trump’s controversial comments about Mexican immigrants in July, which caused several corporations to disassociate from him. YOU’VE BECOME A MAJOR PLAYER IN GOLF. HOW WOULD YOU COMPARE THE WAY YOU’VE REACHED THAT STATION TO HOW YOU’VE BECOME A MAJOR POLITICAL PLAYER IN YOUR RUN FOR PRESIDENT? DONALD TRUMP I think very different in one way, and very similar in another. My golf is very high-end.…

Photograph by Dom Furore BUILDING BUILDINGS ISN’T ENOUGH. NOW YOU’RE BUILDING GOLF COURSES. Trump International, right in the middle of Palm Beach County. A terrific piece of land, 18 great holes. We’re very proud of it. • YOU OPENED IT LAST NOVEMBER [1999], AND IT’S ALREADY A HOT PROPERTY. Absolutely. Jim Fazio designed it, Bruce Zabriski, a great player, is our pro, and we’ve got members paying $300,000 to join. In fact, pros like Greg Norman and Ray Floyd play here all the time. • AND NOT MANY COURSES HAVE THEIR OWN BOMB SHELTER. True. The U.S. government used to store ammunition there during World War II. But we can’t really use it as a halfway house, because it’s on the second hole. WHAT’S YOUR HANDICAP AT WINGED FOOT? I…

n november 2008, Donald Trump rose amid the opulence of Mar-a-Lago, his 126-room estate in Palm Beach where he housed 32 LPGA players as they competed at Trump International Golf Club, and bid farewell to a tournament he’d hosted for eight years. “Just think,” Trump said as he glanced around at the grandeur, “next year at this time you’ll be in a freaking Holiday Inn outside Houston.” • With that he sat down. It was classic Trump, only shorter. At 86 characters, it could have been a tweet—with room left for hashtags like #failedcommissioner—but he hadn’t ynced around at the grandeur, “next year at this time you’ll be in a freaking Holiday Inn outside Houston.” • With that he sat down. It was classic Trump, only shorter. At 86 characters,…

He was Dwight David Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, which hammered the life out of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was the 34th president of the United States, and for the eight years of his presidency he was the undisputed leader of what was known as the Free World. If you want to get a measure of the man, combine President Ronald Reagan with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf and multiply by 10, and you won’t be far off the mark. His campaign slogan was “I like Ike,” and for once there was no political hyperbole involved. Not everybody voted for Eisenhower, but he was probably the most genuinely liked president we ever had. At Augusta National Golf Club, where he was a member for…

Photographs by Dom Furore IN his corner office overlooking Central Park, in the Trump Organization headquarters in the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Trumpville (also known as New York City), Donald Trump has the ultimate vanity wall. It’s not pictures of himself with other famous and powerful people, it’s just pictures of himself, on magazine covers. They engulf one wall, stretch out the door and down the hallway. All the usual suspects are framed: Newsweek, Time, Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Worth, GQ, People, Playboy, Biography. Plus a few esoteric ones: Multifamily Executive, New York Construction News, Real Estate Forum. But no Golf Digest. That bugs Donald Trump because, having conquered the world of real estate and the world of television (in his mind, at least), he has set his sights on…

Photographs by Matthew Mahon Though none of my guys won a major golf championship in 2016, I was right about something else and won something larger. I backed Donald Trump from the start and all the way to the presidency, and I did so out of a certain passion. I donated to his campaign, rooted for him, argued for him in conversations, and voted for him even though I’ve never met him, like I have six other presidents. Of course, if I ever do meet my new hero, it’ll have to be on a putting green because I’ve reached the stage of my development where I can’t hit a tee shot from here to the curb. Why did I do all that for Donald Trump? Because, unlike the mainstream media,…

M My main memory of playing golf with Donald Trump—preserved with more care now that he’s the president— is that he really went after the ball hard. But the interesting thing is that though Trump’s action might have looked a little reckless, it soon became clear that it was quite under control. • Hmmm. Perhaps more support for the quote, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” • Trump was 67 when I played with him in 2013 at his course outside Charlotte and in early 2014 at Doral, but he still possessed a significant remnant of big-man athleticismrough and never in chip-out or penalty trouble—works better than long and (too often) wrong. TRUMP’S 19 CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS 1999 Trump International West Palm Beach men’s club champion 2001 Trump…

Photographs by Nathaniel Welch DONALD Trump was never anything like a good enough golfer to play professionally, let alone win major championships. But in the fall of 2014, Trump, then 68, was on a quest for the next-best thing: to host majors at his golf courses. • In April 2014, he purchased Turnberry i developed by the Whitestone Bridge in New York City, and he declares that some of his other courses will be anointed someday. With 19 golf clubs in his portfolio, the star of “The Apprentice” is now a major player in golf. • Trump’s father, Fred, was a wealthy property developer in Brooklyn and Queens. The young Donald was determined to do even better: He took Manhattan. Trump is the 389th-richest person in the world with a…

WHEN IVANKA TRUMP was a kid, her famous father, Donald, told her something she has never forgotten: The best place to see a person’s true personality is on a golf course. “There’s a lot of truth to that,” she says. “I have a lot of athleticism in the blood. I grew up playing tennis, swimming, skiing. So it’s hard when you’re used to having a natural proclivity toward certain things to go out and struggle to swing a golf club. It’s been a little blow to my ego how I play.” • Welcome to our frustrating game, Ivanka. Despite being the daughterng tennis, swimming, skiing. So it’s hard when you’re used to having a natural proclivity toward certain things to go out and struggle to swing a golf club. It’s…