The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

Everybody who is anybody knows by now that Donald Trump is a liar, a cheat and a bad president.

Even the Republicans who are afraid of Trump and his friends in the Russian Mob know this, even if they won’t admit it in public.

The 200 million dollar question that must be answered between now and November is how to convince enough white guys and Christians not to vote for him in his reelection bid?

What if there is irrefutable proof that Trump cheats at golf?

While the masses and the women who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 may not care so much about this or think it’s important, consider the irrefutable fact that the golf course is quite literally where most major business and political deals are sealed in this world, and you can judge a person’s true character in an afternoon by how they play the game.

Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump is a new book out by ESPN commentator and Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly, who knows Trump personally and has played golf with him.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Reilly talked more about Trump’s propensity to lie and cheat, painting him as a flawed character who should not be running a country club, much less a country.

In the interview he talks about playing a round with Arnold Palmer and recalled what Palmer — considered one of the great players in the game, one of the best businessmen in the game, and a man of top flight character to boot — said about golf and character.

“I never do a business deal until I played 18 holes with a guy,” Palmer said that day when they witnessed a stranger acted rudely during a round.

“In four hours, you can’t hide who you are,” Reilly said. “If you have a bad temper, it’s gonna come out. If you can cheat, it’s gonna come out. If you’re really fun to be with and can hang and are humble, it’s gonna come out. You go a round with Trump and everything comes out. More than you really want to see.”

I once played a round with Arnold Palmer myself with other news reporters, back in the early 1990s when he came to Gulf Shores to christen a new golf course there of his own design. He was not only one of the greatest golfers of all time. He was a larger than life personality with so much character and charisma that he was treated like a god. This is the kind of treatment Trump is clearly after in life, although he’s never been able to really achieve it because he is such a flawed human being. He doesn’t realize that great people don’t have to tell people how great they are.

As Reilly puts it in his book, people treat Trump with deference and roll their eyes when he cheats, only because he is the boss who is paying for the round and buying lunch.

I wrote a little book about 17 years ago called Duffers Golf Rules, which set out to outline the amended rules for how total amateurs who play cheap public golf courses without caddies and cheap pawn shop clubs can enjoy the game without trying to keep score like the pros. Without the benefit of top flight grooming of the best courses, without the latest in expensive golf technology, the course knowledge of a professional caddie, and without the ambition of trying to win tournaments, there are things amateurs can do to make the game more enjoyable.

The point is to get outside, breath in some fresh air, walk for exercise and have some time off for fun. Knock around a ball for awhile on some green, green grass.

So amateurs often agree to take one mulligan per nine holes, for example, meaning you get to hit one extra ball if your tee shot goes in the water or the woods where you can’t find it. Some players also take a gimme putt if the ball is within a couple of feet of the hole on the green. You get some relief on courses with bad spots in the ruff or on the fairway.

But according to Reilly’s analysis of how Trump plays the game, he wants everyone to think he is a great player like the pros, only he takes duffers golf rules to an extreme that would probably be offensive to the most humble player on the worst course in Christendom, maybe that little links course down on Dauphin Island near Mobile, Alabama, where hitting the ball out of the sandy fairways is like hitting every shot out of a sand trap. How can you keep an honest score on a course like that, especially with a 10-year-old set of K-Mart clubs?

But Reilly says an asterisk the size of Trump’s ego belongs next to every “win” Trump claims, which includes 18 club championships, none of which could be confirmed when he tried for the book.

It is widely known that Trump lies about his scores. He takes multiple mulligans, gimmes, hits multiple balls, sabotages the shots of his opponents, moves his own ball at will.

It’s not just the rules of the game Trump violates repeatedly. He also runs roughshod over the etiquette of the game, including routinely driving his golf cart across the green, which is strictly prohibited because it screws up the course for other players.

https://twitter.com/SInow/status/877908744344129536

By the way, it’s worth noting that professional golfers make their scores by walking the entire course. Golf carts are prohibited. Trump has never walked 18 holes in his life.

Trump is also widely known to routinely stiff contractors and vendors, and makes life hell for any community where he wants to build a course that doesn’t give in to his every demand.

“As Reilly detailed in his book as well as in a recent conversation with Rolling Stone, the president’s treachery pervades every facet of his relationship with his favorite sport,” the magazine says. “The book is basically a compendium of all of the ways Trump habitually cheats at golf, which anyone who has played the game will find mind-blowing.”

“I’ve heard of guys fudging their ball mark another foot forward,” Reilly says in the interview. “I’ve heard of a guy throwing it out of a bunker when no one could see him. But never in my life have I heard somebody taking another guy’s ball and throwing it in a bunker. It was (sports writer) Mike Tirico’s! How can you do this! You can’t do that! Really, it’s just such a head-slapper. Even if you don’t know golf, I hope people can understand what all this cheating means. You’re looking into the soul of a guy.”

In the book Reilly writes that Trump always demands to tee off first, an honor which is reserved for the player who won the previous hole. Not even waiting on the other players to hit their balls, Trump then routinely gets in the cart and takes off down the fairway. He even recently tried to cheat against Tiger Woods.

Why do people let him get away with it?

“Because it’s his course,” Reilly says. “You get to play free and he’s probably gonna pay for lunch, but all that matters is that he wins. That’s the only requirement when you’re on the Trump train.”

“It happened to me,” Reilly said. “He took a gimme chip in. He took a bunch of mulligans. Then he said he beat me. OK. You’re playing his course, and he buys the lunch and you’re just hanging on. You’re just hanging on for dear life. But when the TV cameras are on, or it’s not his course, he doesn’t do nearly as well. … But when it’s him telling the story, and his course, and his caddies, and his supercharged golf cart and his ethics deficit, then all of a sudden he’s the winner every time.”

By contrast Reilly talks about playing with Presidents Obama and Bush, who he said, “played everything out. It’s dull, but it’s pretty serious and you keep score and that’s it. You turn your score in.”

He says the whole reason he wrote the book is because, “I’m not as mad as a voter as I am as a golfer. You can’t do this to my game. I’ve known and loved this game for 50 years, and this guy is leaving a big wet orange blotch on it. And it’ll be years before we get young people to play again, because this guy makes it look so elite, so rich, such white-guy golf.”

So Trump supporters will say, “so what, Trump lies. All politicians lie.”

But just maybe, if they see how Trump abuses the game of golf, they will see how low his character is and refuse to vote for such a cheater next time around. One can only hope.

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