If golf is looking for a TV ratings boost in a year of declining interest, perhaps the answer lies in a most unconventional match-play event.
The presidential candidates.
On Thursday, in the first debate of the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden detoured from the big national issues of the economy, immigration and foreign policy near the end of the cringeworthy 90-minute spat to talk about – of all things – their golf games.
In addressing his physical fitness for the job, the 78-year-old Trump, whose vast business interests include 18 golf courses in the U.S. and abroad, said he was in “very good shape” and recently had won two club championships. He added that the feats required him to “hit the ball a long way” before chiding Biden that the president “can’t hit a ball 50 yards.”
The 81-year-old Biden, in turn, challenged Trump to a match, but only if Trump were to carry his own clubs.
Both players claim to have held single-digit handicaps, but their USGA-indexed scores are dated: Trump with a 2.5 index in June 2021 and Biden at 6.7 in July 2018.
Why bother with a messy national campaign and election when we could settle this thing on the golf course? READ MORE
TAP-INS
U.S. rounds played were off slightly in May compared with the same month in 2023, but the year-to-date trend continues to remain positive, according to the latest research reported by Golf Datatech. The number of rounds played was down 0.8 percent in May, but the total for the first five months of the year was up 2.4 percent compared with the same time period in 2023, according to the monthly National Rounds Played Report. READ MORE
Ben Polland, the 2024 PGA Professional champion from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and Michael Block, the 2022 and ’23 PGA Professional player of the year from Mission Viejo, California, lead the 10-man American team that will compete against top club pros from Great Britain and Ireland in the biennial PGA Cup on September 13-15 at Sunriver (Oregon) Resort’s Meadows Course. READ MORE
Celina Sattelkau, a Vanderbilt graduate student from Neustadt, Germany, was named winner of the 2024 Dinah Shore Trophy, which recognizes the top female collegiate golfer who excels in academics and athletics, the LPGA Foundation announced. Sattelkau, a two-time all-Southeastern Conference golfer, compiled a 4.0 grade-point average in earning a master’s degree in finance after she had graduated cum laude with a double major in psychology and the communication of science/technology. The late Dinah Shore, an entertainer whose name was synonymous with the LPGA’s first major championship of the season, was a Vanderbilt alumna. READ MORE
Anna Davis, an Auburn freshman from Spring Valley, California, has been added to the U.S. team for this week’s Arnold Palmer Cup matches. Davis, 18, who won the 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur as a 16-year-old, joined Auburn for the spring semester and posted four top-10 results in eight starts, including an NCAA regional victory. The Palmer Cup matches, which pair the top male and female collegians from the U.S. against their international counterparts, will be played July 5-7 at Lahinch (Ireland) Golf Club. READ MORE
Stephen Gallacher earned an encore performance as captain of Europe’s Junior Ryder Cup team for 2025. Gallacher, 49, a four-time European Tour winner from Scotland who played on winning Walker Cup (1995) and Ryder Cup (2014) teams, led Europe’s youngsters to a 20½-9½ victory in the 2023 Junior Ryder Cup in Rome. The first two days of the 2025 Junior Ryder Cup will be played September 23-24 at Nassau Country Club on New York’s Long Island before the singles matches are held on September 25 at Bethpage Black, the site of the 45th Ryder Cup, on the eve of the biennial matches between Europe and the U.S. READ MORE
Los Angeles has come up with a solution to deter tee-time brokers who had been hoarding reservations at the city’s municipal system and then marking them up for profit. A $10 nonrefundable deposit for each booked round and a cancellation fee has been imposed, leaders announced. READ MORE
Ping will allow owners of its G430 MAX 10K HL driver the option of exchanging it for the G430 MAX 10K at no cost, the company announced. The offer is being made because of the HL (high launch) version’s MOI rating. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon