President Donald Trump is endlessly combative in a variety of areas, from politics to reality shows. Golf is no exception: he loves to brag about his superior golf skills and has attacked actor Samuel L. Jackson as being an inferior player. But according to a new Golf.com article, a plaque identifying Trump as a 2018 champion is misleading because he’s actually a 2018 “co-champion.” And the real champion in that 2018 tournament is a businessman named Ted Virtue.
Before Trump challenged him to a game in 2018, Virtue held the title of champion at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Trump won that one game, but it was Virtue who had won the club’s tournament—which Trump hadn’t even participated in.
At West Palm Beach’s Trump International Golf Club, brass plaques touting Trump’s golf victories are attached to his locker—and that includes victories for 1999, 2001, 2009, 2012 and 2013. But 2018 wasn’t added to the plaque until after the game with Virtue.
Golf.com’s Michael Bamberger writes, “The plaque on his locker is two letters short of accurate. Trump is not actually the men’s champion at the club. He’s the co-champion. While that distinction is not found on his locker, it is made elsewhere at the club.”
Bamberger explains that, “Originally, a man named Ted Virtue, the 58-year-old CEO of a New York investment firm called MidOcean Partners, had the 2018 club championship title all to himself.” And Trump, after winning that game, reportedly said something along the lines of, “This isn’t fair. We’ll be co-champions.” But that one game was the only thing Trump won—not the club’s tournament.
Bamberger goes on to say, “The crowning of co-champions in golf is rare, but it does happen, at every level…. And that is how Trump and Virtue are reportedly listed on a large club-championship plaque on a clubhouse wall: as co-champions.”
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