It’s no secret that Donald Trump is obsessed with golf. However, that doesn’t mean he’s hailed as a bastion of good sportsmanship. Au contraire, in light of some very sketchy antics being caught on camera, he’s become the butt of countless jokes — and even some experts have pointed to the possibility that his golfing prowess may be greatly overstated.
ICYMI, Trump’s makeup-free golf days weren’t the only thing that got people talking during his personal very official trip to Scotland. A video posted to X of the president’s caddy surreptitiously tossing a ball on the ground just seconds before he got out of his golf cart had social media users and golf experts alike raising their eyebrows. Granted, some of Trump’s stans claimed that it was a drop ball and therefore totally acceptable. However, others (like Scottish golf commentator Andrew Cotter) weren’t quite as eager to dismiss the move. In an episode of his podcast, “The Chipping Forecast,” Cotter said that while he was wary of taking the video at face value, the optics were damning. “All I’ll say is … it looked very, very bad,” he said, noting in particular that the caddy looked like he was trying to drop the ball without anyone noticing.
Perfectly legal on the green where players will mark the spot where the ball came to rest – usually with a coin. Then hit the next shot from there.
— Gimme3Steps (@TheSouthGAJohn) August 3, 2025
Of course, a bad headline has never deterred Trump, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that a week later, another video seemingly showing a caddy tossing a golf ball down for him went viral. In response to that video — which was taken during the 2025 Men’s Senior Club Championship at his Bedminster golf club, and which the president won — The Palm Beach Post’s senior sports columnist Tom D’Angelo pre-emptively hushed those who’d no doubt spring to Trump’s defense, clarifying that in a competition setting, “It is never legal for your caddie to drop a ball.”
Trump’s golf course ethics have come into question before
Of course, allegations that Donald Trump cheats at golf are nothing new. Quite the opposite, some may even remember that in 2016, Samuel L. Jackson shared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” that on one occasion when he played with the then-presidential hopeful, he witnessed Trump hit his ball into a lake, only for his caddie to claim he’d found it … not in the lake. Obvi, it was one of Trump’s courses — and that brings us to another time he came under fire.
Some will remember that in 2019, Rick Reilly released “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.” While promoting the book — which outlines Trump’s ethics based on his behavior on the golf course — Reilly, who has also played against Trump in the past, outlined some more outrageous claims about the president’s golfing game on MSNBC. For one, Reilly listed tournaments Trump claimed to have won despite not actually being in the state of those tournaments at the time they took place. For another, Reilly pointed out that Trump’s supposedly stellar track record stemmed from his performance at his own clubs, but that the same couldn’t be said of others. “He’s played in Pebble Beach. He’s played in the Tahoe one … where there are rules, and judges, and cameras, and in those, he’s never finished in the top half,” Reilly said.
Debate about Trump’s competency on the golf course raged once again in 2024. This, after his and Joe Biden’s ridiculous spat over golf in their presidential debate prompted social media users to share videos of the former reality star’s shaky swing. TBH, we’re just mad no one thought to zoom in on Trump’s caddies. That said, going forward, something tells us eagle-eyed golfers will be doing just that.
