Former president and avid golfer Donald Trump seems to have resigned himself to the fact that—after two assassination attempts in three months and amid a host of other security risks—it might be a good idea to avoid his own courses for a while.
According to a New York Times report published Wednesday, the stubborn, set-in-his-ways Trump had told advisors “he is not planning to play golf—his main source of relaxation—at his courses.”
On Wednesday, U.S. prosecutors charged Ryan Wesley Routh with trying to assassinate Trump near the GOP presidential candidate’s Florida golf course earlier this month, highlighting existing concerns among security officials that his love of the links poses a considerable risk.
“I used to play golf a little bit, but that seems to be quite a dangerous sport in retrospect,” Trump joked last week, in an interview with Sinclair Broadcast Group show Full Measure, referring to his alleged would-be assassin.
The official Trump Golf website says the former president owns 18 courses—15 are open, while one course in Oman and two in Indonesia are set to launch at a future date.
Trump has previously expressed a deep and abiding affection for his own courses and criticized others.
He told Golf Digest multiple times that he sees himself as an artist—“Look, I’m an artist,” and “See, I’m an artist,”—when discussing the layout of his courses, adding “golf is very much about beauty.”
He trashed environmentally conscious operators that practice water conservation as “bringing golf down to the lowest common denominator by trying to make courses ugly because they want to save water” and called North Carolina’s prestigious Pinehurst Resort a “burned-out monstrosity.”
Trump has long expressed his love of the sport, both as a player and as a course owner, and even insisted that it should be a game reserved for the most privileged in society.
Asked directly if he thought golf should be an “elitist activity,” Trump said: “It was always meant to be, and people get there through success.”
Golf is so tied up in Trump’s life that he admitted last year to losing track of classified nuclear documents in a pile of golf shirts.
Arguably the most heated and passionate moment of the first presidential debate this year was when Trump and President Joe Biden—who subsequently dropped out of the race—argued about their golf game.
Earlier this year, Trump left Bryson DeChambeau—currently the 10th-ranked golfer in the world—awestruck with his golf skills, especially when he nailed a solo eagle, during a charity round the two played.
The Times reported Trump’s hesitance to change his routine and the fact that he “is happiest when he’s greeting people on the patios of his clubs” has been a headache for the government security details tasked with protecting him.
His pledge that he doesn’t plan any golfing on his courses—at least for a while—is a remarkable pivot given how much he loves the game.
