In an unpredictable debate, a fight over golf was par for the course
It was a surreal detour during a presidential debate already filled with extraordinary exchanges and meandering remarks. On Thursday night, after arguments over the economy, abortion and the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump argued about… golf.
“I just won two club championships — not even seniors, two regular club championships,” Mr. Trump boasted while answering a question related to how he would be 82 at the end of a second presidential term. “To do that, you have to be pretty smart and be able to hit the ball a long way. And I do it. He doesn’t. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards.”
Mr Biden, 81, declared that he would “love to have a riding match” with Mr Trump.
“When I was vice president, I lowered my handicap to a six,” the president said, referring to a system by which golfers compare their skills. The lower the number, the better the player.
“And by the way, I’ve told you before, I’d be happy to play golf if you carried your own bag,” Biden continued, turning to Trump. “Do you think you could do it?”
Mr. Trump, 78, routinely uses a cart. He did not respond to that particular challenge, but scoffed: “That’s the biggest lie — that he’s six-handicapped — of them all.”
Perhaps it was no surprise that golf—a beloved ritual for many presidents, but especially Trump—came to the fore during the debate. But the bickering was also widely dismissed as a trivial exercise between two older men trying in vain to outdo each other.
Few presidents have been as deeply involved in the game as Mr. Trump. His family business manages an enviable portfolio of golf courses, a fact he often crows about when he plays events associated with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series, which has hosted tournaments on Trump properties. (He was much less eager to talk about the way some in professional golf have shunned him in recent years, especially after the Jan. 6 riot.)
Mr. Trump has long enjoyed playing with major tournament winners like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods and asserting his own prowess even on days when he didn’t exactly follow the rules or pleasantries.
“Not bad, right?” Trump asked a New York Times reporter during his course in Doral, Florida, in 2022. “Pretty much, you know what? Quite good. Anyway, let me finish this victory.”
Long before Thursday’s debate, despite his own record of bending the rules of golf, he looked at Mr. Biden’s golf skills and doubted them.
“Can Biden do that?” Trump muttered to a reporter last summer after taking a swing at his job in Bedminster, N.J. “He says he has a handicap of six. He doesn’t have a handicap of six.”
Biden has been playing for years, but lately has been hitting the court less often than his predecessor and often takes a more modest stance. (“The course record is still intact,” he told reporters after his first lap as president.)
For all that is relevant, data from the US Golf Association, which is generally based on self-reported scores, shows that Biden’s handicap in 2018 was 6.7 and Trump’s in 2021 was 2.5.
