Good Read
Champion-Con-Man-3-Handicap
I’ve just finished this. And if you only read one book on golf this summer, it should be Rick Reilly’s Commander in Cheat.
Reilly is one of the game’s best-known writers, he’s been neamed „Sportswriter of the Year“ eleven (!) times and is the author of one of my all time favourites „Who’s your Caddy?” Reilly has also (famously) been called the „closest thing sports writing ever had to a rock star.“
His witty, fast paced, highly informed and hugely amusing new book delves into the orange monster’s close and rather toxic relationship to our beloved game. “Commander in Cheat” follows Trump around the golf world. Meticulously showing his disgusting lying, cheating, bragging, fibbing, deceiving and swindling: on and off the course. In painstaking detail Reilly reveals all the terrible things you have heard of and still might have been reluctant to believe.
Though the facts might be sickening, and the testimonies shocking, the prose is fantastic. There’s not a page in this book without a great anecdote or a tremendous quote. Reilly has spoken to and cites some of the game’s most respected figures. Designers Tom Doak, David McLay Kidd and Tom Fazio address the man’s obsession with waterfalls. Professionals talk about raked-up putts and caddies about kicking balls out of the rough. The Donald might be a revolting, sexist bigot, but he’s also – in Reilly’s narrative - an immensely sad and tragic character. The moral of the story is as old as the game itself. If you don’t know how to lose, you’ll never know how to win. And Trump can’t lose.
The Trumpster is the worst thing that could have happened to golf. He is constantly and publicly giving back the game the “bad name” it has tried so hard to get rid of. Trump (in golf) is all we despise: he’s a cart driving, rude, fat, sexist, gimme taking, mulligan grabbing idiot.
If you belong to the people who still like to believe he has done the game some good (Aberdeen, every now an then someone will mention), you should definitely read Reilly’s account. And if you’re not a fan, you will enjoy it even more.
