I can't believe I'm about to write a post defending Donald Trump...but here goes.
A little context about me--I'm a southern boy who has spent the last 15 years in Rhode Island and Philly. So the whole Donald Trump/brash New Yorker thing really rubs me the wrong way.
I'm a member of a club (Pine Hill GC, now Trump National-Philadelphia) that was purchased by Trump at the end of 2009. This past Thursday I attended a reception hosted by the Donald himself with about 100 members. To say I was shocked by his child-like enthusiasm for golf, his knowledge of agronomy and golf course construction, and his attention to detail regarding club operation would be an understatement. But that's not the reason I'm going to defend the guy.
The economy can't be any worse right now, and according to what I read here and other places, the golf economy has sunk much further than the rest of the country. And all anyone says about Trump is he makes brash statements about his properties and he's 'over the top'. Well, I completely agree. But there is a VERY short list of people who are injecting tens of millions of dollars into golf courses and golf clubs these days, and he's gotta be near the top of that list. I can tell you that at Pine Hill, the place was probably months (maybe weeks) from folding--the finances were that bad and the prior owner was in big trouble. And if that place went, so would the golf-related jobs, the jobs in the clubhouse, the suppliers who sell to the club....you get my drift. So he buys it, immediately closes it to the public, starts dropping several million dollars into the place providing work for those in the construction biz, engineers, interiors, gc construction (he's making several changes to the course), etc....It's a very good thing for the club and for golf.
So before everyone says Trump is the worst thing to ever happen to golf, remember that his track record with his other clubs is impeccable. The two facilities I've been to (Westchester and Bedminster) are absolutely spectacular experiences, and has been discussed here the course at Bedminster is first-rate. Do I like seeing the gold Trump crest everywhere? not so much. But this guy charges some serious coin to be a member at his clubs and for the most part they're all very successful operations with very satisfied memberships.
There's a long history of obscene marketing in the golf business. It's not going to stop, and Donald is probably going to lead the way. Someone posted something about "the views, the condition of the course, and the hot girls" at his LA place. I had a group of friends say the exact thing to me after they played it. THEY LOVED THE EXPERIENCE. But who really cares what the guy says??? He's already a very rich man--maybe he's in this to feed his ego, but that's fine...many very rich folks do that. All I care is he's pumping money into a business that's falling like a lead balloon.