Hard to believe it is the 40th anniversary of Caddyshack. Most of us remember the movie for the ongoing battle between Bill Murray's groundskeeper and the furry gopher, but there were many standout performances, not least of which Ted Knight as the tight-fisted judge and co-founder of Bushwood Country Club, who finds himself at odds with a crass rich new member, played by Rodney Dangerfield, who turns his golf club on end. I never thought much about a political edge to the movie until I read about all the golf courses that Donald Trump owns around the country and indeed the world. It's kind of like Al Czervik buying out the Bushwood Country Club only to run it as Judge Elihu Smails would.
Typically, country clubs are bastions for the rich, but I remember my Dad got together with a number of local military retirees and built a small 9-hole golf course and beach club in Santa Rosa Beach back in the early 70s. They called it Sarogobi, an acronym of sorts for Santa Rosa Golf and Beach Club. When I got older I worked in the pro shop. There wasn't any great accounting. I would try to balance the ledger with the cash in the box only to come up short every time. It would turn out that the woman who ran the pro shop, usually pocketed 10 dollars to buy a bottle of gin and a few other things on the way home. The club struggled financially for over a decade before the richer folk started moving into the neighborhood and decided they wanted to upgrade the club and make it their own. My Dad would have had to pay a huge new initiation fee, which upset him greatly as he had been one of the founding members. It was clear these nouveau riche wanted to flush out the old guard. My Dad obliged as he wanted no part of this new club.
I imagine this is how Trump works. We saw all the bad blood he generated in Scotland when he bought Turnberry in 2014. He fought the locals over wind turbines and beach rights, essentially trying to make the whole town his own. It's been a money-losing venture ever since, but no bother it gives him a foothold in his mother's native country, which he is oddly proud of.
Golf for Donald is the scarlet badge of the rich. This is where big deals are done, and where he has a chance to play with the pros, including Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Rory McIlroy, as he always fancied he had a good enough game to play professional himself, claiming a 2.8 handicap. However, just about everyone he has played with says he cheats. Whether it is taking numerous mulligans, not putting out, or kicking his opponent's balls into the sand traps and ponds. Judge Smails all over again.
Even Obama took up golf for no other reason than to talk with Congresspersons, foreign leaders and celebrities in a relatively private setting away from reporters and other prying eyes. Trump gave Obama no end of grief for his golf game, but prior to his 300th game before leaving office, Barry reported an "honest 13" handicap. Not bad for a duffer.
Trump claimed he wouldn't have time for golf if he was elected president, but here we are nearly four years later and he has logged more than 290 rounds, double that of Obama over the same stretch of time. The cost has been enormous since he prefers his own private clubs to Camp David, where Obama most often played. It also allowed Trump to feather the nests of his clubs, as his entourage was forced to stay at his clubs at exorbitant price hikes at the taxpayer's expense.
When pressed on why he played so much golf, Trump would claim it a working holiday or a way to deal with the stress of the job. He rarely put in more than 4 days at the White House, spending the long weekends typically at Mar-a-Lago, Florida or Bedminster, New Jersey, away from the moles and gophers he believes have infiltrated the Oval Office.
I suppose his adoring supporters see him as Al Czervik. No question he has tried to capture the self-deprecating humor of Rodney Dangerfield but his ego is too big to ever admit any fault. Donald offers no apologies for his actions or off-color statements, in fact he usually gets very angry when challenged and doubles down on his preposterous claims, as Judge Smails would. He has surrounded himself with a coterie of friends and advisors who defend him at every turn, until it simply becomes too much for them and they quit.
Golf was supposed to be the Game of Kings but Donald Trump has turned it into a farce as he does everything he associates himself with. We can't help laughing at Al Czervik and Judge Smails in Caddyshack, but when we see a president embody the worst traits of these two characters it becomes a pathetic reminder of how low he has sunk the bar of the presidency.
You probably won't be able to watch Caddyshack the same way again. Sorry for that. It just came to mind seeing Michael O'Keefe reprise his role of Noonan on the golf course this past weekend. Hard to believe this movie came out in 1980, several years before most of us heard anything about Donald Trump.
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