According to The Associated Press, the PGA of America cut ties to President Donald Trump when it voted Sunday to take the PGA Championship event away from his New Jersey golf course next year.
The vote comes four days after the Trump-fueled riot at the nation’s Capitol as Congress was certifying the election victory of President-elect Joe Biden. This is the second time in just over five years the PGA of America removed one of its events from a Trump course.
PGA President Jim Richerson says the board voted to exercise its right to “terminate the agreement” with Trump National in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“We find ourselves in a political situation not of our making,” Seth Waugh, the CEO of the PGA of America, said in a telephone interview. “We’re fiduciaries for our members, for the game, for our mission and for our brand. And how do we best protect that? Our feeling was given the tragic events of Wednesday that we could no longer hold it at Bedminster. The damage could have been irreparable. The only real course of action was to leave.”
The PGA is at Kiawah Island in South Carolina in May.
“We’ve had a number of places reach out already,” Waugh said. “We think we’ll have a bunch of options.”
The PGA of America, which has some 29,000 golf professionals who mostly teach the game, signed the deal with Trump National in 2014.
It canceled the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in 2015 at Trump National Los Angeles Golf Club after Trump’s disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants when he announced he was seeking the Republican nomination for president. The event was canceled for good the following spring.
The shocking insurrection Wednesday rattled the country, and in golf circles, attention quickly focused on whether the PGA of America would keep its premier championship — and one of golf’s four major championships — at Trump’s course in 2022.
“Our decision wasn’t about speed and timing,” Waugh said. “What matters most to our board and leadership is protecting our brand and reputation, and the ability for our members to lead the growth of the game, which they do through so many powerful programs in their communities.”
Trump had delivered a speech to his supporters in which he repeatedly made baseless claims that the election was stolen from him and urged them to “fight.”
They stormed the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were in the process of certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. After forcing their way inside, the violent crowd ransacked the building and sent terrified staff and lawmakers into hiding. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died.
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found that 67% of respondents said Trump deserves a “good amount” or a “great deal” of blame for the insurrection.
“This is not because of any pressures we feel. We’re not being forced into a decision,” Waugh said. “We had to make a business decision. It’s a perpetual institution. My job is to hand it off better than when I found it. One hundred years from now, we still want to be vibrant.”
He chose not to comment when asked if he expected any legal challenge from the Trump Organization.
According to ABC News, the Trump Organization responded with this statement:
“We have had a beautiful partnership with the PGA of America and are incredibly disappointed with their decision,” said a spokesperson for The Trump Organization. “This is a breach of a binding contract and they have no right to terminate the agreement. As an organization we have invested many, many millions of dollars in the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster. We will continue to promote the game of golf on every level and remain focused on operating the finest golf courses anywhere in the world.”
The PGA of America will strip Donald Trump of the 2022 PGA Championship, which is scheduled to be held at Trump National Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.
In a blistering column that says the golf world must sever all ties with Trump, Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch said the PGA has been debating for two years the need to move the major championship and, once Trump is out of office, will announce the tournament will be played elsewhere:
“The odds that ’22′s PGA Championship will happen as scheduled in New Jersey are about as good as the chances of you or I winning it. Seth Waugh, the PGA of America’s CEO, was a banker and has an alert eye for high-risk exposure. He knows that Trumpism is likely to be an equally incendiary force in the ’22 midterm elections and that any affiliation is poisonous. Waugh will be forced to move the event and face down a small but vocal faction of his membership who remain true believers. Moving its major from Trump National has been debated internally at the PGA for more than two years, but executives have been reluctant to antagonize a famously vindictive man who controls the Internal Revenue Service. Such concerns melt away in 10 days, if not sooner.”
Lynch, like Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga, says professional golf -- including some of its biggest celebrities, like Tiger Woods, Nancy Lopez, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam -- has angered many fans by cozying up to Trump. But, Lynch says, “the events of January 6 that left five people dead ought to make him a pariah everywhere. Including in golf.”
“Reputations too have been left bruised in the eyes of many golf fans. Like those of Jack Nicklaus and Nancy Lopez, both of whom have long been celebrated for their character and rectitude. Both supported Trump in the waning days of the election campaign, despite clear signs he would not accept any result he didn’t like. ...
“Arguably even more sullied are the reputations of Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam, who attended the White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the man who just one day earlier had incited the mob that killed a police officer.”
In the end, Lynch says, golf will be seen as the elitist game Trump played while the country burned:
“The game will instead be portrayed as Trump’s refuge, something he did while ignoring a pandemic that has claimed 365,000 lives, refusing to acknowledge a resounding electoral defeat, and inciting feeble-minded fascists to violence that left five people dead at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
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Drnk_watcher on January 10th, 2021 at 16:55 UTC »
This is an interesting article to unpack.
The PGA has long known Trump is a problem but feared removing the tournament while he was still in office they'd risk the wrath of unnecessary audits from the IRS just as payback.
Yet the head of the PGA (a former baking banking executive) feels Trumpism won't be gone by the 2022 midterms and doesn't want to be anywhere near that.
At the same time the PGA is fighting an image problem because while the PGA may be resistant to Trump they have a lot of players who aren't.
smokedspirit on January 10th, 2021 at 16:39 UTC »
Not a golf man but I thought some guy called Trump Bedminster won a PGA and was goin to be stripped of his title for being called trump.
I thought wow. That's a bit harsh.
Then I read the article and realised it was one of his golf courses.
Tiggerboy1974 on January 10th, 2021 at 15:16 UTC »
Oooh, that’s going to sting!!