The PGA of America, which runs the PGA Championship – one of the four largest men’s golf championships in the world – announced on Sunday night that it would no longer take its main event to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ. It was scheduled for May 2022.
“It was clear that conducting the PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster would be detrimental to the PGA of America brand and would jeopardize PGA’s ability to deliver our many programs and sustain the longevity of our mission,” Jim Richerson, PGA President of America , said in a video statement.
Sunday’s decision by America’s PGA came days after a crowd of Trump supporters, incited by President Trump, converged on Capitol Hill, passed law enforcement and invaded Congressional corridors. The insurrection resulted in five deaths, including that of a Capitol police officer.
For years, Trump has lobbied each of the major government agencies in golf to bring one of the biggest golf events to one of his golf courses. In 2014, well before announcing his candidacy for president, the PGA of America chose Trump National for the 2022 championship.
In the statement, Richerson said the organization’s board voted “to exercise the right to terminate the deal” to bring the tournament to Trump’s estate. A new venue for the event, played for the first time in 1916, will be chosen at a future date. The Bedminster club hosted the United States Women’s Open 2017, and the president’s club in Virginia was the site of the 2017 Senior PGA Championship. The PGA of America, founded 105 years ago, represents more than 25,000 teaching club professionals.
Since joining the White House, Trump has been associated with golf like no president before him, even by the standards of a position that is often held by a golfer. Although he was booed by fans at a World Series game and sparked protests by basketball and football athletes, among other sports, Trump tried to maintain his longstanding ties with professional golfers and some of the most decorated players in the game’s history.
He awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to four golfers: Tiger Woods, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam. The last three, Didrikson Zaharias posthumously, received the honor at the White House on Thursday, the day after the attack on the Capitol by the pro-Trump crowd.
Since his election, Trump has played golf with Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Ernie Els, Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau, among many other golf professionals from the past and the present. The world’s number 4 golfer, McIlroy, later declined another invitation to play with Trump and in May criticized his way of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. “The fact that he is trying to politicize this and make it a campaign rally and say that we run most of the tests in the world as if it were a contest, there are some things that are terrible,” said McIlroy. “It is not the way a leader should act.”
He has visited his golf clubs more than 300 times since taking office and inspired a best-selling book on how golf is the best way to understand it.