Putting on a show at the Irish Open in Doonbeg

First off, a confession – there was a brief period in the mid-2000s when I thought that Donald John Trump was cool.

It was just after the original version of The Apprentice had begun and before I became any way familiar with his modus operandi.

In the days of ‘old’ media, it was easier to portray a certain image and backstory.

When I read an interview with Trump in one of those awful magazines that push an aspirational lifestyle on men, it made him seem almost sympathetic.

In outlining how he had gone from being broke to becoming a billionaire, he offered hope to all of us, not least the impressionable college student hoping to have €50 in the account on Thursday afternoon for the week’s big night out.

Thankfully, I am more educated now – though, given the ubiquity of the New York native in the media, it would be hard not to know more about him.

This coming week, the man who is now the President of the United States of America will be on Irish soil. There will be political meetings in Dublin, but of course that is not the real reason for his presence.

When Jimmy Carter took office as president, he put his family’s peanut farm into a blind trust – and asked that members of his administration did the same with their assets.

Following his failed re-election, he announced that he would not use his status to enrich himself and actually had to sell the farm to pay off debts of more than $1m that had arisen due to drought.

By contrast, the Trump Organisation continues to be inextricably linked with the man in the Oval Office.

Among the businesses to carry his name is Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg which will host this week’s Amgen Irish Open.

That the Clare links’ maiden hosting of the event should happen now is worthy of note: for instance, the R&A, who run the Open Championship are unlikely to return to Turnberry, one of its storied venues, as long as the Trumps remain in charge.

Female members

Then again, the Open continued to be regularly held at Muirfield even though its owners, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, brought the first part of their name into question by not admitting female members until 2017.

Presumably, the terms for bringing the Irish Open to Doonbeg are favourable for both the Trump family and the DP World Tour – we will have to see if either the hosts or the organisers are keen to pick up the bill for Garda overtime.

Then the question becomes this – how much does any of the Trump circus matter with regard to some of the world’s top golfers battling to have the lowest score across four days of competition?

Unfortunately, we live in a world where a degree of nose-holding is required when it comes to enjoying major sporting events, with the World Cup a prime recent example. We love the artists and have to decide how much we can ignore those making money from the art.

Then the question becomes this – how much does any of the Trump circus matter with regard to some of the world’s top golfers battling to have the lowest score across four days of competition?

There is no denying how spectacular Doonbeg is and the argument could be made that, if the Trumps had confined themselves to merely running a golf-course empire, they would be universally lauded.

There is a strong field, which has not always been the case. Rory McIlroy – two-time Masters winner, lest we forget – is defending his title and he leads a roll-call of global stars, including Francesco Molinari, Robert MacIntyre, Brooks Koepka, Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia, Jon Rahm, Patrick Reed and Tyrrell Hatton.

Irish Major winners

Then of course we have our other Irish Major winners, Pádraig Harrington and Shane Lowry – and it’s always worth remembering how surreal that nomenclature would sound to anybody following Irish golf before the millennium.

Equally, the course has been a huge boom to the area and that will be amplified this week. Recently, The Irish Times sportswriter Denis Walsh visited Doonbeg to find a village that has thrived as a result of what the golf has brought.

He spoke to plenty of locals who owe their livelihood to it and the social benefits of that cannot be discounted as statistics in the “X jobs generated” style.

It is also worth noting that it is not an ‘ivory tower’ resort. While American green fees provide a revenue boost, Doonbeg is a club for the people of its hinterland, with membership at affordable levels.

What will happen? Let’s make a couple of guesses. There will be protests and those exercising such a democratic right will be decried as losers by the subject of their ire while not taking any responsibility for the root cause of the disquiet.

At the same time, there will be fabulous golf and he is likely to bask in some of the reflected glow from whoever is lifting the trophy on Sunday evening.

And at least we can be sure of one other thing.

Rick Reilly’s book Commander in Cheat outlines how Trump has regularly claimed victory in the various club championships at courses he owns, albeit sometimes with the help of what we might term ‘the magic pencil’ – at least we can be sure that the Irish Open won’t be added to his list of honours.