Double bogey: Government figures suggest President Donald Trump’s golf expenses make him 10th best-paid ‘athlete’ in America

Donald Trump is known for his love of golf but the amount of money spent on accommodating the US president’s hobby would make him the equivalent of the 10th best-paid sportsperson in the US, according to recently released figures.

Even Trump’s most loyal supporters would struggle to say with a straight face that the 45th president should be regarded as an ‘athlete,’ but recent calculations into the dollar value of his regular golf trips by TheRoot.com suggest that the cost of his time on the links rivals that of the most well-paid sports stars in America.

In the last two years Rory McIlroy, one of the top-ranked players in the world, earned $12.5 million on the golf circuit through 44 tournaments. Tiger Woods took in $8.5 million across 33 events.

In that same time period Trump, who owns numerous golf clubs across the globe, has played on at least 71 occasions – almost as much as McIlroy and Woods combined – but their numbers pale in comparison to that of Trump who, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), spent $13 million of taxpayers money on golf alone in a one-month period in 2017.

It was recently calculated that Trump has spent one in every five days of his presidency at a golf resort, despite being critical of President Barack Obama’s own golf outings during his campaign for the presidency. 

However, Obama’s golfing time doesn’t compare to that of Trump, who famously said during his campaign that if he were to win the presidency he would be too busy to hit the course.

“If I win I may never see my property, I may never see these places again,” Trump said in 2016.

“But because I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go golfing, believe me. Believe me. Believe me, folks.”

The GAO calculated that each round of golf Trump plays costs US citizens around $600,000, while each visit to the “Southern White House” Mar-a-Lago sets taxpayers back $3.4 million.

Since 2016, about $130 million has been spent on financing Trump’s golf trips, with an additional $13.8 million incurred on security costs. If we extend those numbers to today, that means Trump’s golf hobby to date has cost a whopping $152 million, or around $50.6 million per year.

This ‘salary’ means he is tied with baseball star Mike Trout, who signed a 12-year $426.5 million deal with MLB side the Los Angeles Angels in what is the biggest contract in the history of team sports. 

Per Forbes, this figure would place Trump at the 10th spot in the list of the country’s best-paid athletes and make him the single most “expensive” golfer on the face of the planet.