Will The Women's Open Get Trumped?
/That's the question The Guardian's Ewan Murray contemplates as The Donald prepares to arrive at Trump Turnberry Thursday for a press chat and other appearances. (Ron Sirak of GolfDigest.com reports that the questions will be limited to golf for the 1:30 pm Turnberry-time gathering, and has the "T&C" document explaining the restrictions to prove it.)
Murray "says the competitors deserve better" should Trump overshadow the golf, and he also assesses where the world of golf sits after a few weeks have passed since the developer's controversial remarks.
Disappointingly the European Tour, which hopes to host the Scottish Open at Trump’s course on the outskirts of Aberdeen, has been silent. So, too, the Scottish Government which ploughs £1.4m a year into that event.
The R&A would also happily have dodged the issue until it was put to it immediately before the Open Championship. Turnberry remains part of the Open rota and could host the tournament in 2020. When asked if the R&A’s position had been compromised by Trump’s comments, its chief executive, Peter Dawson, said: “Well, it’s had a lot of publicity, hasn’t it? We don’t have any decisions to make about Turnberry for quite some time and I think we’ll just let a bit of time pass and future championship committees will deal with them at the time.”In other words: “We hope this issue vanishes.” Equally disappointing was that it shouldn’t have even been the outgoing Dawson’s question to answer. The chairman of that championship committee, Peter Unsworth, sat on his hands alongside him.
**The answer appears to be muddled as we await Fleet Street's reaction, here's Joel Beall's take on six of the more absurd things said by Trump.