Donald Trump Discusses Golf, Testing And Rickie During Skins Match

The President of the United States called into the match and weighed in on lots of subjects.

Donald Trump Discusses Golf, Testing And Rickie During Skins Match

President of the United States Donald Trump discussed a variety of golfing topics during the TaylorMade Driving Relief Skins Match over the weekend.

The President phoned into the telecast and spoke to NBC Sports Mike Tirico during the broadcast. He weighed in on several key topics prevalent at the moment including the game of golf, testing for the Coronavirus, Rickie Fowler and a lot more.

Below we have summed up the brief interview, starting with Trump acknowledging how much he is missing the game.

“I love golf, I love even the exercise,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not as much when you are running around in carts for speed, but it’s a great game and it’s really so good to see these great players playing, and I know them, and they are really terrific people.”

Trump, an avid golf fan, briefly discussed what he talks about when playing golf with professionals, something he does often.

“A lot of them are very political, actually,” Trump said. “Some to them like my politics very much and probably some don’t. I guess the ones that don’t get to see as much, but they seem to like it.

"I know so many of the Tour players and they are really fantastic people. I can’t think of anyone I don’t like. I can’t say that necessarily in life, but when you meet these Tour players they are just great people.”

A few days ago Rory McIlroy, who was competing in the Skins Match, acknowledged that he played golf with Trump once but said he wouldn't do it again.

Trump also talked about another competitor in the Skins Match, Rickie Fowler.

“It amazes me how Rickie is,” Trump said. “He’s not as big as some people but he’s a very strong guy and hits it a long way. And he’s a great player, and he had one year where he came in second in the majors, in four majors, he came in second [in 2014], and that’s quite an achievement.

"I don’t know if he’d trade it for one [major title]. I actually asked, Would you trade it for one? And he might have said yes. He’s a great player, he’s going to have majors. He’s going to have lots of wins, and he’s a tremendous guy. Great personality.”

Trump weighed in on the issue of testing not just golfers but other American citizens too, as well as the issue of returning to normality;

“The athletes will be tested very carefully and the people that want to go can be tested very carefully, and ultimately I believe we’ll end up with a cure and/or a vaccine, probably both, and I don’t think that’s going to be in the very distant future,” he said. “And even before that I think we’ll be back to normal. I think after that hopefully it will be back. We really want to see it get back to normal.

"So when you have all those tens of thousands of people going to majors and going to golf tournaments, we want them to have that same experience and not have to wear masks and doing what we have been doing for the last number of months, because that’s not getting back to normal.

"We want to be back to normal where you have the big crowds and they are practically standing on top of each other and enjoying themselves, not where they are worried. But in the meantime we do the social distancing and they practice that and they’ve bee doing really well. The county is ready to start moving forward.”

“We want to get sports back. We miss sports; we need sports in terms of the psyche of our country. I had great chats with [PGA Tour commissioner] Jay [Monahan], I had great talks with [PGA of America CEO] Seth Waugh, anybody having to do with the sports. Some are on the commission and some aren’t. They have called me up individually. But we are getting it back, Mike. We are getting it back and it’s going to be fast.

"We’ll start with small crowds, if any … we want to get it back to where it was. We want big, big stadiums loaded with people. We don’t want to have 15,000 people watching Alabama-LSU, for example. And when you have the Masters we want to have big crowds. Right now that’s not what they are planning but you never know what happens.

"Things can happen very quickly. We are looking at vaccines, we are looking at cures. We are very, very far down the line. I think people are going to be very impressed with what is being developed right now.”

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