Biden-Trump golf match would expose Trump as the lying cheat he is. I’d pay to watch | Opinion

I really want to see Joe Biden and Donald Trump play golf.

In fact, I’d pay good money to watch it on pay-per-view.

I’ve been thinking that since that bizarre moment in the first presidential debate when Trump, after claiming he “aced” a cognitive test, claimed he also recently won “two (golf) club championships, not even senior, regular club championships.”

There was some back-and-forth, with Biden claiming that he had his handicap down to a six, or maybe it was eight, when he was vice president, and saying, “I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him.”

At a rally on Tuesday, Trump, 78, challenged Biden, 81, to 18 holes, offering to spot him 20 shots and to donate $1 million to a charity of Biden’s choice if Biden beats him.

Biden’s campaign pooh-poohed the offer, with a spokesman saying “Joe Biden doesn’t have time for Donald Trump’s weird antics — he’s busy leading America and defending the free world. Donald Trump is a liar, a convict, and a fraud only out for himself — par for the course.”

They’re playing this all wrong.

Trump is a golf legend, and what he’s mainly legendary for is cheating and lying about his scores. There’s even a book about it, “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.”

In August of last year, Trump posted this highly implausible statement on his Truth Social network: “I am pleased to report, for those that care, that I just won the Senior Club Championship (must be over 50 years old!) at Bedminster (Trump National Golf Club), shooting a round of 67.”

For the record, that would tie him with the average score over three rounds (66, 67 and 68) shot by 2022 U.S. Open champion Cameron Smith, in winning a LIV Golf tournament on the same course two weeks prior.

For perspective, it’s considered a signal accomplishment for a senior golfer to be able to shoot a score equaling their age. Eleven shots below age is incredible — as in lacking any credibility whatsoever.

If Trump were as good as he says he is, he’d be playing on the LIV tour, not running for president. And being the narcissist that he is, he’d videolog his rounds so all of America could marvel at his supernatural skills.

As skilled as North Korea’s Kim Jong Il?

Trump’s not the first world leader to claim implausible golf scores.

It was pioneered by North Korea’s murderous dictator and “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il, the late father of current North Korean murderous dictator Kim Jong Un, of whom Trump once said “He likes me, I like him. We get along. He wrote me two of the most beautiful letters.”

In 1994, North Korean state media claimed the elder Kim shot a 34 — 38 strokes under par with five holes-in-one — in the first round of golf he ever played.

Golf Magazine’s Josh Sens got to the bottom of it in 2016 after basically sneaking himself into a tournament in the closed-off country.

Part of the explanation was that Kim’s scorekeeper had scored the round relative to par, so a par would be carded as a 0, a bogey as 1, and a double bogey as 2.

“Unfamiliar with that scorekeeping shorthand, the North Korean state news agency covering the outing had read the five 1s on Kim’s card as holes-in-one,” Sens wrote. “Forget the fact that Kim, a rank beginner, probably never sniffed bogey all day. (If you were keeping score for a brutal autocrat, would you dare tell him he’d made nothing but snowmen?)“

A snowman, for those unfamiliar with golf talk, is an 8, double par on most holes. It’s not good.

Frustrating his way to victory

And that brings us around to the reasons I think Biden ought to tee it up with Trump.

When I was about 19 or 20, my dad and I played a round with a guy who looked about like Biden looks now. The course was crowded so the starter had added him to our twosome.

It’s the most frustrating round I ever played.

The old gent stepped up to the first tee and hit it maybe 120-130 yards down the center of the fairway. “Not long, but straight,” he said jovially. He hit another shot like it, and then another, and sank a short putt for a par 4.

He did that all day. He never hit a sand trap, never hit into a water hazard, never sliced into the trees. He beat both my dad and me, although we were outdriving him by 80-100 yards every hole.

And he kept on chanting his mantra, “Not long, but straight,” all day long. I came to understand why he was at the course alone.

If Biden could play that kind of dink-and-dunk golf, he’d drive Trump absolutely crazy.

And even if he just made it all the way around the course, I don’t see how he could lose.

If Biden took Trump’s offer of 20 strokes and won, he could make Trump donate $1 million to Ukraine to resist the invasion of their country by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, another of Trump’s international bromance buddies.

But even if Biden shot 150 and Trump broke 90, which would be a good score for his age, Biden would still be showing up Trump for the lying buffoon that he is.

A lot of Trump voters are golfers. They might forgive him lying about elections, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, or sex with a porn star.

But signing a false scorecard with a 67 on it? That’s a golf cart bridge too far.