His second consecutive win, attending President Trump’s marquee sporting event, is unparalleled in presidential history. Next is the Rider Cup.
Trump’s US open look elicits cheers, boos and delays
President Donald Trump’s open look in the US sparked delays and mixed crowd reactions in the men’s final.
WASHINGTON – Donald Trump suddenly overturns foreign policy in Ukraine and faces potential government shutdowns next week, but the president will not miss what’s on his calendar next. I’ll be attending the Ryder Cup.
Trump arrives in Long Island, New York on September 26th, making it the latest marquee sports event with the first American sports fans taking part in the first day of the prestigious biennial competition between America and Europe’s top golfers.
In the case of Trump – an avid golf follower, a former team captain of a high school baseball team, and a former owner of a soccer team – sports fandom is nothing new. But the number of sporting events attended by the 79-year-old Republican in his second term was historic for the US president, shaking the pace from his first White House term.
It comes as Trump worked to overhaul the NIL system in college track and field, and used the president’s power to interfere in sports debates like his previous president, as he insists that Pete Rose and Roger Clemens in the Baseball Hall of Fame and that the commander of the Washington of the NFL would return to his old names.
“We’re a sought-after player,” said Clay Travis, founder of the conservative sports and politics website Outkick and Trump supporter. “And I think what you’re looking at now is just a reflection of a lot of what you’ve seen throughout his life, and I think that’s one of the reasons why he’s so connected with people so well.”
Unlike friends and family who pretend to be sports experts, Travis said Trump was “naturally familiar with” sports. He said it strengthens the authenticity Trump supporters see at him.
“It’s like speaking a foreign language. You’re either fluent or not. And I think Trump is fluent in sports,” Travis said.
Two weeks after his White House term two weeks later, Trump became the first president to attend the Super Bowl. He laps the following weekend in a presidential limousine around a track at Daytona International Speedway before the Daytona 500.
He’s hardly late since then.
In his first eight months of office, Trump took part in the NCAA Wrestling Championships in Philadelphia. This is a LIV golf tournament at his own Doral Golf Club in Miami, a FIFA Club World Cup soccer match in New Jersey, multiple UFC fights, and a US Open Men’s Final Tennis match in New York City. Most recently he celebrated the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by watching the New York Yankees play the Detroit Tigers from a box at Yankee Stadium.
“Sports is part of his DNA,” former Trump spokesman Sean Spicer said of the president’s regular trips to sporting events. “He really didn’t do much of his first term, but now it is, I think it’s because he has such an order from the office.
It’s a long history of president and sports, but there’s nothing like Trump.
Trump’s showman’s side has long drawn him to major events and glasses. In the 1980s he often held boxing matches at casinos and often sat ringside as people like Mike Tyson won the battle.
But there are also some political strategies, according to Adam Burns, author of Sport and the American Presidency: From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump. It’s the best he’s ever returned to the White House, and how he can see the value of his fitness and masculinity projects (even if he’s not a world class athlete) in a way that shares the spotlight and connects with Americans at events they love.
“It makes you ‘everyone’,” said Burns, political director at Brighton College in the UK. “At the same time being energetic, there are people involved, and at the same time I’m a sports fan.”
Trump is far from the first president leaning on sports. William Howard Tuft was the first president to abandon his ceremonial first pitch at a 1910 baseball game.
Richard Nixon saw him beat Arkansas’ second-place university in 1969, then poured oil on the Texas Longhorn, which ranked the National Champions of College Football at No. 1 from the team’s locker room. George W. Bush is famous for throwing a strike in the middle when he took part in Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium after 9/11. Barack Obama began the tradition of releasing his own March crazy parentheses at the start of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
But Trump’s sports appearances are far more frequent than his predecessors. “I don’t think anyone is approaching attending almost everything they do (like Trump),” Burns said. “He’s doing what he wanted to do for the first time in presidency.”
If 2025 was an action-packed sports year for Trump, wait until 2026.
That’s when 11 US cities in June play host to the FIFA World Cup, the world’s most viewed sporting event. Trump has also finalised plans to hold a UFC match on the South Lawn of the White House with UFC President Dana White. It all coincides with Trump’s one-year anniversary of the US’s founding.
“Essentially, each of these games is like a Super Bowl,” Trump said of the World Cup last month. President Gianni Infantino of FIFA’s Oval Office has forced the president to hold the trophies the winner will receive. “The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the largest and most complicated set of events in the history of sports.”
Two years later, Trump will be at the heart of another global sporting event where Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympics.
golfer Scotty Scheffler says Trump is known to text or call after winning.
Trump has not received good reviews with all the audience at the events he attends. Boos and cheers were heard in this year’s US Open Final Match, which he shook out of the box. The president also got mixed reactions when he attended an awards ceremony on the field after Chelsea defeated Paris Saint-Germain at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey in July. Meanwhile, Trump was cheered loudly on the Daytona 500.
During Trump’s first term he formed a militant relationship with the National Football League, calling for boycotts in response to players kneeling during the national anthem. It sparked racial tensions in a league where the majority of players are black. But the battle between Trump and the NFL is over. The president hosted NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in his oval office in May and announced that the 2027 NFL Draft will be held at the National Mall in Washington, DC.
One sports league that Trump has not embraced is the National Basketball Association, which the president has criticized as a “political organisation” to take on the causes of social justice.
Trump doesn’t just consume sports from the bystanders. He mixes with star athletes and coaches when the game doesn’t happen, and often invites him to the White House.
Trump, the owner of multiple golf courses, has returned Saquon Barkley to the Marines’ White House this year after the Philadelphia Eagles played golf. He chatted with the Yankees in the locker room before the 9/11 game. He met with his soccer coach brothers Jim and John Harbaugh in the oval office. Golfer Bryson Deccanbeau has been granted permission to hit some wedge shots from the Southern Lawn of the White House.
“After you win, you sometimes get calls and texts from him,” Scotty Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 golfer and member of the US Ryder Cup team, told reporters ahead of this week’s competition. “He loves golf games.”
Schaeffler added: “It’s extremely important to us to represent here and the United States of America, to represent our president, despite being in golf tournaments.”
Even world leaders are aware of Trump’s fandom. When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met with Trump in an oval office in May, he brought in two of his country’s famous golfers, Ernie Elles and Letoyf Goosen, to soften the controversial meeting. “This is more difficult than sinking a three-footer,” Trump told Els, who invited golfers to tell them.
Several star athletes joined Trump in July at the White House Roosevelt Room, announcing his administration is reviving the annual presidential fitness test. They included Deccanbeau, NFL kicker Harrison Backer, former wrestler pole “Triple H” Levesque, golfer Annika Sorenstam and retired Hall of Fame football linebacker Laurence Taylor.
Trump’s sports knowledge was on display at the event. “He was great. He’s great when he’s not injured. He has to stay healthy,” Trump said of Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Sometimes, the rally seemed like an opportunity for Trump to brush his shoulders with his sports hero. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” Taylor said after Trump gave him a lecture. “But I am here to serve you. I am here to serve you.”
The White House is celebrating this year’s Ryder Cup achievements after Trump signed a recent executive order to prevent a railroad strike on Long Island. The order created an emergency committee to investigate the conflict between Long Island Railroad Road and the Union.
“This event is one of the greatest sporting events in the world and will not be held this year without the help of President Trump,” White House press chief Karoline Leavitt said on September 21.
If Trump has his path, he finds a way to navigate the turbulent landscape that pays athletes after signing an order in July that attempts to create a national framework for NCAA names, images and portrait programs.
Other sports items are also available on his to-do list.
Trump recently called for Clemens, the seven-time Cy Young winner pitcher linked to steroid use, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. His comments came after MLB in May was long banned by the league for gambling following pressure from Trump, and revived the late Rose for a long time. This means Rose qualifies for Cooperstown.
But Trump may have lost the battle over the team name of NFL Commander Washington. The president threatened in July that the franchise would stop the District of Columbia’s new stadium if the team didn’t return to being called the Redskins. However, DC city council approved a deal at the stadium last week, and Trump has now let go of the subject.
Reach Joey Garrison with X @joeygarrison.
