Trump Wins His Own Club Championship, Again

Donald Trump says he shot a two-under 70 to win the Senior and Super Senior titles at his own Bedminster course. A leaderboard backs up the number. It also shows a seven-shot gap that has fuelled years-old doubts about his golf.

By Miles Ashworth · 4 Aug 2026 · 3 min read · Canada edition

Donald Trump on a golf course. Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images.

Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on Monday 3 August that he had won both the Senior and Super Senior men's club championships at his own Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with a score of 70, two under par.

"I won with a score of 70, and am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I'm given very little time to practice, because I'm focused on many other things," he wrote. "It's called TALENT, and I have it, and they don't!"

He also shared a video of what he called "the winning shot", a pitch from around 40 to 50 yards that checked up with backspin about three feet from the hole.

The record at Bedminster

This is not the first time Trump has won his own club's championship. He won both the Senior and Super Senior titles at Bedminster in 2023 and the Senior title in 2024. Reports put his total of club championships across his courses at between 40 and 43.

The president is 80, and a gross score of 70 at that age would be exceptional by any standard. It is the kind of round that very few amateur golfers of any age produce in competition.

What the leaderboard shows

This time there is at least some independent support for the number. A fellow competitor, Philip Zamloot, shared a video on Instagram of the club's leaderboard, which listed Trump with a gross score of 70. The next-best gross score on the board was Zamloot's own 77.

That seven-shot margin is where the doubts come in. Club championships at a private course are not independently officiated in the way professional events are. There is typically no television coverage and no outside rules officials, and players mark their own or each other's cards. A leaderboard confirms what score was entered. It cannot confirm how the round was played. Critics online also pointed out that Trump's club championship wins have come at courses he owns.

A familiar pattern of skepticism

Trump's golf has drawn public skepticism for years. Actor Samuel L. Jackson accused him in 2016 of lying about a round they played together. Sportswriter Rick Reilly's 2019 book Commander in Cheat alleged a long pattern of rule-bending on the course, drawing on interviews with caddies and playing partners. Among its stories was the claim that caddies at Winged Foot gave Trump a nickname after seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway. More recently, a video from a round in Scotland went viral after it appeared to show his ball being moved, reviving the same questions.

Trump has denied cheating in every instance, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Bedminster result.

Why it keeps coming up

None of this proves or disproves the Bedminster result. There is a leaderboard, and there is no evidence either way about how the round itself went. What makes every new claim a story is the combination of the man and the setting: a sitting president, playing at a club he owns, in a sport where players are trusted to police themselves, announcing his wins on his own social media platform in the language of a victory lap.

For his supporters, it is proof that he is a genuinely good golfer. For his critics, the margin is the giveaway. The result is the same argument that has followed Trump's golf for a decade, with a new number attached.