President Trump swinging a golf club during the White House Sports and Fitness Day on the South Lawn in May 2018. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/AP)
President Trump’s new $50,000 system, which he paid for personally, has replaced a less sophisticated model that was installed under President Obama. But a White House official says he still hasn’t used it since it was put in shortly after the new year began.
President Donald Trump has installed a room-sized “golf simulator” game at the White House, The Washington Post reported, which allows him to play virtual rounds at courses all over the world by hitting balls into a large video screen, according to two people told about the system.
The system has replaced an older, less-sophisticated simulator that had been installed under President Barack Obama, according to two people with knowledge of the previous system, The Post reported.
Trump’s system cost about $50,000, and was put installed earlier in 2019 in a room in his personal quarters, a White House official told The Post.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the president’s private residence, said that Trump had paid for the new system and the installation personally.
While it was recently reported that “Executive Time”—unstructured periods with no official meetings—now accounts for 60 percent of the President’s scheduled time, the White House official told The Post that Trump has not used his new golf simulator at all since it was put in.
Trump has played golf on an outdoor course about 139 times as President, largely at his own golf clubs, according to an analysis by The Post.
After Trump’s demand for a border wall triggered a month-long partial government shutdown, The Post noted, he stayed off the golf course for about 69 days, the longest such period of his presidency. He broke the streak on February 2, playing with golf legends Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus at Trump’s course in Jupiter, Fla.
Trump complained to friends during the shutdown that he missed Mar-a-Lago and being at his Florida course, The Post reported.
The White House has a long history of changes made to suit presidential hobbies, The Post noted. President Dwight D. Eisenhower put in a putting green, and President Richard M. Nixon added a bowling alley. Obama turned an existing tennis court into a full basketball court and added his own golf simulator that one former aide to Obama called “fairly unsophisticated,” The Post reported.
While three of the 16 golf courses owned by The Trump Organization, in Jupiter, Fla., Sterling, Va. and Turnberry, Scotland — own simulators made by the Danish company TrackMan Golf, according to the TrackMan website, officials at TrackMan did not respond to multiple requests from The Post asking if the firm provided the White House’s new system.
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