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Update: 10:13 p.m. The PGA has decided to relocate the 2022 PGA Championship.
"The PGA of America Board of Directors voted tonight to exercise the right to terminate the agreement to play the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster." — Jim Richerson, PGA of America President
— PGA of America (@PGA) January 11, 2021
Donald Trump’s ownership of Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey could be problematic for the course playing host to the 2022 PGA Championship according to one columnist covering the sport.
Eamon Lynch, a columnist at Golfweek Magazine and contributor for The Golf Channel, writes that the tournament will be moved because of the recent activities of the President in a blistering column that discusses more than golf.
His Bedminster course is scheduled to host the 2022 PGA Championship, a fact that now has the PGA of America bunkered down under sustained criticism for a decision made in 2014. Such are the perils of assigning championship venues far in advance; you just never know when you’ve hitched your premier event to a sociopath. Though there was a hint back in 2015, when the PGA of America chose to kill the Grand Slam of Golf rather than play it at Trump’s Los Angeles course in the wake of his racist comments about Mexicans.
Donald Trump’s ownership of golf courses has affected the rotation of before. The same PGA of America that runs the PGA Championship chose not to play the popular Grand Slam of Golf in 2015 at Trump National in Los Angeles because of his comments from his presidential campaign announcement speech.
Also in Scotland, Turnberry has been taken out of the rotation for the British Open already due to the unpopularity of the President and his comments in the progressive nation.
Trump also owns the “Blue Monster” at Doral outside of Miami, which had its popular annual PGA tour stop pulled in 2016. The legendary course was home to the Doral Open from 1962-2006, and was a prestigious World Golf Championships stop from 2007-16. That event is now the The WGC-Mexico Championship at Club de Golf Chapultepec in Mexico City.
But some affiliations have continued for Trump courses during his presidency, as the PGA Tour Latinoamerica Championship has contested its season-ending championship event at Doral’s Golden Palm course since 2018.