As if Trump isn’t bad enough, now the poor people of Doonbeg have to worry about LIV Golf

It is with regret that we must note that Donald Trump has done a golf again. And worse, that he has done it here. He came, he saw, he blathered on about hitting 285-yard drives around Doonbeg. First rule of golf — always play the ball as you lie.

For those who live their lives blessedly golf-free, it’s worth noting that the PGA Tour average for driving distance is 297.6 yards. Go check out the players who average in and around 285 off the tee and you find the likes of Russell Henley, who just came fourth in the Masters a few weeks back. Or Ryan Moore, US Ryder Cup player and a five-time winner on tour.

And yet here’s Ol’ TanoraFace, 77 next month and 17 stone in his Maga hat, still striping his drives like he treats his wives. Which is to say, cheating, lying and dissembling to such an extent that most people can’t even be bothered to call him on it any more.

A little gerrymandering of the truth around his golf game is no biggie, obviously. Given the extensive list of Trump’s peccadilloes, it’s fair to say there’s bigger fish to fillet. After all, literally, while he was playing golf in Clare, he was being tried for rape and defamation back in New York. Instead of turning up in court, he chose to stand on the other Atlantic coast and bad-mouth his accuser between swings. In every sense, the trial continues.

As if Trump isn’t bad enough, now the poor people of Doonbeg have to worry about LIV Golf

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Poor old Doonbeg. Of all the sandy bumps on all the scraggy inlets in all the world, theirs had to be the one the old gasbag feasted on at a knockdown price. It was on sale for €75 million in the summer of 2013. He got it for €15 million the following May. As Colm Keena showed in these pages during the week, it has never booked an after-tax profit in all the time since.

You may recall that so tickled were we at the time by the idea of a famous man coming to buy a golf course in west Clare, we sent our actual minister for actual finance to meet him off the plane at Shannon Airport. Michael Noonan gave him the full treatment — red carpet, violinist, harpist, cailín aileann ag canadh, the whole bit. Nope, that wasn’t a fever dream. That actually happened.

So now Doonbeg has to stand up straight and slap on a smile a few times a year and assure the outside world that they are Trump people. Their idyllic little slice of the western seaboard gets taken over every once in a while by all the secret service agents and all the Trumpaloompas and if anyone asks, they’re only delighted to have them.

Maybe they throw out a little rueful chuckle that, oh well now you wouldn’t necessarily be agreeing with everything he says, of course. But Doonbeg is a welcome employer in a rural area and sure you wouldn’t want to be waiting on the feckers above in Leinster House to be bringing jobs to west Clare, now would you?

And by and large, everybody is happy enough to leave them at it. Mostly, we like to imagine that as soon as the Trump 757 leaves the tarmac at Shannon and points its nose back across the Atlantic, the good people of Doonbeg let their shoulders relax and get on with their lives, relieved that it’s over. Maybe they are genuine fans of the only doubly-impeached president in American history, although it feels unlikely. One way or the other, they can do without snooty out-of-towners giving them grief for their part in the whole enterprise.

It all gets a little more complicated though when the prospect is raised of Doonbeg holding a LIV golf event. The Saudi sportswashing vehicle already visits three Trump-owned courses a year and Eric Trump said on Thursday that they’d be delighted to bring one to Doonbeg if LIV are interested at some stage in the future.

Now, it’s quite likely that this will never come to pass. The fact that the course is a gem is neither here nor there — plenty of the LIV events have been played on glorified cabbage fields. More importantly, the age-old problems of bringing a major sporting event to a tiny village will be difficult to get around. Also, it’s hard to see the Government throwing any of that sweet, sweet Fáilte Ireland money at it. So we’ll see.

But seriously — how exactly did the poor folk of Doonbeg find themselves shunted down into the armpit of sport and politics? Bad enough they have to put up with all the tut-tutting when the Trump circus comes to town. Imagine the scouring they’ll have to grin and bear if all the old stooges on the payroll of cuddly Prince Salman pitch up for the week somewhere down the line.

All they did was live near a patch of land so gorgeous it makes Narnia look like an inner-city squat. A place of beauty and soul and fresh sea air, polluted now by a dangerous jackass who comes along and says things like: “I said to myself, ‘it’s on the ocean. If it’s on the ocean, we call it Doonbeg on the Ocean. We have the ocean, and nobody else does, so that’s what we’re calling it’.”

And now they have to worry about LIV Golf arriving on their doorstep.

They must be wondering what they did to deserve such a risible fate.