No matter what you think about our country’s two presidential candidates, we can all agree it was good to see them tackling the most important topic on Thursday night: golf handicaps. Yep, golf handicaps.
We kid, we kid—especially because there are a LOT of actual important topics out there—but seriously, the most-heated discussion between President Joe Biden and former Presdient Donald Trump may have revolved around the golf games of the two candidates. It began when Trump was asked by CNN debate moderator Dana Bash about his fitness, providing him the perfect opportunity to pump up a couple recent victories on the course—and take a shot at his political opponent.
“I just won two club championships—not even senior,” Trump said. “Two regular club championships. To do that, you have to be quite smart, and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way. He doesn’t do it. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards. He challenged me to a golf match; he can’t hit a ball 50 yards.”
Ouch. Biden responded by saying he’s a six-handicap and he would happily play Trump if he agrees to carry his own bag.
“That’s the biggest lie—that he’s a six handicap—of all,” Trump retorted. “I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.” Damn, those are fighting words. Here’s the exchange:
And it had even one of the best fact-checkers in the world stumped:
Of course, golfers knew to check GHIN. A quick search shows Trump—who is No. 1 on Golf Digest’s ranking of golfing presidents—has a significantly lower handicap index. It also shows Biden has only recorded one score since 2015. Hmm.
Both have been accused of carrying vanity handicaps through the years, but on Thursday, the focus was on Biden’s number.
In any event, the exhange had people calling for a match—perhaps the latest edition of Capital One’s THE MATCH—to settle this once and for all:
And if not, reigning U.S. Open champ and YouTube golfer Bryson DeChambeau stepped in offering to host the match on his channel:
Golf’s top showman and content king really knows how to seize the moment, huh? Anyway, this match will probably never come to fruition—like that cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg—but, hey, we can dream.
