While he was in New York over Labor Day Weekend to fund-raise and attend a high profile wedding, the president was turned down at several elite golf courses.
According to NBC 4 New York, the Trump National Golf Club, the Winged Foot and Willow Ridge were among the courses that rejected the president’s request to golf.
Club managers apparently did not want to inconvenience their high-powered and high-paying members over Labor Day weekend by shutting down their courses to accommodate the president.
The president was in town Aug. 29, a Friday, for fundraising events in New York and Rhode Island. He had been scheduled to stay overnight in Westchester County in order to attend the Saturday evening wedding of MSNBC host Alex Wagner and White House chef Sam Kass at Blue Hill Farm.
The sources said the White House advance team was giving the clubs just a day or two notice to fill the president’s open Saturday morning in New York. Of several courses contacted in New York and Connecticut, a spokesman for Fairview Country Club in Greenwich said it would have accommodated the president if he had asked. That was the only club that said it would.
Although Labor Day weekend is one of the busiest weekends of the year for golfing, and the courses didn’t want to inconvenience their high-paying members, it wasn’t too long ago that Obama’s cachet was such that no golf course would have denied him.
“I think he has lost that star quality he had in his first two years in office and in that 2008 campaign,” analyst Dan Gerstein told NBC 4 New York.
These days, owners don’t think twice about rebuffing President “No Strategy,” forcing him to change his plans at the last minute and return to Washington, rather than spend Friday night in New York.
“He can sleep in his own bed, do a little work tomorrow, spend some time with his family and then travel back to New York tomorrow evening to attend a private event,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained.