Massive golden Donald Trump statue appears at Trump Doral ahead of Cadillac Championship

If you thought “Gold Boy,” the short-lived mascot of the Players Championship who made his glimmering bow at TPC Sawgrass in 2022, was cringe and controversial, ba-ba-ba-baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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That is what greeted players, staff, fans and media as they arrived at Trump Doral for the Cadillac Championship this week. The new Signature Event marks the first time in a decade the PGA Tour has returned to the Donald Trump-badged course, and they received a bright (some might say blinding) welcome from the 15-foot-tall statue of the current President of the United States.

While it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that Trump commissioned the tribute to himself, it was in fact the long-running project of Patriot Token, a right-wing crypto coin that is hoping the statue will encourage the buy-in of big-money investors.

With Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies currently in freefall (BTC and ETH are down 33.39% and 44.81% respectively over the past six months), Patriot Token has an uphill climb ahead of them, especially with a giant statue of a 79-year-old man strapped to their back. Even golf fans on X, which skews broadly right due to the influence of Trump benefactor and owner Elon Musk, were split on the gaudy totem.

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Loathe it or love it, the statue represents one of the primary reasons the PGA Tour stepped away from Trump Doral in the first place: Politicization. The statue is a partisan statement designed to raise capital for an unaffiliated investment group. It’s hard to imagine tour leadership, nor its various financial partners, will be thrilled with the appearance of the literal and figurative lightning rod, but here’s hoping it won’t cast a shadow on golf's much-anticipated return to the Blue Monster.