A new book says Trump "cheats at the highest level"

Mike Tirico, a former golfing partner of Trump's, says the president launched his ball off the green and into a bunker

Which you'll be surprised to learn is not allowed under the rules of golf

Do we reckon Donald Trump has read much John Updike? Maybe, but if we're presuming so then he might have recognised himself in Updike's view that "golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child" - though a new book suggests you might want to amend that to "the idiot in us and the child, and the petulant and obvious cheat".

In Commander In Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, sports journalist - and sometime golfing partner of Trump - Rick Reilly says that the long-assumed cheating which Trump's golfing partners have chucklingly accused him of is more like the expression of a deep-rooted philosophical position on the idea of fairness and competition Trump's settled on. Namely: if I do it, it's fine.

"He cheats at the highest level", Reilly writes, according to the New York Post. "He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf… if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat."

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Reilly cites one example from ESPN's American football announcer Mike Tirico. Tirico pinged a 230-yard 3 wood at the green, and caught it sweetly. He knew he'd hit the green, but because it was elevated he couldn't see exactly where it landed.

When Tirico got to the green, though, his ball had somehow landed 50 feet away in a bunker. It was a bit of a riddle until after the round finished.

"Trump’s caddy came up to me and said, 'You know that shot you hit on the par 5? It was about 10ft from the hole," Tirico explains. "Trump threw it in the bunker. I watched him do it.'"

While the rules officials at the Royal and Ancient dust off enormous leatherbound volumes to check whether there's anything against that in the laws of the game, it's worth remembering that while Trump's been accused of cheating by the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, pro golfer Suzann Pettersen and Oscar de la Hoya, some of Trump's golf partners, like Alice Cooper, are a lot more relaxed about the idea of 'rules', 'regulations' and 'not being a dick'.

"The funny thing is, everybody wants me to say he was cheating," Cooper told Billboard last August. "And I say, 'I don’t know anybody that doesn't cheat at golf.' When it’s for fun, I mean, I cheat, everybody cheats."

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