US President Donald Trump opened a new golf course bearing his name in Scotland on Tuesday, capping a five-day foreign trip designed around promoting his family's luxury properties and playing golf.
“Let's go. 1-2-3,” Trump said before he cut a red ribbon and fireworks popped to mark the official opening of the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie on Scotland's northern coast.
“This has been an unbelievable development,” Trump said before the opening. He thanked his son Eric for his work on the project, saying it was “truly a labor of love for him.” Son Don Jr. also was present.
Immediately after the opening, Trump, Eric Trump and two professional golfers in the foursome teed off on the first hole. They planned to play 18 holes before Trump returns to Washington.
The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington’s sweaty summer humidity. It was mostly built around golf — and walking the new course before it officially begins offering rounds to the public on Aug. 13.
Billing itself the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, was designed by Eric Trump. The course is hosting a PGA Seniors Championship event later this week, after Trump leaves.
Signs promoting the event had already been erected all over the course before he arrived on Tuesday, and, on the highway leading in, temporary metal signs guided drivers onto the correct road.
Golfers hitting the course at dawn as part of that event had to put their clubs through metal detectors erected as part of the security sweeps ahead of Trump's arrival.
Several dozen people, some dressed for golf, including wearing cleats, had filled the sand trap near the tee box to watch the ribbon-cutting ceremony shortly before it was scheduled to start. Another group of people were watching from the other side in tall grass growing on sand dunes flanking the first hole.
Also from Scotland's north is the president's late mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born on the Isle of Lewis, immigrated to New York and died in 2000 at age 88.
“My mother loved Scotland,” Trump said during a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday at another one of his golf courses, Turnberry, on Scotland's southern coast. “It's different when your mother was born here.”
Trump used his trip to meet with Starmer and reach a trade framework for tariffs between the US and the European Union’s 27 member countries — though scores of key details remain to be hammered out. But the trip has featured a lot of golf, and having the president visit is sure to raise the new course's profile.
Trump’s assets are in a trust, and his sons are running the family business while he’s in the White House.
Visible from various parts of the new course were towering windmills lining the coast — some with blades that showed visible dots of rust. They are part of a nearby windfarm that Trump sued to block construction of in 2013.
The new golf course will be the third owned by the Trump Organization in Scotland. Trump bought Turnberry in 2014 and owns another course near Aberdeen that opened in 2012.
Trump golfed at Turnberry on Saturday as protesters took to the streets, and on Sunday. He invited Starmer, who famously doesn’t golf, aboard Air Force One so the prime minister could get a private tour of his Aberdeen properties before Tuesday’s ceremonial opening.
“Even if you play badly, it’s still good,” Trump said of golfing on his course over the weekend. “If you had a bad day on the golf course, it’s OK. It’s better than other days.”
Trump also found time to praise Turnberry's renovated ballroom, which he said he'd paid lavishly to upgrade — even suggesting that he might install one like it at the White House.
“I could take this one, drop it right down there," Trump joked. “And it would be beautiful.”
