The rather large and gold Donald Trump statue towering over Trump National Doral, host of this week’s Cadillac Championship on the PGA Tour, is understandably catching everyone’s attention. It’s not often you arrive at a golf course and see a statue of the president of the United States overlooking the property.
While the Trump critics are doing their typical, very loud yelling online about the statue, players who are actually teeing it up in the event have reacted to the inanimate object’s presence in a totally sane manner, which is always refreshing in the year 2026.
“It’s big and gold,” six-time PGA Tour winner Rickie Fowler told The Palm Beach Post. “About all I got. It’s his place he can do whatever he wants.”
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Former Champion Golfer of the Year, Brian Harman, echoed the same sentiment, saying, “It’s his place, he can do whatever he wants.”
“If I have my own resort one day, maybe I’ll put a big gold statue of me on it,” Englishman Tommy Fleetwood told the Post. “We’ll see.”
There have been countless calls from folks on social media, living scarily detached from reality, that players should have boycotted the event being held at the Trump-owned property by not playing. The installation of the gold statue days before the opening round of the tournament only added more fuel to that fire.
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While it’s incredibly fair to describe the statue as unnecessary and over-the-top, as Fowler and Harman accurately stated, it’s Trump’s place, and he can do whatever he wants.
As for the statue itself, the story surrounding it, and how it eventually made its way to Trump National, is quite something.
An Ohio sculptor by the name of Alan Cottrill was commissioned for the project in August 2024, the month following the first assassination attempt on the president that took place in Pennsylvania. The project was commissioned by $PATRIOT, a cryptocurrency group, but was allegedly put on hold after Cottrill accused the crypto group of copyright infringement after it allegedly used the likeness of the artwork to sell crypto tokens.
Cottrill was paid $300,000 for the 15-foot bronze statue itself and another $60,000 for the gold leafing, but until full payment was received and agreements were made, he held the statue in an unknown location east of Columbus, Ohio. Terms were met last week, and Cottrill himself drove the statue from Ohio to Miami, Florida, for it to be installed between the first tee and driving range at Doral.
