Colin Sheridan: Is the juice for Irish golf worth the squeeze?

Doonbeg, Irish golf and Donald Trump! There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Donald Trump isn't simply coming to the Irish Open. The Irish Open is coming to Donald Trump and his Trump International Golf Club at Doonbeg. Pic: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

Mon, 10 Aug, 2026 - 07:15

Colin Sheridan is a writer and columnist. A former officer in the Irish Defence Forces he has extensive deployment experience as a peacekeeper with the United Nations, having lived and worked in the former Yugoslavia, West Africa, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine.

Ah, Doonbeg, Irish golf and Donald Trump! The unholy trinity of TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch) theory! Irresistible in its potential for drama. Grotesque in the arrangement of its marriage. The helicopters. The motorcades. The Secret Service. The MAGA hats among the galleries and, presumably, protesters somewhere beyond them, lurking in the second cut of rough. The American president surveying the Atlantic from a links bearing his name - looking for Greenland, perhaps - while Rory McIlroy attempts to win an actual golf tournament somewhere in the foreground.

As spectacles go, Irish golf could do considerably worse. And spectacle, increasingly, is part of the gig. An international head of state attending our national open should constitute quite a coup. Except this isn't quite that. Trump isn't simply coming to the Irish Open. The Irish Open is coming to Trump.