PGA Strips Trump Property Of Major Championship (Update)

Update, 10 p.m. Eastern:According to The Associated Press, the PGA of America cut ties to President Donald Trump when it voted Sunday to take the PGA Championship event away from his New Jersey golf course next year.

Earlier story follows:

The PGA will strip the 2022 PGA Championship from Donald Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey golf club, but it will come after the President is out of office to avoid Trump retaliating, a Golfweek columnist hypothesized over the weekend.

In a column published Saturday, Eamon Lynch wrote, "the odds that ’22’s PGA Championship will happen as scheduled in New Jersey are about as good as the chances of you or I winning it."

"Seth Waugh, the PGA of America’s CEO, was a banker and has an alert eye for high-risk exposure. He knows that Trumpism is likely to be an equally incendiary force in the ’22 midterm elections and that any affiliation is poisonous. Waugh will be forced to move the event and face down a small but vocal faction of his membership who remain true believers.

"Moving its major from Trump National has been debated internally at the PGA for more than two years, but executives have been reluctant to antagonize a famously vindictive man who controls the Internal Revenue Service. Such concerns melt away in 10 days, if not sooner."

While Lynch is openly anti-Trump and has left behind plenty of evidence, there appears to be a coordinated drumbeat for the PGA to strip Trump of the event. Washington Post columnist Barry Svrluga just happened to write a column Saturday with a very similar tone as Lynch. Svrluga doesn't go as far as implying the tournament will be stripped from Trump, but he does believe (shocker) that that PGA should teach Trump a lesson by moving the tournament.

"That the tournament, one of four majors annually on golf’s calendar, should be moved is obvious, and it’s shameful that the PGA stood by after Wednesday’s horror show at the Capitol and announced nothing about its intentions," Svrluga writes.

It appears Lynch and Svrluga were both beat to the punch by John Feinstein, who wrote in Golf World on Thursday that the 2022 event needs to be moved from Trump's property.

"This is about a man who encouraged—all but ordered—his supporters to attempt some sort of clumsy coup d’etat on the United States government. This is about a man who, even AFTER finally telling his supporters it was time to leave the U.S. Capitol following one woman’s death and the Capitol building itself—a major part of our country’s history—had been severely damaged, tweeted: “We love you. You’re very special.”

Golfweek ranked Trump Bedminster No. 158 on its 2020 Top 200 Modern Courses list, up from No. 159 in 2019.