Natalie Gulbis calls Trump ‘gracious, generous and inspiring’
Natalie Gulbis, an LPGA Tour veteran, wants you to know something about Donald Trump: she likes him.
“I realize he has made his share of controversial remarks,” she writes in a Golf.com essay, “but in my experience, I have found him to be gracious, generous and inspiring.”
Only in this election is this newsworthy and only because of Trump are you reading this far. But that’s where we are, so let’s dig in.
“The commentary that follows is not about policy or who I think you should vote for in November. Instead, it’s one woman’s story about Donald Trump written in hopes that you might get to know him a little better through my experiences,” Gulbis writes.
The thousand-word essay steers wholly clear of politics, save for one quip:
“He encouraged me to look at myself as a brand and as a professional golfer with a huge platform to grow the game of golf, regardless of my gender,” she writes. “Because of that, I have always found political rhetoric about Trump’s misogynistic ‘war on women’ to be inconsistent with the Trump I know.”
Gulbis, whose lone LPGA Tour win came in 2007, details several encounters she’s had with the presidential candidate. The two have played golf on numerous occasions – he’s a “sneaky-good putter” – and Trump, she says, has been a wealth of knowledge when it comes to her business of being a professional golfer. It was Trump, she says, who encouraged her to demand equal compensation as men in all her endorsement deals.
“He believed any notion that I should accept less money than a PGA Tour player for appearances or endorsement contracts was just plain wrong,” she writes.
