When a president meets a national champion golf team, the usual script involves handshakes, a few kind words, and a photo. Donald Trump had a different idea. On April 22, in front of over 100 collegiate athletes at the White House, Trump stepped up, mimed a golf swing, and then challenged the Cowboys to a match he openly admitted he did not expect to win.

“I’m going to try giving you a match. I think it’s going to be tough,” Trump told the Oklahoma State Cowboys men’s golf team, the 2025 Division I national champions.

He also told the Cowboys to reach out any time they were in Washington, and he would take them to a special place on the Potomac River, directly referencing the Trump National Golf Club, which hosts LIV Golf Virginia next month, just ahead of the PGA Championship.

While the Oklahoma State golfers were the focus, they shared the White House stage with champions from six other schools, including Texas A&M Women’s Volleyball, Wake Forest Men’s Tennis, Georgia Women’s Tennis, Youngstown State Women’s Bowling, West Virginia Mixed Rifle, and Florida State Women’s Soccer.

The Cowboys earned that White House invite by defeating Virginia 4-1 at Omni La Costa’s North Course last May. Trump praised the team for securing its 12th national title and credited head coach Alan Bratton for leading a squad that showcased consistency, grit, and precision all season long. Oklahoma State’s 12 titles are the second most in NCAA history, behind only Houston’s 16.

Donald Trump has long used golf as a social stage. In 2017, Tiger Woods played a practice round with Trump alongside Dustin Johnson and former PGA Tour player Brad Faxon at Trump’s club in Jupiter, Florida. In 2024, after Bryson DeChambeau clinched his second US Open title, he celebrated the following day with the Trump Golf team, making it a public moment rather than a private one. From competitor outings to challenge talks with college champions, the approach has stayed the same.

The White House visit for a national champion college golf team is not new. Oklahoma’s 2017 squad made the same trip, as did Stanford’s 2019 team.

Trump this month signed an executive order on college sports reform, limiting eligibility to five years, allowing one transfer without penalty for undergraduates, stopping pay-for-play schemes, and adding protections for women’s and Olympic sports. The Champions Day event sat inside that larger conversation Trump is actively having with college athletics.

For Oklahoma State, the visit lands at a useful moment. The Cowboys head into the Big 12 Championship at Prairie Dunes next week as defending national champions. A presidential golf challenge and an open invitation to Trump National are not a bad way to open a postseason.

But while the Cowboys received a warm welcome, not everyone has been so friendly at Trump’s golf properties; Greenpeace protesters recently placed six model wind turbines on a green at his Turnberry course in Scotland.

When Greenpeace turned Donald Trump’s Turnberry into a wind farm

The protest targeted Trump’s policies against wind energy in the US, where his administration has moved against the renewables sector. Activist Lily-Rose Ellis said clean energy independent of Russian pipelines or the Strait of Hormuz would lower energy bills and strengthen security.

Donald Trump spent years fighting Vattenfall’s offshore wind farm visible from his Aberdeen golf course and lost every legal challenge. Many in the industry trace his opposition to wind power back to that defeat, the consequences of which American renewable developers are now facing.

Turnberry has hosted the Open Championship, and Trump has previously described it as one of the great courses in the world. Greenpeace staged the demonstration there rather than at any of its other properties.