Before Kai Trump leaves for the University of Miami next week, her longtime coach had one last message for her, and it had nothing to do with her swing.

She will start her freshman year at Miami, where she’ll play for the Hurricanes golf team after years of building her game as a junior. Before she left her hometown, she squeezed in one final training session with her coach, and it turned into a bonding session that showed just how much trust the two have built over the years. Coming from him, it felt like more than a casual goodbye.

In her latest video titled “Playing My Last Round Before College,” Kai Trump documented her final week at home before heading to Miami. The vlog closed out her regular weekly updates, but this one carried a little more weight than most.

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“No boyfriend’s going to college,” Paup said when asked about the last piece of advice. “I tell that to guys too. It’s not just guys. It’s a bad idea to go into a relationship.”

Kai Trump burst out laughing, but Paup didn’t back down. He repeated that the rule applies to everyone he coaches, not just her, and held firm on it even as she pushed back. The only concession he made was telling her to stay smart and still find room to enjoy her time in college, but the rule itself wasn’t up for negotiation.

It’s a message echoed by coaches well beyond Paup’s program. Relationships that turn into distractions during a season tend to show up fast, in missed reps, lost focus, and awkward team dynamics if things go sideways, and programs from smaller college golf teams to major conference rosters have leaned on similar ground rules for that reason.

For a freshman working her way into a new program, avoiding that kind of distraction carries real weight. Trump is still building back full strength after wrist surgery while adjusting to college-level competition, and the fewer outside variables competing for her attention early on, the more room she has to settle in with a new team.

Paup has coached Kai Trump seriously for the past three years, ever since she committed fully to golf, training with her two to three times a week. The two first crossed paths nearly six years ago, but it’s the last three that turned into a real partnership. Trump also joked in the video that Alex Paup will miss her a lot once she leaves and promised she’ll be back more Saturdays to keep training with him.

Alex Paup has also guided Kai Trump through her recovery earlier this year after she underwent wrist surgery in January to repair damage to her ECU tendon and fibrocartilage complex. When she returned to the gym in March, she tagged him in her comeback workout video and captioned the post, “We’re so back.”

Toward the end of the video, she turned emotional. She played one last round at her home course, packed up, and called it pretty much her last video. She also admitted she’s going to miss her mother a lot, and the goodbye has hit her just as hard.

“I am gonna miss my mom a lot. I think my mom, like, she’s getting very emotional about it, so. I don’t know. We were leaving a store the other day, and she started crying in the car, and I started crying, just me.”

Kai Trump Solely Focused on Golf

She starts her freshman season at Miami this fall as one of three first-year players on the Hurricanes’ roster. She’s admitted the move is a little nerve-racking, telling Fox News she’s “a little nervous” but ready for the next chapter. At the 2026 ESPYs, Sportico asked her about America 250, sports, and her grandfather’s political role. Her answer was direct.

“Honestly, I kind of stay out of politics completely,” Trump said. “It’s just not my thing.”

She’s said the same thing before. In an earlier interview on Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast, Trump called political life “such a dangerous thing,” and said she has no interest in ever running for office. Her focus, she’s made clear, stays on golf and building her own path separate from her grandfather’s world.

Miami’s fall season is light by design, four or five tournaments meant to ease freshmen into the college game. That gives Trump time to just play, without the noise that’s followed her all summer. Whether she can keep it that way once the season actually starts is the real question.