President Trump calls his Turnberry golf course “my Monet” and makes calls at all hours of the day with ideas to improve it, his son has revealed.
Eric Trump has told of his father’s pride in the resort on the Ayrshire coast which he purchased for almost £40 million in 2014.
Trump said that while his rich friends were buying masterpiece paintings by the French artist he had bought Turnberry and described it as “far more beautiful”.
The US president, who also owns Trump International Links in Aberdeenshire, obsesses about perfecting his Scottish properties, according to his son’s new book.
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Eric, 41, is in charge of the golf resorts and oversaw a £200 million renovation of Turnberry after Trump’s firm took it over.
In his book Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation, he writes: “Donald Trump could describe properties in the simplest yet most compelling terms.
“He was never interested in the poetic nonsense written by overprice PR firms. His messages were, and are, always simple and strong.
The president at the opening of Trump International Golf Links at Balmedie in Aberdeenshire
ANDREW HARNIK/GETTY IMAGES
“‘Turnberry is the greatest golf course on the planet. Nothing compares’. It was an easy message to carry because it was true.
“‘I have friends who buy Monets,’ he would say. ‘Turnberry is my Monet and it’s far more beautiful’.
“As a company we’ve built many projects from the ground up. Other times we purchased properties where previous owners didn’t have vision or couldn’t execute.
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“He was the best at turning a diamond in the rough into the most iconic properties.
“Time after time, previous owners would come back to our renovated properties and say ‘I just never saw the potential that you saw’.
“Often, the difference was seeing what others couldn’t; other times it was simply having pride of ownership and unwavering standards.”
Eric Trump said his father calls him “honey” and still kisses him on the cheek when they see each other.
He said the president was fixated on minor details about his golf resorts and recounts one late-night phone call where he suggested making changes to the seventh hole on Turnberry’s Ailsa course.
He said: “My father is the hardest-working person I’ve ever known. He never stops. An Energizer bunny in a red tie.
“He’ll sometimes call me at five o’clock in the morning: ‘Hey, honey, are you awake?’
“He calls me at 11 o’clock at night. ‘Eric, I was thinking. The seventh hole at Turnberry, if we made that dogleg a little bit sharper, we could put a trap off to the left-hand side. You push that green back, we could pick up 30 yards and elevate the tee box. You’d have a better tee shot.’”
He added: “We used to make ridiculous bets over the tiniest details of our properties. ‘I’ll bet you that window is exactly three feet from the corner’.
“‘Well, Dad, I’m 3,000 miles away at the moment, but I’ll bet you a dollar it’s five feet’. Out came the tape measure, ready to prove the other wrong.
“I have a stack of signed dollar bills pinned to the board above my desk for the bets I’ve won.
“The granularity of these conversations is something that no one would expect from Donald Trump. I definitely inherited his DNA.”
Earlier this month it was revealed Turnberry made a loss of £631,000 last year despite record sales. Its turnover increased by 15 per cent in 2024 to a record high of £24.2 million.
The increase in revenue was driven by wealthy visiting golfers. A round can cost up to £1,000.
Trump’s ambition is for The Open Championship to return to the venue, which also includes a five-star hotel.
Turnberry has hosted The Open four times — including the famous “Duel in the Sun” between Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus in 1977 — but not since 2009.
Earlier this year the championship’s organisers, the R&A, said “big logistical issues” around local infrastructure had to be overcome before Turnberry could be awarded The Open again.
Trump, 79, resigned as a director from the golf businesses after being elected as president for the first time and handed over his controlling stake to a trust run by his family.