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Golf is an endless difficult and rewarding sport. It's a game that just throws endless euphoria and disappointment at you. I love it desperately (I just came back from a holiday where I played golf every day, sometimes multiple times, for two weeks) and I understand why some might not. But Trump loving golf makes a lot of sense to me.
I recently read Nikaidou Hell Golf , which a manga series about a man trying to go pro but failing over and over again. Unlike a lot of manga, which is aimed at a younger audience and usually carries a theme of success and triumph, Nikaidou Hell Golf is a seinen manga (target audience being young adult men and older) and it is a story of failure. I think it did touch on golf being a "endless difficult and rewarding sport", the protagonist, Nikaidou Susumu, is a loser with mediocre skills that relies on the sponsorship of others to be able to attempt to become pro.
However, he never gives up (at least up to the most recent chapter) despite watching countless peers of his give up on their dreams to become an adult and take a job that pays the bills, despite being ostracized by those who once saw him as their hope of creating a successful pro golfer and by his much younger peers in the same program, and despite losing his sponsorship and having to come up with his own way of getting money to try to go pro (including taking money from his own retired mother that saved money for a vacation).
You essentially have a man with no future, who continued to take advantage of the goodwill of others in pursuit of his selfish dreams, and is unable to face reality that he should just give up on his dreams and move on with his life. Yet, if you read the story, it becomes clear the man is very aware of his own flaws, he knows he's taking advantage of those around him and feels immense guilt. In a sense, he is an addict, an addict to the game of golf, and to the idea that if he just goes pro he can fix all his mistakes and earn the adoration and respect of those around him.
The story is still ongoing, so it's not 100% clear exactly what the message the author intends to convey with the story. But it does touch a lot on the themes of adulthood, failure, dreams versus reality, and of course, euphoria and disappointment, all centered around one man's relationship with golf.
When golf presents itself in a story like this, I don't mind having to read about it. However, rather than enjoying golf in and of itself, I'm finding entertainment in the stories golf might create. I usually don't find any entertainment in watching an actual game of golf or looking at stats through golf (it also doesn't help that I actually don't play the sport, so those stats mean very little to me). It might just be because I don't create my own stories around these events, while those that do enjoy golf are able to immerse themselves in some kind of greater narrative beyond the game of golf. In a similar vein, I find baseball to be utterly boring, despite finding Michael Lewis' Moneyball to be a fascinating read.
Part of the reason I might not be able to formulate my own stories could be I'm just not in a bubble where anyone actually cares about golf. I work in a more technical role in a tech-focused company, where I rarely interact with executive level people (but I don't think even they really play golf). So none of the coworkers I interact with daily play golf, nobody in my family plays golf, the only time I really knew anyone that played golf was in college because some of my peers worked and played golf at the nearby country clubhouse. But those guys were in a different social group, with a different background. They were from rich, upper class families, while I attended the school on scholarship (and I chose the school precisely because it would cost me the least amount of money to graduate from). I didn't play the networking game well and that's my one regret in college, but honestly, even now I'm not sure, I could've done a good job at it. I don't think I would ever really be close friends with most of them. Perhaps if I did, I might have come to appreciate golf more for what it is.
But alas, golf to me just isn't something I can find myself to really be excited about. At best, it can serve as a medium for storytelling, and I can appreciate it through that, but as a sport in and of itself I can't find myself enjoying. For a guy like Trump, who probably grew up playing golf, who is surrounded by many others who engage in the sport, and who has many stories and experiences with surrounding it, I'm sure golf resonates with him on a deeper level. He's a big man with big stories, after all.
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