To pass through the ornately gilded gate of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach is to enter a playground for the 1-percenters.
Ferraris, Jaguars and Porsches wait patiently for their owners on the driveway.
On the course, members who pay a $150,000 initiation fee and $25,000 annual dues thwack dimpled white balls down garden-like fairways between chuckles and pulls on their cigars.
Inside the opulent clubhouse, Donald Trump has just finished his usual Saturday round on his flagship golf course, the first of 11 in his collection, which now includes Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Doral, site of the WGC-Cadillac Championship that tees off Thursday. The author of The Art of the Deal bought bankrupt Doral last month for the the bargain price of $150 million. He intends to remake the Blue Monster and surroundings, as scuffed as an old pair of shoes, into “the finest golf resort in the country.”
Full story: New owner (and avid golfer) Donald Trump plans to make Doral ‘finest golf resort’