PGA Tour players have refreshingly normal reactions to gold Trump statue at Doral
The sizeable, gold statue of Donald Trump towering over Trump National Doral, home of this week’s Cadillac Championship on the PGA Tour, understandably catches everyone’s attention. It’s not often that you arrive at a golf course and see a statue of the president of the United States overlooking the grounds.
While Trump critics made their typical, very loud rants about the statue online, the players who actually prepared it for the event reacted to the inanimate object’s presence in a completely sane way, which is always refreshing in 2026.
“This is big and gold,” said six-time PGA Tour winner Rickie Fowler. Palm Beach Post. “This is all I have. This is where he can do anything he wants.”
The bust of a 15-foot bronze statue of U.S. President Donald Trump, covered in gold leaf, lies on his back in the studio of sculptor Alan Cottrill in Zanesville, Ohio, on February 5, 2026. Lying on its back in a sculpture studio in Ohio, the 4.6-metre gold-leafed statue of US President Donald Trump, dubbed “Don Colossus” by its creators, is perhaps not in the best shape. The massive bronze work, planned to be two stories tall when erected on a 6,000-pound (2,720 kg) base, depicts a defiant Trump raising his fist in the moments after surviving an assassination attempt in July 2024. But the $360,000 statue, commissioned by cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and supporters of then-candidate Trump, waited more than a year to be erected in part by sculptor Alan. Cottrill has not yet been paid. (Photo: Eli Hiller / AFP via Getty Images) (Eli Hiller/AFP via Getty Images)
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Former Champion Golfer of the Year Brian Harman echoed the same sentiment, saying: “This is his place, he can do whatever he wants.”
“If I ever have my own holiday resort, maybe I’ll put a big gold statue of me on it,” Englishman Tommy Fleetwood told the Post. “We’ll see.”
There have been countless calls on social media from people horribly out of touch with reality that players should boycott the event held at Trump-owned property by not playing. The installation of the golden statue days before the tournament’s opening round added further fuel to the fire.
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Donald Trump’s golden statue is erected at Trump National Doral in time for this week’s Cadillac Championship (Tom D’Angelo/Palm Beach Post / Imagn Images via USA TODAY NETWORK)
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While it’s perfectly fair to describe the statue as unnecessary and over-the-top, as Fowler and Harman correctly point out, this is Trump’s place and he can do whatever he wants.
As for the statue itself, the story surrounding it and how it eventually ended up at Trump National is pretty significant.
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President Donald Trump makes a fist as he arrives at Miami International Airport in Miami on April 11, 2026. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Alan Cottrill, an Ohio sculptor, was commissioned to work on the project in August 2024, the month after the first assassination attempt on the president in Pennsylvania. The project was commissioned by $PATRIOT, a cryptocurrency group, but was allegedly put on hold after Cottrill accused the cryptocurrency group of copyright infringement after it allegedly used a likeness of the artwork to sell crypto tokens.
Cottrill was paid $300,000 for the 50-foot bronze statue itself and $60,000 for the gold leaf, but he kept the statue at an unknown location east of Columbus, Ohio, until full payment was received and deals were made. Last week, the conditions were met and Cottrill personally drove the statue from Ohio to Miami, Florida, to be placed between the first tee and the practice field in Doral.
