One morning during Bill Clinton’s presidency I got a call from my friend who works at the Pebble Beach golf course. Mr. Clinton was teeing off at 6:30, he said, and if I hurried over I could tag along.

The golf was underwhelming. (More interesting was the choreography of Secret Service agents, zipping around in carts, with automatic weapons poking out of golf bags.) On the fourteenth fairway, the president had about 150 yards for his approach to the elevated green — one of the more challenging shots at Pebble. He shanked it badly into the trees on the right.

Without hesitation, Mr. Clinton dropped another ball and thrashed at it again, rolling it barely 30 feet to the left. His caddie provided a third ball, which managed to find the putting surface.

I have no idea what was written on the scorecard, if one was even kept that day. Mulligans weren’t newsworthy in the judgment of a few pool reporters and me.

I thought about that as I watched one of dozens of YouTube videos about Donald Trump’s latest golf adventure, at his new course in Scotland. In one viral clip the president’s two caddies appear to make a replacement ball magically appear.

Personally, I care deeply about President Trump’s policy decisions — many of which I disagree with. What I don’t care about is his golf game or whether he “cheats.”

It’s true that golf is a game of honor in which penalty strokes are often called by a player against himself. But in social situations where score doesn’t count (unless it’s being used to establish a handicap index), taking a do-over or “Breakfast Ball,” is fairly common. So is improving your lie — say, if the ball is near a root that could damage your club—or declaring a ball lost and dropping another without penalty.

The commentator Sam Stein told his 1.4 million YouTube subscribers that Mr. Trump’s golf deception “says a lot about him.” The president’s lack of golfing etiquette might be extreme, but it’s foolish for his critics to seize upon that as proof of, well, anything. It makes them look desperate and petty.

The sports writer Rick Reilly wrote an entire book back in 2019 called “The Commander in Cheat,” in which he said “golf is like bicycle shorts. It says a lot about a man.” It’s a clever line, but it doesn’t ring true to those of us who spend countless hours with otherwise upstanding buddies who fudge their golf scores regularly.

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Copyright 2025 Peter Funt distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Peter Funt’s latest book is “Inside Fantasy Football.”