PGA Tour players have a refreshingly familiar reaction to the gold statue of Trump in Doral
The large and golden statue of Donald Trump atop Trump National Doral, which hosts this week’s Cadillac Championship on the PGA Tour, is grabbing 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 area.
While Trump’s detractors have done their usual, shouting out loud on the Internet about this photo, the players who put it together at the event have responded to the presence of the inanimate object in a completely reasonable, always refreshing way in the year 2026.
“It’s big and it’s gold,” six-time PGA Tour winner Rickie Fowler told The Palm Beach Post. “Almost everything I have. It’s his place where he can do whatever he wants.”
A broken part of a 15-meter bronze statue of US President Donald Trump, covered with gold leaf, lies on its back in the studio of sculptor Alan Cottrill in Zanesville, Ohio on February 5, 2026. Lying on its back in a photo booth in Ohio, Donald Trumpe 15 feet tall (4.6 meter) Colossus” by its creators, perhaps, is not very well. A large bronze work, planned standing two stories tall on a 6,000-pound (2,720-kg) platform, it shows a defiant Trump raising his fist after surviving an assassination attempt in July 2024. But the $360,000 sculpture, commissioned by the businessman to wait for cryptocurrency at the time, has been suspended. (Photo by Eli Hiller / AFP via Getty images) (Eli Hiller / AFP via Getty Images)
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Former champion of the year, Brian Harman, echoed similar sentiments, saying, “It’s his place, he can do whatever he wants.
“If I have my own resort one day, maybe I’ll put a big gold statue of myself in it,” Englishman Tommy Fleetwood told the Post. “We’ll see.”
There have been countless calls from people on social media, who live in fear of the truth, that the players should have boycotted the event held at Trump’s place for not playing. The placement of the gold medal just days before the opening round of the tournament added more fuel to that fire.
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A golden statue of Donald Trump was erected at Trump National Doral during this week’s Cadillac Rally. (Tom D’Angelo/Palm Beach Post / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
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While it’s incredibly fair to describe this image as unnecessary and superficial, as Fowler and Harman rightly say, it’s Trump’s place, and he can do whatever he wants.
As for the statue itself, the story surrounding it, and how it eventually arrived at Trump National, is quite something.
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President Donald Trump makes a fist bump upon arrival at Miami International Airport in Miami, April 11, 2026. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
An Ohio photographer named Alan Cottrill was commissioned to do the work in August 2024, a month after the first assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. The project was commissioned by $PATRIOT, a cryptocurrency group, but was allegedly stopped after Cottrill accused the crypto group of copyright infringement after allegedly using artwork to sell crypto tokens.
Cottrill was paid $300,000 for the 15-foot bronze statue itself and another $60,000 for the gold leaf, but until full payment was received and agreements made, he held the statue at an undisclosed location east of Columbus, Ohio. The goals were met last week, and Cottrill himself drove the photo from Ohio to Miami, Florida, to be placed between the first tee and driving range at Doral.
