Trump Brings the Winthrop Golf Team On Stage at Rock Hill and Gives Them Their Marching Orders: Win the National Championship
The surprise guests at a Senate rally were a college golf team that just tied for eighth at Furman. They left the stage with a presidential expectation attached to their spring season.
ROCK HILL, S.C. - The strangest sports moment of the midterm campaign's closing week came in the middle of a Senate rally. As President Donald Trump spoke Thursday at the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center - a few protesters escorted out along the way - he welcomed the Winthrop University men's golf team to the stage in a surprise move, and joked with the crowd that he should give the team a match.
Then he set their target for them. 'The team is doing good, huh?' Trump asked. 'Well, I watched them, and they were interviewed. I said, "These guys, look at them, the future of America. Handsome, beautiful guys." They were so into whatever President Trump wants. He's got America. He loves his country. I said, "Isn't it nice? Really, isn't it nice, as opposed to all the negative stuff you hear?"' He finished with the charge: 'This is the future. So go out and win the national championship. Fellas, go out. We expect them now to win the national championship, right?'
The team receiving that expectation has a more modest recent line on the board. Winthrop is done with its fall schedule after the recent Furman Intercollegiate in nearby Greenville, South Carolina, where the Eagles tied for eighth in a 15-team field at Furman University Golf Course, with Mason Kucia and Andrew Gregory leading the way.
None of which diminishes the moment's place in the week: a college golf program from Rock Hill, in the middle of its offseason, walked onto a presidential rally stage in its own city and walked off with a national-title expectation issued by the president of the United States. Their spring schedule now carries a footnote no other team in the country has.
