What is the most comprehensive public tracker of Donald Trump’s golf outings and how does it source its data?
Executive summary
DidTrumpGolfToday.com is the most-cited and broadly used public tracker of Donald Trump’s golf outings, repeatedly referenced in news reporting and analyses for tallying the president’s club visits and estimating taxpayer costs, and it builds its counts primarily from the president’s publicly released schedule and related public records [1] [2]. Other trackers — including TrumpGolfTrack, TrumpGolfTracker (multiple similarly named sites), and independent aggregations cited by outlets like Statista — exist and often use overlapping sources, but they differ in scope, verification standards and whether they count site visits or confirmed rounds of golf [3] [4] [5].
1. Why DidTrumpGolfToday.com stands out as the de facto tracker
DidTrumpGolfToday.com is frequently cited by mainstream outlets reporting on Trump’s golf frequency and its fiscal implications, with articles noting its tallies (for example, reporting that Trump had spent roughly a quarter of his second term at golf clubs based on the tracker’s counts) which makes it the de facto reference for short-form media summaries and cost estimates [2] [6]. The site’s visibility in reporting — not an official endorsement of methodology — is what makes it the most comprehensive in practical terms: journalists and analysts point to its running totals when framing stories about time away from official duties and associated costs [2].
2. How DidTrumpGolfToday.com sources its data
The tracker compiles visits largely from the president’s publicly released schedule and media reports about his whereabouts, counting “club visits” noted on those schedules rather than always proving a round was played, and then using government analyses to convert trips into estimated taxpayer costs [2] [6]. News coverage explicitly states the tracker “compiles data based on Trump’s public schedule” and that it “does not note how many of those days the president actually hit the courses,” which underscores the site’s reliance on official schedule entries and secondary reporting rather than on direct observational confirmation [2].
3. How cost estimates are calculated and their provenance
Cost figures commonly reported alongside the outing counts are not raw accounting released by the administration but are extrapolations: trackers frequently apply per-trip cost assumptions drawn from a 2019 Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of presidential golf-related travel during the first Trump administration to current tallies, creating estimates of taxpayer cost that are regularly reused by news outlets [2] [6]. That methodology gives a consistent headline figure for stories, but it is an estimate built on prior GAO cost-per-trip models rather than line-item, contemporaneous spending reports [6].
4. Other trackers and how they differ
Sites such as TrumpGolfTrack, TrumpGolfTracker (and similarly named projects) keep independent tallies and sometimes emphasize different metrics — for example, counting only confirmed rounds versus broader “club visits” — and some newer trackers claim to aggregate verified sources for each entry, producing variant totals that reflect methodological choices rather than factual contradiction [3] [4] [7]. The journalist resource list of “trackers” also flags an Alt Media “Trump Golf Track,” indicating a crowded ecosystem where multiple projects monitor overlapping activity with varying transparency and verification rigor [8].
5. Limitations, transparency and competing narratives
A key limitation across all public trackers is the White House’s intermittent refusal to confirm whether time at a club included actual play or who accompanied the president, meaning trackers often default to schedule entries and media accounts and explicitly note the difference between “visits” and “played” [7]. There is an implicit agenda in some trackers and in much of the coverage — they are framed to highlight perceived misuse of time and taxpayer resources — so readers should treat tallies and cost estimates as tools for accountability rather than definitive audited fiscal statements [2] [6] [8].
6. Bottom line for users seeking the most comprehensive public tracker
For practical purposes — because it is widely cited, frequently updated and used as the baseline in reporting — DidTrumpGolfToday.com is the most comprehensive public tracker in circulation today, and it sources its data primarily from the president’s publicly released schedule, corroborating media reports, and GAO-based cost extrapolations for taxpayer estimates; alternative trackers exist and may be preferred by researchers who want different inclusion rules or stricter verification of actual play [1] [2] [6] [3] [4].