On Nov. 2, 2010, at approximately 1 p.m. Eastern time, Donald Trump exercised his civic duty like many Americans. He stepped out of his Park Avenue office for an hour to vote in the tumultuous midterm elections.

For whom, he wasn’t saying. Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo, perhaps?
A local Tea Party insurgent? A well-connected buddy? Nobody’s business,
of course, although he did give a hint of who he might support in 2012.

“A lot of people want me to run, and I am considering it,” he said later that afternoon, between conference calls and a live interview with Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto. Run for what? President of the United States, of course. And he sounded serious.“So will you make [New York City Mayor] Michael Bloomberg your running mate?” came the follow-up question. No answer. Turns out Trump wanted to change the subject from politics to his second great love — beyond real estate deal-making and his unmatched branding prowess. He wanted to talk golf. A few weeks after inviting Fairways + Greens for a round at Trump National Golf Club Westchester, a half hour’s drive north of Manhattan, he was still reliving how he played that day among the turning leaves and his trademark waterfalls.

“I putted unbelievably well,” Trump said, referring to his short-stick display that had to be seen to be believed. Twice holing bombs from off the edge of the green, Trump had a grand total of six putts over the first six holes. His reaction that day was simple and subdued. No high fives. No banter with his playing partners. It was just another day on the course for the man known as The Donald. But it was certainly memorable enough to recount on Election Day.

“I didn’t hit it great, but I putted great. I had seven putts on the front nine or something. I putted three in from off the green. It was a fluke. When you’re putting from a foot off the green, you have no putts, right? I ended up shooting 71.”
We had him at 74, but what’s a stroke here and there when you own the joint — and several other world-class private clubs and resort courses around the Western Hemisphere.

No matter what he shot that day or how he plays in his club championship, a celebrity event or just a friendly round, Trump reveals an almost youthful enthusiasm for the game that captivated him from the moment he took it up many years ago. Could this be the same cutthroat magnate who has made “You’re fired!” a hallmark of The Apprentice, now in its 10th season on NBC and duplicated in 23 other countries? Absolutely. Trump is a different person on the golf course than the popular image of the animated titan who can turn competitors weak-kneed with his sinister stare.

He’s downright humble and respectful of the game of golf. He’s almost vulnerable at times, asking playing partners if he’s taking the club back too far inside. Or if they really think he’s a near-scratch golfer. But when he typically bombs it 275 yards straight down the middle with little movement either way, nobody’s going to tell him to change a thing.

Over the course of two days, Fairways + Greens interviewed Trump about his burgeoning golf empire at his office overlooking Central Park. Then came our round at Westchester, a tight Jim Fazio design with plenty of ponds, streams and, of course, waterfalls — no Trump golf experience is complete without them.

And while he loves talking about his growing golf portfolio, which spans the continent and extends to layouts in the Caribbean and his controversial new course in Scotland, Trump’s first love clearly is playing the game itself. He maintains a USGA index under 4.0, and with 17 club championships over the years, he has plenty of game. For this round, the 64-year-old drove the half-hour from Manhattan to Westchester himself. His wheels? A $500,000 white Rolls-Royce.

Dan Scavino, executive vice president and general manager of the Westchester property, sauntered over to the putting green. “Mr. Trump is in the building. He’ll be over shortly,” he said.

Dressed in a white, blue and gold vertically-striped shirt, white slacks and a red golf cap emblazoned with his familiar gold and black crest, Trump walked briskly to the practice tee.

“How you doing, fellas — want to hit a few balls?” he asked, although on this day not much time was spent on the range. He hit a handful to warm up and was ready to go, not bothering with the practice green — a good move, as it turned out.

Trump told Head Professional Cary Stephan that he might tinker with his swing during the round. He felt he might be taking it inside more than he wanted. But the swing change was quickly abandoned after Trump’s first couple of drives found the rough. It was a bit of a shaky start, but he managed to save par on the first hole by burying a 25-footer from off the front edge. He then salvaged bogey on the second by making a difficult left-to-right 30-footer after hitting his third shot into the hazard on the water-lined 533-yard par 5.

Following a routine par on No. 3, Trump started to find his form. He canned a 40-foot birdie putt from off the front of the green on the par-4 No. 4 to put him back to even for the day. “I’m not happy with my swing, but I’m thrilled with my score,” Trump said.

His wizardry on the greens continued when he made a curling 25-footer on the par-3 No. 6 after getting a read from caddie Tom Accomando.
“I don’t think you’ve seen a better display of putting than this, have you?” Trump asked with a smile. “This is as good as it gets.”

“You sure can putt, Mr. Trump,” agreed Stephan.

And it was hard to argue with him.

“When he gets it rolling, I don’t know too many people who putt as well as he does,” Stephan said. “He seems to will the ball into the hole.”

One of the best shots all day came on the dangerous 196-yard No. 8, a downhill 3-par guarded by a large pond right of the green. Trump spared his playing partners the agony of hitting from the championship tee, which stretches the hole to 231 yards. His “easy” 5-wood soared to the left of a pin placed perilously close to a slope leading directly to the drink. Trump had about four feet remaining for his second putt but easily holed it when no one in the group decided to give it to him.

“That was a tough putt — I wouldn’t have given it to me, either,” he said.

Though he played mostly from blue tees, Trump occasionally moved back to the blacks (7,361 yards) if he liked that spot better. Always a fast player, he wasted little time hitting even the most difficult shot.

The real estate mogul and TV reality show host bogeyed the uphill par-4 No. 9 hole, but was happy to make the turn at even-par 36.

When it comes to his golf properties, Trump is hands-on to the Nth degree. On his way to No. 10, Trump stopped to chat with tennis pro Joe Roediger. He’d noticed that golf carts had been going off the path opposite the tennis pro shop and made sure the damage was paved. He also added a parking area for 12 to 15 carts for members to park prior to playing tennis.

“It looks great, Mr. Trump,” Roediger said.

On the 10th tee, Trump posed for pictures with a potential member who was touring the club. Scavino said that happens often when the owner is in the house. “When Mr. Trump is at the club, I cannot tell you how many times we’ll introduce him to a potential member, and they all love meeting him,” Scavino said. “Sometimes they’ll write the check on the spot after meeting Mr. Trump. He’s not the greatest businessman in the world for nothing.”

On No. 13, easily Westchester’s signature 3-par, a twosome was anxious to let Trump and his group play through. To speed things up, we hit from the forward tees, which measure nearly 100 yards shorter than the 218-yard championship tee.
According to Trump, the 13th hole cost $7 million to build. The 100-foot black granite waterfall behind the green is as noisy as it is spectacular — a mini-Niagara Falls that pumps 5,000 gallons a minute.

“There’s never been a waterfall like this on a golf course,” Trump said. “It’s quite a feat. It can be a bit distracting the first time you play it because it’s so beautiful.”
Speaking of distractions, a round of golf with Trump can be fraught with them. His phone goes off incessantly. He politely excused himself each time, but on the back nine the calls clearly affected his concentration. At one point while others teed off on No. 16, Trump wore a frown and gestured with his arms as he talked business out of earshot. After hanging up, he started to drive down the fairway before realizing he hadn’t teed off. It didn’t seem to bother him, however — the ultimate multi-tasker, he birdied the par 5 from about 15 feet.

Trump shot 2-over on the back nine, his only weakness on this day being short-wedge play, especially chipping. He missed several badly, which led to bogeys. Ironically, his sand game is strong.

“A chip-in for me is like making a hole-in-one,” Trump said after fluffing one out of some wiry greenside rough.

As expected, lunch conversation included a heavy dose of golf. He was still steamed about the controversial two-stroke penalty assessed to Dustin Johnson for grounding his club in a fairway bunker on the 72nd hole of the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, which knocked him out the playoff eventually won by Martin Kaymer.

“He took the ruling very well,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t have taken it that well. When you have people standing in a trap with beer cans, that’s not a trap in my opinion. I think he should have litigated it. That was just a shame.”

Trump then excused himself, saying he needed to check on a few things. Later, Scavino said he and Trump spent more than an hour with a tree expert picking locations for new oaks and maples. Last year, Trump chose more than 150 locations and the trees were planted last fall. “We do that about two or three times a year,” Scavino said. “He doesn’t miss a thing.”

Back at his Manhattan office, Trump explains that his attention to detail is what separates his courses from others. He has more than a dozen at the moment, and he’s still hopeful his controversial course on the North Sea coastline of Scotland will open by July 2012.

The sand dunes, he says, are a sight to behold.

“These are the greatest dunes in the world — 80 feet tall. They put Bandon Dunes to shame.”

“It’s an amazing piece of land, a great place to be,” he added during our Election Day follow-up. “We started construction six months ago. I got all the approvals, won all the international and local environmental battles.”

Heading up the course’s design is Martin Hawtree, who was recommended by Peter Dawson of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. “He’s been fantastic,” Trump says.
According to noted golf writer George Peper, who has walked Trump’s new location, it has the potential to be truly spectacular.

“I’ve never seen dunes anything like them,” Peper says. “Ballybunion is close, there’s a course in Ireland called the Island that’s close, parts of Barnbougle Dunes [in Tasmania] have dunes that big. If The Donald had it all to himself, he might have gone crazy [with the design], but Hawtree will respect the dunes and craft the course through and around them rather than over them. He won’t let the course overwhelm the dunes or the dunes overwhelm the course. He knows links courses as well as anyone. It’s going to be really, really good.”

For the moment, Scotland is the farthest afield Trump plans to expand his golfing empire.

“Generally speaking, I like to build a course I can drive to,” he says, ticking off his club in Westchester and three others within easy driving distance in New Jersey. “And I only buy great property. I turn down 10 for every one I buy.”

Trump’s first venture was the Jim Fazio-designed Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., which opened in 1999. The LPGA Tour thought enough of it to hold its season-ending ADT Championship there for several years.

Trump then turned his attention to Westchester County. A membership at nearby Winged Foot wasn’t enough, so he found the right site for his own club and again brought in Fazio, who moved more than 3 million cubic yards of dirt during construction.

Then there’s Trump National Los Angeles, easily his biggest challenge to date — and a business opportunity he couldn’t pass up. Snatching Pete Dye’s Ocean Trails out of bankruptcy in 2002 for $27 million, he then spent a bundle to realize (and surpass) the potential of the tight, tiered Palos Verdes Peninsula course set on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean — essentially Dye’s answer to Pebble Beach, with 180-degree views of the ocean and Catalina Island from every hole.

The ensuing overhaul was overseen by Trump himself; he is listed as the official redesign architect, with an assist from Fazio. Replacing the 18th hole, which was lost to a massive landslide just as the course opened in 1999, qualifies as one of modern golf construction’s most amazing feats. Using more than 100 concrete-filled, 20-foot-long steel pipes, $8 million worth of a special fabric normally used in dam construction and countless tons of dirt, the finisher is better than ever. From the back tee, which resembles a small flat-topped volcano hovering over the Pacific, the well-bunkered par 4 stretches longer than 500 yards and has starred in several TV spots over the years, including a memorable scene in HBO’s Entourage that featured Phil Mickelson witnessing the untimely death by heart attack of a rival to frenetic agent Ari Gold, played to Emmy-nominated perfection by Jeremy Piven. Somehow, that scene was hilarious — and gorgeous, thanks to a dramatic seaside setting concocted by nature and finished with a dose of Trump’s financial savvy.

“The good news is that insurance companies spent most of the money to fix the course,” Trump says. “It’s actually the most expensive course ever built at $256 million. I took the 18th hole out of the Pacific and rebuilt it for $61 million. It’s the most expensive course ever built and the most expensive hole ever built. I’m a little embarrassed by that because that’s not my history. So I always say thank you to the insurance companies.”

Unlike his other domestic courses where memberships cost as much as $350,000, Trump’s rebuilt Los Angeles course is open to the public with green fees ranging from $160 to $275.

Trump says he’s happy to bring lavish country club style to the general public in his West Coast prize, where two clubhouse restaurants draw strong lunch and dinner business year-round to complement amazingly healthy tee-time numbers. “It’s been a success,” he says. “We’ll do more than 40,000 rounds this year.”

While the Los Angeles-area layout remains his only West Coast acquisition (he has given several other California and Nevada clubs the once-over before walking away), Trump’s East Coast presence is strong and growing. Besides Trump International in Florida and his New York-New Jersey lineup — Westchester, Bedminster, Colts Neck and Hudson Valley — he’s acquired two courses along the Potomac River near Washington, D.C.

“Tom Fazio just completed a full renovation,” he says. “We have four miles along the river. It’s seriously good property. The championship course is 7,800 yards long.”
Trump also has a foothold in the vaunted Philadelphia market after acquiring a private club right next to Pine Valley, which often shows up on magazine lists as America’s No. 1 course.

“I affectionately call it Pine Valley No. 2,” Trump says. “I took it over one year ago; it was very expensive to build and was named best new course of the year by most magazines 10 years ago. They ran out of money, so I bought it, fixed the clubhouse and signed many members — we’re up to 311 already.”

And he’s in the Caribbean, too. Trump International Golf Club in Puerto Rico hosts a PGA Tour stop that, he says, is already a favorite among players. “We had 70,000 people last year and drew more people than at Doral during the same week,” Trump says. “The players voted it among the top five tournaments on Tour. It’s by far the best course in Puerto Rico — with the best clubhouse in Puerto Rico.”

It is also the only golf property that Trump owns with a partner. “Jorge Diaz played my course in Palm Beach and fell in love with it,” Trump says. “He contacted us and told us he has this incredible piece of land on the ocean. But you couldn’t see the ocean.”

The completed Trump project, which is semiprivate, has 1,000 acres of Atlantic Ocean waterfront and has become a popular destination for vacationing golfers.
As for the future, Trump says he’s through building courses from scratch unless something special like Scotland comes along. At this point he would prefer to buy financially troubled courses at great discounts and brand them with the Trump name. After all, that gold crest looks awfully nice at the entrance.

“The initial phase was very successful, and I liked it very much because I built courses from the ground up,” Trump says. “But it was very expensive. My current phase is buying great courses or courses that can be great. If they can be only very good, I’m not interested. I like to buy them at tremendous discounts, fix them and put the Trump name on them. That makes them successful.”

For example, he got a great bargain when he purchased the struggling Brandon Woods Golf Club in Dutchess County, N.Y., in December 2009. “It’s 30 minutes up from Westchester. I bought it because it’s a great course. We’ve signed probably 150 members in the last six months.”

Trump wasted little time putting his mark on the club. He extended tees, cut down hundreds of trees that blocked the view of a beautiful lake on the back nine, doubled the staff to improve service and began building a $600,000 locker room.

“It takes money to play this game and I have it,” Trump says. “I bought Hudson Valley for many times less than construction cost. It would take years to get permits [for a new course]. I then spent $1 million on the course, and the bones are fantastic. And I’ll spend $2 million on the clubhouse. I now have a phenomenal course at a very low cost.”

While Trump is an expert at leveraging his name and reputation into golf gold, he’d have to dig deep to dive into politics. Many will shrug off Trump’s presidential aspirations as nothing more than a publicity stunt, but it’s tough to underestimate the guy in any endeavor. He’s proven himself a golf developer with great instincts and staying power, backed by a healthy love and respect for the game — and a pretty good player in his own right. Whether he’s firing 71, 74 or a number he’d rather not see published, he’s earned the right to laugh at the cynics who thought he would never be a major player in the golf business.

“The funny thing about my courses is that when everyone else is dying, my courses are all doing phenomenally well,” he says. “It’s really a very simple formula. I have the best courses and the best locations. And I have the name Trump. Calling it Trump National makes a big difference. People know when I put my name on a course, it’s something special. End of story.”

Vic Williams contributed to this story