Mike Trout is getting to the golf course business.
The Los Angeles Angels star announced Monday that he is planning to open “Trout National – The Reserve” in his home state of New Jersey, with an ETA of 2025. The course will be designed by Tiger Woods and his TGR Design firm.
You don’t see many non-golf athletes opening golf courses these days, but it’s not a huge surprise that Trout is the one doing it. When not being the best baseball player of a generation, Trout has spent much of his time on the course.
Per an interview with Sports Illustrated, Trout’s love of golf goes back to his time on the driving range with his father Jeff and has translated to a claimed handicap of seven or eight, with an average drive length of 330 to 360 yards if he’s focusing on distance.
That power tracks with what we’ve seen from Trout at a Top Golf in the past:
The idea for Trout and his wife Jessica, who also reportedly enjoys golf and event planning, to own a course apparently goes back to early 2020, but they hit a fairly obvious obstacle that year.
From SI:
“We sat down and said, ‘Look, if an opportunity comes up it would be a great thing to do. I want to own a course,'” Trout says. “We were close to owning a course when COVID-19 hit. A lot of stuff wasn’t going our way, so we backed out of the deal. We just said, ‘If an opportunity comes down the road, we’ll explore it.’
“It was probably a year or two later somebody sent me drone footage of somebody attempting to build a couple of holes in Vineland while courses were shut down. I sent it to my brother, Tyler, and said, ‘Can you look into this for me?'”
As for Woods, he was apparently quite interested in working with a fellow elite athlete, via a press release:
“I’ve always watched Mike on the diamond so when an opportunity arose to work with him on Trout National – The Reserve, I couldn’t pass it up. It’s a great site for golf and our team is looking forward to creating a special course for Mike, Jessica, John and Lorie.”
The course will reportedly be located in Vineland, NJ, not far from Trout’s hometown of Millville. The intended site, about 45 minutes south of Philadelphia, was formerly home to a silica sand mine and will also feature a practice range, short-game area, clubhouse, restaurant, lodging and a wedding chapel.