President Trump can talk about golf for hours. Ask his go-to course designer

WASHINGTON, DC – It’s been a stuffy week, especially here in the nation’s capital on Wednesday. The so-called Hump Day was cold, windy and dreary, more December than Christmas. Still, and amazingly, there was plenty of action all things considered at the very public East Potomac Golf Links.

At lunch, the double-decker driving range was home to a dozen or more golfers, hitting tired balls from first-floor stalls onto a bumpy, unkempt field. East Potomac’s charming miniature golf course was empty, but on the playing fields, which have a total of 36 easy golf holes, golfers were in action, in pairs, trios and as singles. People love to play golf. People love to play golf!

There is a century-old 18-hole Walter Travis course in East Potomac, the Blue course, along with two short nine-hole courses, the White and the Red. There are spectacular views of the Washington Monument from many of the dead plain East Potomac holes on an artificial island. Yet no one confuses golf in East Potomac with, say, golfing at the city’s revamped course in West Palm Beach, Florida, The Park. At least, not yet.

The East Potomac courses fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior and are administered by a pro-bono group, the National Links Trust. This group has ambitious rehabilitation plans for golf at East Potomac and the two other public golf courses on federal land in Washington, the Langston and Rock Creek courses, all on federal parkland, just as Mount Rushmore is on federal parkland. Progress has not been rapid. The term “red tape” has semi-ancient European origins, but federal bureaucracy, aided by America’s historic and dueling two-party system, has turned the term into a slow art form.

As you may know, in the United States there is municipal golf and public golf. Philadelphia’s historic city-owned Cobbs Creek course is getting a total makeover under the direction of Gil Hanse. Just like The Patch, in Augusta, Georgia, under the watchful eye of Tom Fazio and his former colleague Beau Welling, now associated with Tiger Woods’ course design company. The Houston Open, the venerable PGA Tour stop, is played on a beloved municipal course there, Memorial Park. Name a city – Austin; Chicago; San Francisco; Jacksonville, FL; Jacksonville, SC – and you’ll find a bevy of public-spirited golf fanatics committed to improving the state of affairs for local golfers on public courses.

It’s no state secret that Donald Trump, who was bitten by the golf bug at Cobbs Creek in the mid-1960s while a student at Penn’s Wharton School, has East Potomac in his sights, literally and otherwise. He regularly flies over it as a passenger in the presidential helicopter Marine One. The National Links Trust is in the early stages of a 50-year operating agreement with the Home Office. But anyone who has seen how quickly the East Wing of the White House was demolished in the name of a new ballroom knows that Trump is not moving slowly and methodically.

Trump developed a public course in New York City, his hometown, that no one would confuse with a regular public course, not in size or scope of green fees. (That course was called Trump Ferry Point, but is now called Bally’s Golf Links at Ferry Point.) The National Links Trust has a vision for the Blue course that is rooted in its special history, a course where a bogey golfer can make lots of bogeys and some pars. Trump’s golf taste focuses exclusively on the spectacular.

Tom Fazio has designed four courses bearing the Trump name, including the original course at Trump Bedminster, in New Jersey’s horse country. The second course there was built by Tom Fazio’s cousin, Tommy Fazio. Tommy’s father, Jim Fazio, designed the Trump courses in West Palm Beach and in Westchester County, New York. You can’t play golf with Trump and not hear him talk about one of the Fazios. (Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods are also mentioned regularly.) Tom Fazio was a guest at the White House luncheon last month. After two hours, President Trump was still engaged in his afternoon golf conversation with Fazio. The two men have known each other for half a century. Trump is 79 and Fazio is 80.

“He really loves golf and his memory is incredible,” Fazio said in a telephone interview Thursday afternoon after a day of work at a golf course in Florida. The legendary course designer is studiously apolitical in his public life, wittily noting that he will work for anyone, regardless of the developer’s party. (“The only times I haven’t been busy were in 1974 and 2008,” he said, a nod to two recessionary periods.)

During their lunch, Trump recalled a day of golf from 1989, opening day at Shadow Creek, a Fazio course in Las Vegas. Trump recalled how he stopped in Las Vegas on his way to Los Angeles to see the Ambassador Hotel, which he was interested in purchasing. (He bought the hotel, where Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot in 1968, in 1991.) The two men recalled the unlikely quintet who gathered at Shadow Creek that day: Steve Wynn, the track owner; Fazio, the designer; Clint Eastwood; and Trump. The fifth person present was Michael Jackson, who did not perform but took in the scene.

“He asked me what I thought would happen to LIV Golf and the PGA Tour,” Fazio said. They talked about several courses, including Trump Doral, which has a spot on the PGA Tour schedule again, for the Miami Championship, two weeks after the Masters. There will also be an LIV Golf event in early May at a Trump course, Trump Washington in Northern Virginia. Trump told Fazio how truckloads of dirt, the waste from digging where the East Wing once stood, were being parked in East Potomac, with more dirt coming in every day.

And sure enough, on a cold and windy Wednesday afternoon this week, there were workers on this gigantic pile of dirt, surrounded by a chain-link fence, its gate open for the arrival of new truckloads of dirt from the East Wing. The pile is to the right of the 9th hole on the White course in East Potomac, and there were golf balls on the pile, some of which were newly arrived. If a right hand hits a wind-assisted slice off the 9th tee, it could end up in need of repair on this most unexpected of grounds.

“He said he needed a place to put the dirt and the track could use it anyway,” Fazio said. “He’s a construction man.”

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com