Washington, D.C., has three public 18-hole courses, and Donald Trump regularly flies over one of them at Marine One, the Blue Course at East Potomac Golf Links, a Walter Travis course that has been a mainstay for casual golfers in the nation’s capital for nearly a century.
Over the past five years, a group of golf benefactors, running their nonprofit business as the National Links Trust, has methodically raised money and taken on an endless amount of red tape in the name of restoring these three golf courses: Rock Creek, Langston and East Potomac. They proceeded in that order, as the East Potomac facility, however dilapidated, is more than breaking even, the Rock Creek track has been looming for years, and the Langston track is somewhere in between. Doctors go to the place where the bleeding is.
That was then.
In an interview on Monday, the two founders of the National Links Trust said that Trump, aided and abetted by Interior Department officials and his own Gulf interests, plans to intervene and push out the NLT team, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal late last week. (The properties are essentially owned by the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior.) With 45 years left to run, the National Links Trust’s 50-year lease on the three properties will be terminated, according to co-founders Will Smith and Mike McCartin. NLT expected Tom Doak Tom Doak to undertake a complete renovation and restoration of the Blue Course on a pro bono basis, much like Gil Hanse is currently doing at Rock Creek and Beau Welling is on board to do at Langston. They now expect Tom Fazio, one of Trump’s favorite course architects for his golf properties, to get the course.
“We’re gutted, just gutted,” Smith said Monday. “We believe that golf in itself is a public good, that golf teaches us many great life values,” Smith said, and the group built on that sentiment. If you know Trump’s golf values, they are very different, as his courses are dramatic and showy, often with tall waterfalls, perfect cart paths and hot dogs at the turn that Trump claims are the best in the world.
Smith and McCartin, on the other hand, wanted the Blue Course to be what it has always been: a user-friendly course with modest green fees but in a new and improved condition going forward, a course with more interesting topography and design features, unobstructed views of the Potomac River and healthier grasses throughout. As they understand it, Trump, working with Fazio, will want a course with lakes and hills suitable for tournament play. It’s an easy prediction because that’s a broad description of most Trump courses. “We had no desire to make it expensive and luxurious,” Smith said. In golf, as in other things, Trump is expensive and luxurious. As Trump said Magazine“I think we just want to build something different and build that into the government.”
Are you aware of the dizzying speed with which Trump oversaw the demolition of the East Wing of the White House and approved a first and now second set of plans to build lavish ballrooms in its place? “I think they want to do the exact same thing” at East Potomac, Smith said, in terms of speed and decisiveness, with little or no input from the public.
A text message and phone call to an Interior Department official, William Doffermyre, who is familiar with Trump’s views on the project, were not returned. Nor a text message to Tom Fazio or an email interview request to the White House press office. Last week, Fazio told GOLF.com that he had a two-hour lunch with Trump at the White House in November. He was not asked at the time about his possible involvement in working on the Blue Course, but he did note that Trump was proud of taking dirt from the East Wing project and dumping it behind a fence on the East Potomac golf course. “He’s a construction guy,” Fazio said.
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The National Links Trust has been expecting it to be put off the market for several months now that Trump began showing interest in the Blue Course in early August. Smith and McCartin believe, based on what government officials and others have told them, that their lease will be terminated because they have not met certain goals by certain dates. If that’s true, the men said, it’s only because, as McCartin said, they’re working “by the book,” including dozens of community and agency presentations, getting environmental reviews and approvals from the Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Office of Historic Preservation. Any observer of Trump knows he is a big man, drawn to big messages and big themes. Working on golf courses on federal land is a difficult process, or it can be.
There is no clear model for what the National Links Trust had hoped to do. Many active golfers are familiar with the major renovation projects at Harding Park in San Francisco, The Park in West Palm Beach and Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia. Smith and McCartin said these projects are not a model for their vision for the Blue Course. “If you design a course with a green fee of $250 for visitors and $50 for locals, it still has to meet the expectations of the golfer paying $250,” Smith said. In other words: something spectacular, in terms of design, atmosphere and amenities. McCartin grew up playing the Blue Course. He wants the golfers there to experience what he has experienced: good golf without fuss for an affordable price.
The NLT folks had hoped – and still hope – to pay tribute to the original Travis design from the early 1920s. “The course was his tribute to Saint Andrews and was incredibly complex,” said Smith. “We believe the design, combined with the views of the Washington Monument, will make this a course that every American golfer should play at least once in their lifetime.” There are two nine-hole courses, one of which is a par-3 course, adjacent to the Blue Course. The NLT plans also call for the renovation of those courses, plus the driving range.
“We have worked hard to determine why this work is, on balance, a public good,” Smith said. “We are saying, this is what our project is and what the impact on you will be. What the president is doing is setting himself up to bypass the public engagement process.”
“We are expecting a termination letter,” Smith said.
The National Links Trust has several strong and experienced lawyers assisting it on a pro bono basis. The Department of the Interior has 200 attorneys in DC alone.
“We have our Christmas party tonight,” Smith said Monday afternoon. He received an annual stipend of $50,000 for his NLT work, most of which he donated to the trust, he said. “We’re going out with a bang.”
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
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