President Trump can talk golf for hours. Ask His Go-To Course Designer

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s been a wet week in the nation’s capital, especially Wednesday. The so-called “Hump Day” weather is cold, windy, and bleak, more like December weather than Christmas weather. Still, surprisingly, there’s still a lot to do at the very public East Potomac Golf Course, all things considered.

At lunchtime, a dozen golfers filled the double-decker driving range, hitting tired balls from first-floor booths onto the bumpy, tangled field. East Potomac’s charming mini golf course was deserted, but golfers were playing 36 easy holes on the playing fields, with doubles, triples and singles. People love golf. People love golf!

East Potomac has a century-old 18-hole Walter Travis Course (the blue course), as well as two shorter nine-hole courses (the white and the red). There are stunning views of the Washington Monument from one of the many dead, flat holes on the man-made island of East Potomac. Still, no one will confuse the golf at East Potomac with the golf at the revitalized city-owned courses in West Palm Beach, Florida. At least not yet.

The East Potomac course is part of the Department of the Interior and operated by the National Links Trust, a public benefit organization. The group has developed ambitious restoration plans for the East Potomac Golf Course and two other public courses on federal property in Washington state: Langston and Rock Creek, all of which sit on federal parkland just as Mount Rushmore is on federal parkland. Progress is not rapid. The word “red tape” has semi-ancient European origins, but the federal bureaucracy, aided and abetted by America’s historic two-party system, has turned the word into a slow-paced art form.

As you probably know, municipal golf and public golf are becoming popular across the United States. Gil Hanse oversaw the complete renovation of Philadelphia’s historic Cobbs Creek course. The same goes for The Patch in Augusta, Georgia, under the watchful eye of Tom Fazio and his former colleague Beau Welling, now part of Tiger Woods’ course design firm. The Houston Open is a historic PGA Tour event played at Memorial Park, the beloved local municipal course. Name a city—Austin; Chicago; San Francisco; Jacksonville, Florida; Jacksonville, South Carolina—and you’ll find a community of public-minded golf enthusiasts dedicated to improving the game for golfers on local public courses.

It’s no national secret, literally or otherwise, that Donald Trump fell in love with golf at Cobbs Creek while attending the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in the mid-1960s and now has his sights set on the East Potomac. He frequently flies over the site as a passenger on Marine One, the presidential helicopter. The National Links Trust is in the early stages of a 50-year operating agreement with the Home Office. But anyone who has witnessed the East Wing being demolished in the name of a new ballroom knows that slow and methodical is not Trump’s way.

Trump developed a public course in his native New York City that no one would confuse with a regular public course, either in size or green fee range. (The course was formerly known as Trump Point Ferry, but is now known as Point Ferry Barrie Golf Course.) The National Links Trust’s vision for the Blue Course is rooted in its quaint history as a course where bogey golfers can shoot plenty of bogeys and a few pars. Trump’s golf taste is all about spectacle.

Tom Fazio designed four courses named after Trump, including the original course at Trump Bedminster, the home of horse racing in New Jersey. The second course was built by Tommy Fazio, Tom Fazio’s nephew. Tommy’s father, Jim Fazio, designed Trump Stadium in West Palm Beach and Westchester County, New York. You can’t play golf with Trump and not hear him mention one of the Fazios. (Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods are also frequently mentioned.) Tom Fazio was a guest at lunch at the White House last month. Two hours later, President Trump was still having his midday golf talk with Fazio. The two men have known each other for about half a century. Trump is 79 years old and Fazio is 80.

“He really loved golf and his golf memory was unbelievable,” Fazio said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon after a day at the Florida course. The legendary course designer, who remained studiously apolitical in public life, wittily noted that he would work for anyone, regardless of the developer’s partisan affiliation. (“The only times I wasn’t busy were 1974 and 2008,” he said, a nod to the two recessions.)

During lunch, Trump recalled playing golf on the opening day of Shadow Creek at Fazio’s course in Las Vegas in 1989. Trump recalled that he stopped in Las Vegas on his way to Los Angeles to visit the Ambassador Hotel, which he was interested in buying. (He bought the hotel in 1991, and it was where Robert F. Kennedy was shot to death in 1968.) The two men recalled the improbable fivesome who gathered at Shadow Creek that day: Steve Wynn, the course owner; Fazio, its designer; Clint Eastwood; and Trump. The fifth person is Michael Jackson, who is not playing but watching the scene.

“He asked me what I thought about LIV Golf and the PGA Tour,” Fazio said. They talked about various courses, including Trump Doral, which once again has a spot on the PGA Tour schedule for the Miami Championship two weeks after the Masters. In early May, a LIV golf event will also be held at the Trump Golf Course in Washington, Northern Virginia. Trump told Fazio that truckloads of dirt — remnants of excavations where the East Wing once stood — were parked in the East Potomac, and more was coming in every day.

In fact, on a cold and windy Wednesday afternoon this week, workers were working on the massive mound, surrounded by razor wire and with its gates open, waiting for new trucks of dirt to arrive from the east wing. The pile is located to the right of the 9th hole on the East Potomac White Course and contains golf balls, some newly arrived. If the right-hander hits a downwind chip shot off the 9th tee, he could end up on the most unexpected of grounds being repaired.

“He said he needed a place to put the dirt and the course could use it anyway,” Fazio said. “He was a construction worker.”

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