President Trump could talk golf for hours. Ask his course designer

WASHINGTON, DC – It was a gloomy week here in the nation’s capital, especially on Wednesday. Humpty Day, as it was called, was cold, windy and dreary, more December than Christmas time. Still, and surprisingly, in very public East Potomac Golf Links there was a lot of action, all things considered.

By lunchtime, the two-story fairway had a dozen or more golfers pushing weary balls onto a bumpy, messy green from the first-floor stalls. East Potomac’s charming mini-golf course was empty, but out on the fairways, which total 36 silent holes of golf, there were golfers in action, doubles and triples and singles. People love golf. People love golf!

There is an 18th century hole Walter Travis course at East Potomac, the Blue Course, along with two nine-hole short courses, the White and Red. There are spectacular views of the Washington Monument from many of the flat dead holes in the East Potomac on a man-made island. Still, no one is confusing golf at East Potomac with, say, golf at the renovated city-owned course in West Palm Beach, Fla. park. At least, not yet.

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

Community and public golf, as you may know, is having a moment across the United States. Historic city owned Cobbs Creek the course in Philadelphia is getting a total makeover, Gil Hanse leading. Like The Patch, in Augusta, Ga., 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 at a beloved municipal course there, Memorial Park. Name a city – Austin; Chicago; San Francisco; Jacksonville, Fla.; Jacksonville, SC – and you’ll find a number of public-minded golf nuts dedicated to improving the state of play for local public course players.

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

Trump developed a public course in New York City, his hometown, that no one would mistake for a regular public course, not on the scale or scope of the green fee. (That course was called Trump Ferry Point, but now it’s called Bally’s Golf Links at Ferry Point.) The National Links Trust has a vision for the Blue Course rooted in its quirky history, a course where a rogue golfer can make a lot of bogeys and some money. Trump’s golf tastes run, exclusively, to 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 grandson, Tommy Fazio. Tommy’s father, Jim Fazio, designed Trump courses 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 regularly mentioned.) Tom Fazio was a White House lunch guest last month. After two hours, President Trump was still deep in his midday golf conversation with Fazio. The two men have known each other for about half a century. Trump is 79 and Fazio is 80.

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

During their lunch, Trump recalled a day of golf from 1989, the opening day of the Shadow streama Fazio course in Las Vegas. Trump recalled stopping in Las Vegas on his way to Los Angeles to look at the Ambassador Hotel, which he was interested in buying. (He bought the hotel, where Robert F. Kennedy was shot to death in 1968, in 1991.) The two men recalled the fivesome who had gathered at Shadow Creek that day: Steve Wynn, the course owner; Fazio, its designer; Clint Eastwood; and Trump. The fifth person on hand was Michael Jackson, who did not play but participated on stage.

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

And indeed, on a cold and windy Wednesday afternoon this week, there were workers on this giant pile of dirt, surrounded by a chain-link fence, its gate open to the arrival of new East Wing dirt trucks. The pile is to the right of the 9th hole on the White course in East Potomac, and there were golf balls in the pile, some newly minted. If a right-hander hits a wind-assisted slice from the 9th tee, it can end up on this most unexpected terrain in repair.

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

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