36 to 18 on the Potomac: Who Is East Potomac's New Map Being Drawn For?

Hains Point is a manmade peninsula in the Potomac, and the East Potomac Golf Links laid across it is the kind of public golf that Washington people call "public in every sense" — 36 holes, a mini-golf course, a driving range, and a pro shop where someone remembers your name. For the past few days, a plan has been circulating to redraw that map: one 18-hole course instead of 36, stretched past 7,600 yards.

The afternoon I read the argument, it carried two anecdotes that looked separate and were saying one thing. John Garrity, 79, walking and carrying his own bag, went down mid-hole with a heart attack, and someone came running from the pro shop. The other was Senator Lindsey Graham's 2026 claim of a 73 — or possibly a 74 — at Trump National Washington, with the reporter himself hedging between the two numbers.

The first is about service. The second is about credit. What is at stake in this proposal sits between them.

Context: whose land, whose course

East Potomac sits on federal land managed by the National Park Service. That fact is the hinge, because any rebuild on public land raises a procedural question before an aesthetic one. The GOLF.com commentary drew its own boundary clearly — "from a golf perspective, not a political one" — and described itself as a public-service notice in the name of constituency services. Its sharpest sentence is the shortest: "East Potomac is not Trump's." Its sharpest suggestion is just behind it: ask the golfing public what it wants instead of telling golfers what they will get.

The comparison offered is Bethpage State Park, and that comparison carries the whole argument. Bethpage has five courses. One — the Black — is hard enough to have earned major-championship and Ryder Cup prestige; the other four let a 30-handicap play 18 holes at his own pace. The model is simple: a fearsome anchor on top, four steps of accessibility underneath.

The proposal shows the top floor. The staircase is missing.

Core: the arithmetic of 18 holes

The first number is plain — 36 holes becomes 18. Operationally that means tee-time capacity roughly halves while demand stays where it is. What happens to the mini-golf course and the range is not stated at all, and that is the largest unanswered question for juniors, beginners and time-poor players. A facility that produced hundreds of rounds a day across 36 holes will now have to charge more per round to fund the same maintenance budget. Longer course, slower round, lower throughput, higher fee — the chain is direct. The commentary supplies no green-fee, rounds-played, capital-cost or maintenance-backlog figure, so the financial case cannot be assessed at all.

The second number is distance. A course stretched past 7,600 yards is "cool" to the golfer who shoots under 75 — club champion, tournament player. The median recreational male golfer's driving distance is commonly put in the 215–225 yard band. From the back tees this layout asks him for three or four extra shots on every hole. Length is the least inclusive design variable available: it raises the barrier for beginners, juniors, seniors and the time-constrained — precisely the cohorts a federal-land muni exists to serve. And the tee configuration, meaning how generously the forward tees are laid out, is nowhere in the report. A 7,600-yard course is public on paper; it stays public in practice only if the forward tees are generously placed.

The third number is the one the piece does not give and the reader needs — Bethpage's portfolio. One championship course among five. East Potomac had 36 holes, a range and mini-golf, but no championship anchor. The proposal adds the anchor and removes the portfolio. Calling that Bethpage is wrong; it is Bethpage minus the accessibility layer.

And here the plan's real logic surfaces, acknowledged but never named: the economics of aspirational golf. TPC Sawgrass, Pebble Beach and Pinehurst No. 2 charge a premium to people who cannot break 100, because they are buying prestige, not a score. Trump understands that logic as an operator. The plan is not irrational. It is optimized for a different customer.

I carry my own ledger into this argument. In March 2026 I talked my way toward the Royal Calcutta Golf Club media tent with a school-magazine letterhead, a number and a nerve. Eleven people were inside, four of them club members. That week's ledger read: total purse INR 40 lakh, winner's cheque INR 6 lakh, a caddie's loop INR 800 a round, and roughly 200 members in a city of 15 million. Access is always billed to someone else's account — sometimes the caddie's, sometimes the beginner who sees 7,600 yards and turns back. I went in to watch a game and came out with a ledger.

The contrarian case: state the strongest argument first

Start with the conventional case, because it is not weak. For a public facility fighting deferred maintenance, a championship anchor brings three real things: capital, events and tourism. A championship-standard public course can attract state and national amateur championships, qualifying events and golf-tourism spend. Junior programmes gain prestige, and investment on federal land gains political footing. That side is real, and the commentary concedes it nowhere — its clearest gap.

Now the number that breaks it. An 18-hole layout roughly halves capacity, which makes the cost immediate and measurable while the benefit stays speculative. With green fees, rounds and backlog all missing, the claim that prestige will pay for lost access remains unproven.

Second, the decisive fact is the one absent from the page — the transaction structure. Lease, concession contract, donation, or design advice only. Access, pricing and permanence all flow from that term sheet, and it is not in the material. Nor is the size of the existing maintenance backlog, and a shabby facility is always politically easier to redesign than a healthy one.

Third, process. No rule-breaking is established and I will not infer any. But when a sitting president proposes to redesign federal property he could plausibly operate, public-ethics and conflict questions stand on their own, separate from the golf. The critical unknown is whether public comment was binding or merely advisory — because that single point decides whether the rebuild is democratic or sponsored.

Takeaway

Beautiful renderings will arrive: sweeping fairways, new tees, a new clubhouse. The document that matters is the term sheet, and it should be public first — who holds operating authority, what share of tee times is reserved for local residents, how many forward tees exist, and what facility is returned in exchange for cutting 36 holes to 18. On the day those four answers appear in writing, this stops being a golf argument and becomes an argument about a ledger. Until then, the 79-year-old at Hains Point keeps carrying his own bag.