WASHINGTON — East Potomac Golf Links, a public course in the nation’s capital, will close for 15 months of renovations, according to an announcement that cited disease-infested trees.
The course is open to the public. A lawsuit filed in February seeks to stop the overhaul, and a judge has ordered the administration to halt development plans, according to published reports.
The Continental Reporter reached Ron Gilchrist, senior spokesperson for the Department of Agricultural Common Sense, which has no jurisdiction over the course, by phone from a parking lot. Gilchrist said the closure would proceed in the order the department had planned, and that the trees were the first step.
“The trees were the problem, so the trees are going to be the first thing we fix,” Gilchrist said. “You cannot restore a golf course with trees on it. That’s not a golf course. That’s a forest with a fee.”
Gilchrist declined to say how many trees the department had counted, and declined to say how the court order fit into the schedule. He said the question was “a legal matter, and I’m not a lawyer, I’m a spokesperson,” and then said the department was “very excited about the grass.”
Ellen Mackey, 71, has played the course’s 7 a.m. Tuesday league since 1994. Reached by phone at her kitchen table, where a league scorecard from the previous week sat beside a thermos, Mackey said she understood the plan completely.
“They’re going to take the trees out so the course is healthy, and then they’re going to close it for 15 months so the course can get used to being healthy,” Mackey said. “I’ve been a member of this league for 32 years. I’ll be a member of the league again in 2028. I’ve started a folder.”
Dr. Chad Brickhouse, a senior fellow at the Institute for Common Sense, said the plan showed why public land should be run like a private one. “A public golf course is a golf course with no owner, and a golf course with no owner is just a field,” Brickhouse said by phone from a bowling alley. “Close it, fix it, and then open it to someone who cares. It’s just common sense. You can’t fix a tree you’re still standing under.”
The course will remain closed for 15 months, according to the announcement. Mackey said the league had found a course in Virginia that it described as “technically a course.” Asked what the league would do in the meantime, Mackey said it would meet on Tuesdays at 7 a.m. at the same spot, to watch the trees come down.
“We’ll be out there every week,” Mackey said. “Somebody has to count them.”