The Trump administration's redesign plan for the East Potomac Golf Links unveiled this week would hand the historic Washington D.C. municipal course to Tom Fazio for a 7,600-yard championship rebuild, the most aggressive transformation proposed for a public American course in decades, and one that critics say bears no resemblance to the original Walter Travis layout that has stood on the property for more than a century.
President Donald Trump confirmed the headline ambition in a brief exchange with reporters in Washington this month, framing East Potomac as a future major championship venue rather than a city muni.
"We're going to make it a beautiful world-class US Open caliber course," Trump said. "Ideally we're going to have major tournaments here and everything else. It's going to bring a lot of business into Washington."
The renderings that followed put hard numbers on that ambition. The proposed Fazio layout stretches beyond 7,600 yards from the back tees, includes a string of new water features cut into the Potomac peninsula, a full short course and a practice facility large enough to host televised exhibitions. The total footprint, however, would be cut from 36 holes to 27, reducing the daily-fee capacity that has made East Potomac one of the most-used public courses in the country.
Supporters of the plan, including Trump-aligned commentators, have compared the upside to the Bethpage Black template, the New York State park course that famously hosts US Opens and Ryder Cups while charging local resident rates. The argument is that a major-grade course inside the Washington beltway could draw event revenue that subsidises ongoing affordability for D.C. golfers.
Critics are not buying it. Preservation groups behind the original Walter Travis routing have accused the administration of bypassing public input entirely and producing a layout that "completely ignores" the historic design they say has defined East Potomac since the early 1900s. Several have already pursued legal action to block the project, and one independent golf media outlet summarised the local mood bluntly.
"Locals say there was zero public input, and the redesign would shrink the property from 36 down to 27," one Washington-based golf channel reported this week. "Preservation groups also claim the new layout completely ignores the original Walter Travis design that's been part of East Potomac for more than a hundred years."
The price point is the second flashpoint. East Potomac currently operates as a $40 muni. The fear among day-to-day customers is not that rates will rise overnight, but that a championship-grade course on the site will be priced for tournament events and corporate outings, gradually squeezing out the city golfers it has historically served.
The Trump administration cleared part of that legal landscape earlier this month, striking a deal with the non-profit National Links Trust to keep the trust as the long-term operator of D.C.'s public courses while renovations proceed. East Potomac is the headline asset in that portfolio, but the trust also runs Langston and Rock Creek, both of which would be unaffected by the Fazio plan as currently drawn.
Fazio himself has yet to detail the design publicly. The architect, best known for Shadow Creek and a string of upscale resort layouts, has built only a handful of true championship-test public courses in his career, with the bulk of his portfolio sitting in the private-club world. East Potomac would be the most politically charged commission of his career and the most visible D.C. golf project since the construction of the original Wilson-era layout.
Whether the redesign survives the legal and political process is far from settled. Trump's stated goal is national championship golf inside the capital. The original Walter Travis design has been there for more than 100 years.
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*Originally published on [Golf News](https://golfnews.global/article/tom-fazio-trump-east-potomac-golf-course-7600-yards-us-open-caliber-dc-muni-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
