The Four Hundred Thirty Trees That Were on No List: East Potomac, a Judge's Rebuke, and the Future of Public Golf

The fog had not lifted. I stood at the tip of Hains Point — the Potomac on my right, the Anacostia on my left, and in front of me a freshly cut stump. The smell of sawdust still hung in the air. The patch of ground that had been in shade even in October sun was now open sky. A fairway had suddenly grown longer, longer in a way a fairway should not.

This is not a major-championship scene. It is a photograph of an old, public, open-to-everyone golf course in Washington, D.C. East Potomac Golf Links. A 105-year-old course whose founding idea was a single sentence — anyone can stand on the tee box.

I have measured golf two ways all my life. One, by trophies — who won, what score. Two, by doors — who gets in, who stays out. The second measure is the one that keeps pulling me back to courses like this. Because a course's fate is never written on a scoreboard. It is written in a lease, a budget, and a count of which trees someone had permission to cut.

That count is now in court.

Hook — The smell of sawdust, and one weekend's arithmetic

At the centre of the story is a number nobody had counted in advance — at least 430 trees.

According to reports, those trees came down in a single weekend. Not one day, but two, during the holidays, when courts are shut, press tents are empty, and fewer people walk the path beside the course. They came down at a time when a court order was explicit — notify first.

This is where the story stops being an ordinary renovation story. A federal judge — Judge Reyes, per reports — rebuked the administration. A contempt-of-court threat followed. A deadline was set — Tuesday, 7 a.m. And National Park Service Superintendent Kevin Griess was summoned to testify.

Years of standing beside fairways have taught me one thing: the biggest crises in sport never begin with a ball. They begin with paper. Here the paper is a lease, a permit, and a court order that someone is accused of ignoring.

Context — 105 years, a few nine-hole loops, and a lease

To understand East Potomac, you first have to understand the geography of public golf in Washington, D.C.

Public golf here means three courses — East Potomac, Langston and Rock Creek. All three sit on federal land, all three have historically been open to everyone, and all three are now managed by one body: the National Links Trust, a non-profit whose stated mission is affordable and sustainable public golf.

Remember where East Potomac sits. At the tip of Hains Point, at the confluence of two rivers, on land that is engineered, filled and flattened. Roots do not go deep. Trees do not take easily. What grows, grows over years.

The course is 105 years old. In those years it has survived wars, depressions, pandemics and the changing face of a city, all on a single simple principle: this course belongs to everyone.

Everyone means everyone. The person who tees off a nine-hole loop at 5 a.m., the person learning golf at noon, the person on the range at dusk with a ten-dollar bucket. The course has a miniature-golf layout where children meet the game for the first time. Places like this are now rare in America.

Now the renovation proposal.

Reports describe a large plan, somewhere between 20 and 49 million dollars, built around a so-called conversion to a professional complex. Modern practice facilities, training structures, competition-grade amenities.

On the surface this does not sound bad. Who does not want a better range, better putting greens, better coaching?

But I remember the eleven days I spent in Dhaka before flying to Rio in 2026, and what I understood there applies directly here: amenity is never neutral. Amenity always lets someone in and keeps someone out.

Remember the lease too. Around 2026, the National Links Trust took over management of these courses under a long-term agreement. A non-profit on the inside, federal land beneath, private management on the outside — that mix is the source of today's argument. Who decides, who approves, who is accountable: three questions arriving at once.

Core analysis — Weekend saws and Tuesday at seven

First, clarity. The question is not whether cutting trees is right or wrong. The question is whether permission was taken first, and whether a court order was obeyed.

Reports say a court order required advance notice — notify first, so objections can be raised. That is the minimum condition of a civilised administrative process.

Then came the weekend. At least 430 trees were felled. No evidence of adequate notice, the accusation runs.

Judge Reyes's reaction was sharp. He did not merely express displeasure; he signalled a path toward contempt. And he set a hard deadline — Tuesday, 7 a.m.

Here I want to pause. My job as a sports writer is never to interpret legal language. My job is to show the gap — where an institution says 'we are doing this for everyone', and then, in doing it, shrinks everyone's right to know.

A contempt threat is not an ordinary notice. It is a court's final warning. It can mean fines, sanctions, even harsher measures. It comes when a court believes its order was deliberately defied.

But the bigger fact is timing. The gap between the stop-work order and the felling is the real information here. It shows how hurried the decision was.

Second — the summons. Superintendent Kevin Griess being called to testify matters. It means the court is no longer only asking who cut the trees. It is asking how the decision was made, who knew, who approved, and who stayed silent.

Who was in the room is now the court's central question.

Now the least-discussed dimension — money.

Reports say the 20-to-49-million-dollar renovation was pushed without congressional approval. That is not a mere procedural lapse. It is a direct separation-of-powers question.

In my experience, when federal land, a large budget and private management arrive together, one thing usually disappears: the public's voice. Because if people believe the work is being done 'for the good', fewer people ask questions. And when fewer people ask, accountability shrinks.

I want to draw a comparison some may find unwelcome. I was born in Bangladesh. There I spent years writing about one specific problem — the courses behind cantonment walls. Nineteen courses, only five with eighteen holes, nearly all behind army walls. The slogan is always the same: 'golf for all'. But a gap always sits between the slogan and the door.

That gap is built sometimes of burnt-earth forts, sometimes of lease paper, sometimes of budget figures.

East Potomac is not behind a military base. But this episode returns me to the same question: when someone begins to 'improve' public property, who decides — the public, or someone claiming to speak for the public?

This is where the story becomes a distant mirror of Bangladesh's cantonment problem. The process differs, the wall differs, but the logic is one — where decisions are made in the name of public interest, nobody checks whether the public was ever invited into the room.

Now the question of the course's character.

Public golf course and professional complex differ in one fundamental way nobody says aloud. The difference is time.

On a public course, time is generous. A beginner can play slowly. A family can spend two or three hours. Someone can laugh at a bad shot.

At a professional complex, time compresses. Tee times are scarce, fees higher, expectations strict. Someone here to practise cannot waste time.

Now imagine a 105-year-old course slowly becoming the second kind. Who loses first?

The person who stood on the range at dusk with a bucket of balls. The child who first held a putter at mini-golf. The elder who came only to walk, not to play.

I have seen one thing repeatedly in places like this. When a course is 'improved', first the fee changes, then the crowd, then who comes. Last of all changes the thing nobody records — the habit of the place.

A calendar can be erased. The habit of showing up cannot.

And here lies my second fear, one nobody is discussing yet. The caddies.

Caddies always leave first. No rounds, no income. On a public course a caddie is not salaried; he is paid per loop. How many generations of caddies have worked this 105-year-old course has never been counted. Because nobody counted them.

One scene stays vivid for me. In 2026, walking beside Bangladesh's domestic circuit — where a tournament winner's cheque was around 145,000 taka — I understood what courses like these really are. They are not competition stages. They are the foundation of a way of life.

And when that foundation is broken in the name of renovation, it breaks first and is felt last.

So in this story a tree is not only a tree. A tree means shade. Shade means time. Time means patience. And patience is the life of public golf.

This is where the episode becomes genuinely notable.

Over four decades I have seen many federations, ministries and committees. They share one habit — they tell stories with numbers. This episode showed that sometimes a judge speaks louder than a figure.

That is the real significance. This is not a story about a course. It is a story about accountability.

Contrarian angle — Trees versus quotient, shade versus membership

Now the thing everyone avoids.

Could cutting trees ever be right? Yes.

A golf course sometimes must cut trees. Light, air, turf health demand it. Good design means not only planting but intelligently removing. I will not deny that truth.

But the real question is different. The question is 430.

430 is not a cleanliness figure. It is a policy. And policy always carries a consequence nobody has calculated.

What I have seen repeatedly: the numbers of big projects are always made small, and the numbers of small people are always left out. Nobody says how many will stop coming. Nobody says how many caddie incomes vanish. They say only that it will be beautiful.

In the arithmetic of beauty, people are always last in line. That is the silent rule nobody writes down.

The second contrarian question: how much 'professional' is actually needed?

Let me be plain. America's biggest golf problem is still not talent, not facilities, not sponsors. It is that the game is slowly slipping out of ordinary hands.

Public courses were the one counter-force. Fees low, rules simple, and most of all — nobody had to be 'qualified'.

If we erase that counter-force, who gains? Those already playing. Those who can buy good equipment, who can book tee times. And who loses? The person connected to the game for one reason only — the place was open.

Here I add my own experience. I went to Rio for the medals and stayed for the ball boy.

That ball boy was Siddikur Rahman, a caddie at Kurmitola Golf Club who became the first Bangladeshi to qualify for an Olympics on merit. He was not born in an academy. He rose from a caddie shed.

He qualified on merit, and qualifying on merit is the loneliest way to qualify.

Remember this: a public course is not only a place to play. It is a pipeline. Where good players are not made, caddies are not made; and where caddies are not made, the next Siddikur is not made.

If someone asks what East Potomac has to do with Bangladesh, the answer is simple. The same question. Who gets in, who stays out, and who decides.

Now a dimension few have noticed — time.

The caddies leave first. The silence arrives a week later.

When a course closes for renovation, the first week it feels like a 'project'. The second week, an 'inconvenience'. The third week, a 'situation'. Six months later it is only a memory — that a course for everyone once existed here.

This arithmetic of time is the most dangerous because it never shows up in a number.

I saw this silence in 2026. Bangladesh's domestic calendar vanished entirely while the country's five eighteen-hole courses stayed open and unplayed. Caddies paid per round lost their whole income in a week.

I stayed silent for six weeks then. Ordinary sports copy cannot hold this. Then I returned with one question — who pays for the silence?

East Potomac returned me to the same question.

A third contrarian point nobody is weighing — the nature of the land.

Hains Point is made ground. A piece filled in between rivers. On such ground roots stay shallow, so trees fall more easily in storms. Some will argue safety required the felling.

That is not an impossible argument. But there is a problem.

If safety is the question, you test first, then cut. And testing means paper — reports, notices, schedules. Where there is no paper, the safety argument is easier to assemble.

Safety is always a good excuse, because nobody wants to argue against safety.

That is precisely why the judge matters. He did one thing. He asked for the paper.

Takeaway — The real question is whose course this is

Look ahead. Three things to watch.

First, the Tuesday 7 a.m. deadline. Whether work happened before it, or a new order arrived. This deadline decides whether the episode moves toward contempt.

Second, the testimony. If Superintendent Kevin Griess testifies, the question will not stay small. Who was in the room becomes knowable. And once known, many names enter the conversation that nobody has yet spoken.

Third, Congress. If a 20-to-49-million-dollar project advances without approval, that becomes a large question. Watch for committee intervention or appropriations amendments.

But beyond these three, one large question remains.

Whose course is this, really?

On paper the answer is easy — federal land, non-profit management. But what is written on paper is not always true. The truth is written on those evenings when someone stands on the range with a bucket of balls and thinks — this place is mine.

All my life I have watched this — where the game was meant to belong to everyone, and slowly became some people's. The process is never sudden. Sometimes an announcement, sometimes a budget, sometimes a weekend of felled trees.

The biggest changes are never announced. They are only noticed — too late.

That is why this is not merely a legal story for me. It is a sports story. Because a sport's future is decided in two places — on the greens, and in the rooms outside them.

The trees will not come back. A century of shade cannot be restored in a weekend. But one question stays open, and it is the most important one.

Before the next decision, will anyone ask the people who use this course — who gets in, and who stays out?