The DOI started laying the groundwork for this move several months ago. On August 1, 2025, DOI Secretary Doug Burgum and Solicitor William Doffermyre pitched President Donald Trump on transforming East Potomac Golf Links into a high-end professional tournament venue named \u201cWashington National Golf Course.\u201d President Trump quickly warmed to the idea. However, Burgum and Doffermyre likely recognized that their plan was at odds with the NLT\u2019s own intention to work with architect Tom Doak to restore East Potomac\u2019s reversible Walter Travis design. <\/p>\n
Soon the conflict between the DOI and the NLT bubbled into public view. On October 29, Doffermyre issued a formal default notice to the NLT, and in November, architect Tom Fazio, the President\u2019s choice to guide the renovation at East Potomac, toured the course and visited the White House. Finally, last Tuesday, Doffermyre sent a termination letter to the NLT.<\/p>\n
In an odd twist, the NLT will remain the day-to-day operator of East Potomac, Rock Creek, and Langston for the short term. Evidently, the Trump administration had no other plan for keeping the facilities open.<\/p>\n
Hard to convey the minor miracle it was that a group with such deep golf course expertise and a national network of friends to help has been so invested in local municipal golf course management. Throwing them out makes no sense. https:\/\/t.co\/S93jmDUmxv<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Brendan Porath (@BrendanPorath) December 31, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n Doffermyre\u2019s termination letter made three key assertions about the NLT\u2019s performance over the past five years:<\/p>\n 1. The NLT failed to make substantial capital improvements to the courses according to the schedule specified by the lease.<\/p>\n 2. The NLT did not provide a \u201creasonable and credible\u201d cure proposal after the initial default notice.<\/p>\n 3. The NLT owes as much as $8.8 million in unpaid rent to the NPS.<\/p>\n Since these claims have been adopted as talking points by some on social media, it\u2019s worth assessing them one by one. The following are my own interpretations and opinions, based on my reporting and conversations with multiple sources close to the issue. I also sent a list of questions to a DOI spokesperson, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.<\/p>\n Has the NLT underdelivered on the lease\u2019s promises?<\/p>\n The DOI\u2019s primary rationale for killing the lease is that the NLT has fallen behind on the agreed-upon improvement projects. In an addendum to the lease titled \u201cExhibit D,\u201d the NLT proposed to finish renovations at Rock Creek by 2022, Langston by 2024, and East Potomac by 2027. The DOI says that the NLT has not made substantial progress at Rock Creek and has not started the projects at Langston and East Potomac. <\/p>\n I disagree with the DOI\u2019s description of the Rock Creek renovation, which the NLT planned, permitted, and broke ground on before the termination letter halted construction. But it\u2019s true that the projects at all three courses have taken longer than Exhibit D suggested they might.<\/p>\n What the DOI leaves out, however, is that Exhibit D contains the following phrase: \u201c[T]imeframes are general and subject to change due to compliance timeframes or other circumstances.\u201d In other words, the dates in the lease are tentative, and the DOI appears to be misrepresenting them as firm and binding.<\/p>\n Hindsight being 20\/20, the NLT\u2019s schedule in Exhibit D was overly ambitious, perhaps na\u00efve. Completing overhauls of Rock Creek in two years, Langston in four, and East Potomac in seven would have been an achievement unprecedented in the history of American municipal golf. Maybe the NLT believed that its close relationship with the NPS would speed up the usual compliance processes. This has not been the case. Every change proposed by the NLT has taken a winding, brambly path through the NPS\u2019s bureaucracy. At Rock Creek, for instance, the NLT had to justify its tree-removal program literally one tree at a time.<\/p>\n The bulk of the work thus far has occurred on 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, and 12. We are very encouraged by the early results and look forward to continuing our progress. If you want to learn more about the project, we encourage you to click below. \u2014 National Links Trust (@links_national) December 6, 2024<\/a> <\/p>\n Still, the NLT has made $8.5 million worth of upgrades to the courses since 2020. A large chunk of this money \u2014 $3.6 million \u2014 went to planning the Rock Creek renovation and ushering the project through the permitting quagmire. The NLT has also spent about $1 million on tree removal at the Rock Creek property over the past two years. Meanwhile, the group has pushed through an array of smaller projects at East Potomac and Langston, removing invasive vegetation, improving drainage systems, and installing Toptracer technology at both courses; expanding greens, overhauling the irrigation system, and regrassing the driving range at Langston; and restoring a historically significant mini-golf course at East Potomac. Every D.C.-area golfer I\u2019ve spoken with says the courses are in better shape than they were five years ago.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of activity, especially in a tough regulatory environment. For some perspective, I serve on the golf advisory committee in Portland, Oregon. Last year, the operator of Portland\u2019s municipal golf facilities installed a single Toptracer range at a single course, and we considered it a coup.<\/p>\n Doing as much as the NLT has done in the past five years is highly unusual in big-city American municipal golf.<\/p>\n Did the NLT not respond sufficiently to the DOI\u2019s default notice?<\/p>\n In his termination letter, Doffermyre asserts that the NLT failed to provide a \u201creasonable and credible cure proposal\u201d in response to the October 29 default notice. <\/p>\n The problem for the NLT was that the default notice did not contain specifics on what needed to be cured. It was two sentences long, alluding to a general \u201cfailure to make the Initial Improvements described in Exhibit D and Construction Documents\u201d and declaring Doffermyre\u2019s hope to \u201cfind a mutually acceptable path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet it seems that the NLT did mount a substantial effort to address the government\u2019s concerns. Doffermyre\u2019s termination letter acknowledges that the NLT was involved in \u201cmultiple in-person meetings, teleconferences, and written submissions during the [45-day] cure period.\u201d In addition, the NLT spent approximately $1 million to mobilize construction at Rock Creek after receiving the default notice.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear what the NLT could have done in November and December to stave off termination. <\/p>\n Does the NLT owe the government $8.8 million?<\/p>\n After laying out his case for ending the NLT\u2019s lease, Doffermyre drops what seems to be a bombshell: \u201cNPS leadership has recently discovered that NLT owes NPS millions of dollars in unpaid rent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Project Updates: https:\/\/t.co\/vLEK7CHlkB<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/mNSaOBDx53<\/a><\/p>\n
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