I bought the last hoodie.
It was hanging there in the pro shop at East Potomac Golf Links on Sunday afternoon — the good one, with 1923 on it and a screen print of the clubhouse that harkens back to the days when this city was quite literally plopped down on a swamp at the edge of the Potomac. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed it, paid for it, and walked out onto the course with the particular feeling of someone who has just bought something they hope they never have to think of as a souvenir.
I wasn’t the only one. By the time I finished my second round and walked off the final green, the pro shop had been picked nearly clean. Shot glasses. Towels. Hats. Anything with the East Potomac logo on it. Strangers were buying pieces of a place they weren’t ready to lose, just in case.
The vibes at East Potomac on Sunday were subdued and confused and also, somehow, defiant. Nobody knew exactly what was happening. The Trump administration had signaled it might take over operations and close the course for maintenance — with almost no notice, no clear timeline, no real explanation. The people who run National Links Trust were fielding interviews from NBC 4 on the lawn. Journalists wandered the grounds looking for interesting-looking golfers to tell them how this felt. I apparently looked interesting enough. The Washington Post found me somewhere between the 18th green and my car — bags loaded, hoodie claimed, ready for the kind of silent drive home where you process emotions and when you get home you don’t really remember how you got there.
What struck me most wasn’t the uncertainty — it was what the uncertainty revealed. In a place where we are mostly strangers, people were suddenly talking to each other. Really talking. At the clubhouse, on the tee boxes, in the parking lot. The conversation was always some version of the same thing: this would be such a shame.
And it would. Let me tell you why, for those of you who don’t golf — or who have never found yourself standing at Haines Point with the Washington Monument rising above the old growth trees behind you, in a public space that has belonged to this city since the late 1800s.
East Potomac is not fancy. That is entirely the point.
It is affordable and accessible and centrally located in a city full of extraordinary private clubs that most of us will never belong to. It is where a policy staffer from the Hill gets matched with a medical sales rep from Northern Virginia and they spend four hours outside together solving nothing and everything. It is where families set up tents and hammocks at Haines Point while the kids run wild and the parents actually exhale for a minute. It is where cyclists and runners and people who just need to be near water come to remember that this city — underneath all the noise and the politics and the chaos — is genuinely beautiful.
I played two rounds on Sunday. Both on the par three Red Course, because I booked my tee time Saturday afternoon the moment I heard this might be it — the last hurrah. I played okay. I am what you’d generously call a bogey golfer, though I got a few pars each round which is enough to keep the obsession very much alive. I am no Nelly Korda. But I love this game with my whole heart.
Here is what golf has in common with yoga, and with life: it takes you completely into the present moment and asks you — firmly, repeatedly, with zero negotiation — to leave everything else at the door. Your expectations. Your yesterday. Your score on the last hole. The news on your phone. The thing someone said to you last week that you’re still carrying around like the 50+ rescued golf balls I carry around in my bag.
You cannot swing a clean shot while you’re holding all of that. The game will not allow it. Every single hole is its own fresh start whether you want one or not.
A playing partner on my second round said it perfectly — and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The argument for keeping East Potomac open isn’t complicated. You don’t need to pour a fortune into it. Fix the tee boxes. Address some drainage issues. Keep the doors open. Keep it affordable. Keep it public. Let the people who live here have this.
We’ve watched the uncertainty around Rock Creek Golf Course quietly devastate play there. Every time I mention it to another golf-obsessed local the question is always the same: “Is Rock Creek even open?” That’s what happens when you introduce doubt into a beloved public space. People stop showing up. Not because they stopped loving it — because they stopped trusting it would be there.
I walked off the final green on Sunday as the sun was getting low over the Potomac. The wharf glittered across the water. The Monument stood behind the tree line exactly the way it always has. I approached the course operators gathered near the clubhouse — the people who have shown up every single day to keep this place running — and I said the only thing that felt true:
“Thank you, guys. Is it really happening?”
“We have no idea,” came the reply. “You know as much as we do.”
And that uncertainty — that collective not-knowing — is something a lot of us in this city are sitting with right now about a lot of things. You show up. You do the work. You love the place and the people and the life you’ve built here. And then you wait to see if it’s still there tomorrow.
I don’t have a tidy answer for that. The mat doesn’t either. Neither does the 9th hole.
What I know is this: you play the shot in front of you. You leave your baggage on the front 9. You carry on.
And if they close East Potomac — I’ll be the one in the hoodie, at Rock Creek, keeping the faith. ⛳️
East Potomac Golf Links has served the Washington DC community since 1923. Haines Point has been a beloved public space since the late 1800s. As of this writing, the course remains open. A federal judge is expected to weigh in on an emergency order blocking any potential closure. Stay tuned — and if you’ve never played it, go this week.
— Maggie
Centeredish | Hot yoga teacher. Single in DC. Ish.