A Whole New Mall Game

The Fate Of East Potomac Blue, Dc’s 106-year-old Muni, Is Up For A Vote.

- Michael Bamberger

THE STARTER PAIRED US up on a recent, steamy Friday morning, and luckily, my playing partner knew the course. I didn’t need Google Maps to play the seventh hole, a slight dogleg left, just Sharon: Drive it down the right side, then take dead aim at the Washington Monument for your second. Welcome to the Blue Course at East Potomac Park!

The course has a celebrated pedigree (Walter Travis designed it in 1916), history (home track to Presidents Harding and Coolidge) and owner (the National Park Service). Through most of the long, painful, separate-but-unequal chapter of American golf, East Potomac was well-integrated, and remains so today. (Sharon is a black woman in her sixties with a 16-handicap and a perfect practice swing who stood 3 over on the seventh tee.) There are two nine-hole courses beside the Blue Course, plus a tired driving range and a clubhouse and snack bar where I saw a golfer with two thermoses in his picnic bag, one for his soup, the other for his iced tea. True Everyman golf.