Eric Green: Brought up to par, Rock Creek Golf Course could tempt more Washingtonians to take ‘a good walk’
There we were, the only three golfers on the Rock Creek Golf Course off 16th Street NW, teeing off on a blustery afternoon during the week of Thanksgiving.
The Rock Creek course, in the heart of Northwest DC, is practically never crowded with golfers, but on this day it felt even more deserted and desolate than usual — like an apocalyptic scene from a movie, with our group the last humans on Earth. Helping inspire that mood was the leaden sky and the whispering wind that swirled leaves across the green, making it a challenge for us amateurs to putt in a straight line to the hole.
It was great on a personal level to have the Rock Creek Golf Course all to ourselves, but it’s a shame for DC that relatively few people choose to play there.
As is well-known by Washington-area golfers, the front nine holes of the course are in poor condition, while many of the holes on the back nine are closed completely.
I don’t blame the small staff who work at Rock Creek for the condition of the course; they’re trying to maintain it as best they can, but there’s not enough financing to keep it up to speed. With its beautiful sylvan surroundings of Rock Creek Park, the course has the potential — with the appropriate care and attention — to become a diamond in the rough, so to speak.
DC Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced a bill in Congress in April 2014 to improve Rock Creek and the two other federally owned golf courses in Washington, Langston Golf Course and East Potomac Park. All three of these courses host a large number of African American players. Norton said at the time that the three courses had “long been in desperate need of capital investment to reverse decades of deterioration and to maintain and preserve their historic features.” From the looks of Rock Creek as well as East Potomac, where I also play, nothing much has improved since 2014.
Hopefully, that will change soon. In October 2020, the National Park Service signed a 50-year lease for the three historic golf courses. The new operator, National Links Trust, took over operations and committed to improvements. Norton praised the public-private partnership as a way to “infuse desperately needed capital into these golf courses to maintain and preserve their historic features while making them fully available to the public.”
Time will tell.
On this recent November day, our threesome — all retired guys who’ve known each other for many years — got together to play at Rock Creek. It was the perfect central meeting place for us stooges, with my friends Mo and Larry coming from Silver Spring while I was driving into DC from Arlington.
Sportswriter John Feinstein talks in his book “A Good Walk Spoiled” about how there’s a fine line between good golfing and bad. “One week you’ve discovered the secret to the game, the next week you never want to play it again,” he writes. I’ve never had the good fortune to find the secret to golf, but because Rock Creek is so accessible and almost never crowded, it always beckons me to come back for more.
The day we played was a fine example: With nobody else around, we finished the front nine holes in less than two hours. For the senior weekday walking rate (without a cart) of $12, that’s a bargain in just about anybody’s book. That’s why the place is a great alternative to rich country clubs. With greens fees that are so inexpensive, it could attract more people if only it got in better shape.
What made it fun to play at Rock Creek was our love of golf, a chance to get exercise, the fine companionship, and just the desire to be outside — even if it was freezing, which in my case meant trying to keep warm by wearing two sweatshirts, a heavy coat and ski cap.
My companions were dressed for winter as well. But at least that offered a built-in excuse: All these clothes impinging on our swings must have been why we often couldn’t hit the darn ball right (or, when needed, left).
With my playing partner Mo already inclined to slice the ball to the right, it didn’t help that the wind would send his shot heading violently toward the trees. For his part, Larry, the longest hitter of the three of us, sometimes would have his drive land just short of the green — only to see the gusting wind affect his chipping stroke, carrying the ball clear across the green into the rough on the other side.
Setting aside the deteriorated state of affairs at the Rock Creek course and the cold weather, our threesome gathered together for what I would call a perfect day for golf. You might even say that despite the way we played, nothing could spoil it.
Eric Green is a writer in the Washington area.
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