For Black Youth, Public Golf Courses Are Entry Points

Trump trying to wrest control of three public golf courses in D.C. seems like another attack on diversity and inclusion.

Imagine as the sun rises higher, you know it is almost time. You head to the putting green and sink a few practice putts, listening to the quiet rhythm of the golf course waking up. When it is time to start your round, you pick up your clubs and walk to the first hole, your club heads softly clanking with each step. Dry leaves crunch under your feet. You finally reach the tee box and take in the course waiting for you, trees decorated in orange, red, yellow, and brown, contrasting with the bright-green fairway. You tee up your ball, take a breath, and hit one of the purest shots you have hit in a while. You put your club away and begin the long walk forward, surrounded by a peaceful, comfortable, and calming environment.

This is how I feel every time I play golf. This is my happy place.

What makes this moment meaningful is not just the game itself, it is where I play. I grew up playing golf on public courses in Washington, D.C., operated by the National Links Trust. These courses were my introduction to a sport that has long been seen as exclusive, elite, and overwhelmingly white. Here, I learned my first swing, played my first full round, and began to understand that golf could belong to people like me, too—Black players, young players, and players without generational access or private club memberships.

Langston Golf Course (National Park Service)

That is why Donald Trump’s recent efforts to take control of the public golf courses in D.C.—East Potomac, Langston and Rock Creek golf courses—feel so personal. This is not just a fight over land management or branding. It is about power, access, and who gets to claim ownership of a sport that is struggling to outgrow its deeply racialized past. Under an administration widely criticized for its hostility toward Black communities, diversity initiatives, and public institutions, the attempt to wrest control from the National Links Trust, an organization dedicated to accessibility and inclusion, is alarming. These courses are not just fairways and greens, they are rare entry points into a sport that has historically shut people like me out.

Trump’s political record makes it even worse. His administration’s policies and rhetoric disproportionately harm Black communities, whether through the rollback of civil rights protections, open hostility toward diversity initiatives, or framing public resources as commodities to be privatized rather than preserved for the communities they serve. When viewed through that lens, the attempt to take over these public golf courses feel less like a neutral administrative decision and more like part of a familiar pattern, stripping control from institutions that prioritize access and placing it in the hands of private interests aligned with wealth, exclusivity, and power.

The National Links Trust nonprofit was created in 2019 to protect public golf courses and ensure that they remain affordable, accessible, and rooted in the local community. It holds a 50-year lease signed in 2020 with the National Park Service to manage the courses. In Washington, D.C., where Black residents have historically fought to maintain control over public spaces during gentrification and political disenfranchisement, that mission matters. These courses are not just recreational facilities, they are community anchors. They provide young people with exposure to a sport that serves as a gateway to scholarships, careers, and professional networks, opportunities that Black golfers have long been denied.

The courses in D.C. had been managed by the National Park Service (NPS) not as commercial spaces but as places meant to serve the community while honoring their historical significance. Langston, founded in 1939, was created specifically to provide Black golfers access to the game when they were banned from white-only courses throughout the city. That made federal oversight especially important. National Links is specifically equipped to manage golf while maintaining that same public mission.

Because golf’s history in this country can’t be separated from race, Trump alleged intent to prioritize private interests over public access is especially concerning. For decades, Black players were explicitly banned from courses, tournaments, and professional organizations. Even after formal barriers were removed, the cost of entry, equipment, lessons, and private memberships kept the sport inaccessible. Public courses became rare spaces where Black golfers could learn, play, and belong without facing the same financial and cultural exclusion. I am a product of that access. Without these courses, I likely would not have found my way into the sport at all.

That is why the prospect of these courses being taken over by an administration that has shown little regard for racial equity feels so threatening. It suggests a future in which public land becomes a branding opportunity, profit and power outweigh community impact, and inclusion is treated as optional rather than essential. When leadership consistently dismisses conversations about systemic racism, it becomes difficult to trust that decisions about public spaces, especially those with meaning for Black communities, will be made with fairness or care.

There is also a symbolic weight to this moment. Golf is in the middle of a slow, ongoing effort to shed its “white man’s sport” image. Professional tours have invested in diversity programs, youth outreach, and public-private partnerships designed to increase participation. Taking public courses from an organization that actively supports those goals sends the opposite message. It reinforces the idea that golf’s progress is fragile, conditional, and easily reversed when power shifts.

For me, this issue is not hard. It is about preserving the spaces where I learned confidence, discipline, and patience, where I discovered that I belonged in a sport that never seemed designed for people who look like me. Losing these courses or seeing them transformed into something unrecognizable would be closing a door that generations before me struggled to pry open.

My dad signed me up for First Tee classes. Early one Saturday morning, we drove to Langston Golf Course. I walked onto the course with my First Tee class, holding a second-hand but very real putter, and hit my first real golf ball on a real course.

I remember telling my dad after that class that I loved it and could not wait to go back the next week. The rest was history.

Every time I returned to Langston or East Potomac, I was met with smiles, greetings, and conversations that never made me feel out of place as a young, Black, amateur golfer. I was welcomed. I was encouraged. I was seen. Those moments mattered more than I realized at the time. They taught me that golf could be a space where I belonged, where I was supported, and where my presence was not an exception.

That is what is at stake now. These courses are not just patches of green in the nation’s capital, they are entry points, lifelines, and sanctuaries for metropolitan youth who might never otherwise see themselves reflected in this sport. To allow an administration with a documented disregard for racial equity to threaten that access is to risk undoing years of quiet progress. It is to tell young Black golfers that their place in this game is conditional.

Golf cannot claim to be evolving while the spaces that foster inclusion are stripped of their purpose. I am here because Langston and East Potomac existed as public, welcoming courses, because organizations like the National Links Trust believe that golf should belong to everyone. No child should be denied the chance to fall in love with this game. For me, golf began on public land, with borrowed clubs and open arms. That experience shaped who I am. Protecting these courses means protecting the possibility that the next young Black golfer will step onto the tee box, feel that same sense of belonging, and know without question that this game is for them, too.