Trump bought this course, formerly known as the Lowes Island Club, in 2009. He added a historical marker commemorating a Civil War battle on the site — though historians have said no such battle occurred there.
He rearranged the two courses so that the holes got longer and more challenging, and so that the most beautiful holes along the Potomac were linked into a championship-level course.
He also enhanced that view by cutting down 465 trees near the river. That move did not violate laws, but it alarmed environmentalists, who said it would cause more erosion and more sediment clouding the Potomac.
“It is now the single largest stretch of Potomac shoreline on either side of the river — from American Legion Bridge up to Harpers Ferry — without any trees on it,” said Hedrick Belin, president of the nonprofit Potomac Conservancy. That is a stretch of roughly 50 miles.
Trump praised his work using the same metric: “You can go 20 miles up and down the river and there’s nothing like it,” he told a Virginia reporter.
The goal, all along, was to compete for big tournaments — to be on par with courses like Congressional Country Club in Maryland, which has hosted three U.S. Opens. “Congressional doesn’t have a chance,” Trump told The Post in 2009.
It took years. It took planning. It worked.
In 2014, before Trump began his presidential bid, the PGA of America awardedthe Senior PGA Championship to his Virginia course.
And the PGA kept it there, shrugging off the controversies surrounding Trump’s campaign and his young presidency. Trump has worked hard on this relationship: Golf.com reported in February that he’d spoken three times since the election to Pete Bevacqua, chief executive of the PGA of America. They met once at Trump Tower. They golfed in Florida. And Trump called Bevacqua out of the blue to talk golf, the magazine reported.
How did the PGA decide that Trump’s politics were not an issue?
“The PGA of America is not a political organization. Our association with the Trump organization is strictly as a developer of golf facilities,” a spokesman wrote in an emailed statement.
The PGA said that the commercial shown Thursday on the Golf Channel, touting the virtues of Trump’s course, was a standard gesture.