Revolutionary golf plan would redistribute handicaps and nationalize the putting green
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A Marxist golf committee has entered the controversy over President Donald Trump’s proposed renovation of East Potomac Golf Links, demanding an immediate suspension of improvements until the government can establish that no American will get better at golf than any other American.
The committee’s intervention adds a revolutionary economic dimension to an already complicated debate involving public recreation, environmental protection, presidential ambition and roughly a century of people hitting golf balls into the Potomac River.
What Trump’s East Potomac Redesign Would Actually Do
Trump’s proposed redesign would turn the existing public facility into a championship-level course capable of hosting major tournaments. The administration says the facility will stay publicly accessible, although the future price of admission has not been set. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said the renovated course would operate along the lines of Bethpage Black and Torrey Pines, which charge discounted rates of under $100 to local residents, according to WTOP.
Opponents have raised concerns about affordability, historic preservation, tree removal and the possible loss of public walking and cycling facilities. The Associated Press has documented those worries, including a lawsuit arguing that the redevelopment would violate the 1897 act of Congress that created the park.
Not all opponents share the revolutionary committee’s ideology, a distinction that becomes obvious when you consider that most local cyclists just want somewhere to ride their bicycles.
Why Golf Is a Bourgeois Problem, According to the Committee
The Marxist committee, however, has identified a deeper problem. Golf involves competition. Competition produces winners. Winners hold advantages over losers. And letting one person finish eighteen holes under par while another loses eleven balls amounts to an unacceptable redistribution of happiness toward the bourgeoisie.
Committee chairman Boris Penhallow, a retired municipal sanitation inspector, told reporters the group reached its position after a long study of a scorecard. “There was a column for each hole and a total at the bottom,” Penhallow said. “We looked at the total and we looked at each other, and that was the end of the debate.”
The Five-Year Golf Plan: Equal Scores for Everyone
The committee has proposed replacing ordinary golf scoring with a system of revolutionary sporting equality. Every player will receive the same score regardless of performance. A golfer who completes a hole in three strokes will receive a four. A golfer who needs fourteen strokes will also receive a four. A golfer who never shows up will receive a four, provided the absence was caused by an officially recognized disagreement with capitalist recreation.
The policy will finally end the humiliation of golfers who are less talented than their playing partners. It will also end the incentive to practice, which the committee regards as a relic of nineteenth-century individualism.
Under the proposed Five-Year Golf Plan, private ownership of golf balls will be prohibited. Every golfer will contribute balls to a common national inventory, and a central committee will then redistribute the equipment according to need, political loyalty and the availability of golf balls after the national inventory has mysteriously disappeared.
Golfers who need additional balls must submit a written request explaining why their previous allocation was insufficient. Players who regularly hit balls into the water will receive priority assistance, provided they agree their difficulties came from structural inequality and not from an inability to swing a golf club.
Abolishing Handicaps and the Pro-Amateur Divide
The committee has also proposed doing away with the distinction between professional golfers and amateurs. Professionals currently benefit from years of experience, disciplined practice, superior technique and the objectionable habit of earning money.
Under the new system, all of those advantages will be redistributed through compulsory handicap equalization. The committee’s handicap committee has reviewed the USGA’s version, in which a Handicap Index averages a player’s best eight Score Differentials out of the most recent twenty, and found it objectionable because it requires scores.
A beginner playing for the first time will be awarded the same official skill rating as the reigning Masters champion. The results will be spectacular, particularly for the beginner. The champion may find the arrangement somewhat less satisfying.
Committee economists defended the proposal on the grounds that equality of outcome is considerably easier to achieve once performance is no longer measured.
Golf Carts, Nationalized: The Warehouse in Maryland
The revolutionary authorities are also concerned about golf carts. Letting some golfers ride while others walk creates a transportation hierarchy incompatible with sporting solidarity. Accordingly, all golf carts will become government property, and each cart will be assigned to a federal agency responsible for determining whether anyone should be allowed to use it.
After eighteen months, the agency expects to finish a preliminary report concluding that the golf carts require further study. The vehicles will then be moved to a warehouse in Maryland, where they can enjoy equal access to inactivity.
From Each According to His Handicap
The committee’s greatest concern, however, is Trump’s suggestion that East Potomac could host prestigious professional golf championships. International tournaments attract sponsorship, tourism, private investment and commercially successful athletes. Those developments could produce additional economic activity, which the committee regards with considerable suspicion.
Economic activity produces income. Income produces inequality. And inequality raises the possibility that someone might buy a better putter than the committee chairman.
The revolutionary solution is simple: prohibit improvements until every citizen has exactly the same equipment, ability, enthusiasm and opportunity to participate. Fortunately, there is an established economic method for reaching that final condition. Make participation so unpleasant that nobody wants to play.
The course would then become a perfect model of sporting equality. No winners. No losers. No professional championships. No capitalist sponsorship. And, most importantly, no evidence that anybody benefited from the revolution.
The Trump administration would probably object, particularly to the provision requiring golfers to surrender their personal property to a federal agency. The committee believes the resulting shortage of golf balls could be handled with a second Five-Year Plan.
The Practical Questions Nobody Answered
Meanwhile, ordinary Washington residents keep asking more practical questions. Will the course remain affordable? Will the popular cycling routes survive? What will happen to the historic miniature golf facility? How much will the renovation cost, and will the public keep meaningful access?
Those questions deserve serious answers whether the person asking voted for Trump, opposed him or simply wants to play nine holes before dinner. Unfortunately, practical questions are not sufficiently revolutionary.
The committee therefore issued one final declaration: the people’s golf course must belong to the people, every golf ball must serve the collective, and no citizen shall enjoy a birdie until every citizen has been guaranteed one.
After all, from each according to his handicap, to each according to his need. The committee credited the slogan to Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program, and said it had amended the original to include a stroke limit.
Unfortunately, nobody has volunteered to retrieve the golf balls from the river. The committee has referred the matter to the Ministry of Underwater Equality. Its first meeting has been postponed because everybody wants to be chairman.
Five Humorous Observations
- Everybody gets a four. Every hole. That’s not communism, that’s my golf game. I’ve been practicing equality of outcome since 2009. It’s called “I forgot to count.”
- They’re nationalizing the golf balls. Do you know how many golf balls are already in the Potomac? That’s the only successful redistribution of wealth in American history. A rich guy hits it in the water and a kid with a net gets it.
- A man who spends his Saturdays in a cart with a cooler is not afraid of the revolution. He’s afraid of the cooler being nationalized. Touch the cooler and you’ve got a real uprising.
- “From each according to his handicap.” Every golfer I know has a handicap, and every one of them is lying about it. They tell you twelve. It’s twenty-two. It’s always twenty-two, and he’s wearing a visor.
- The first meeting got postponed because everybody wants to be chairman. That’s the only part of the whole plan that actually worked. That’s the most efficient part of any committee I’ve ever seen.
Editorial disclaimer: The golf course and the associated legal and public-access disputes are real. The political characters, revolutionary committee, bureaucratic adventures and comic dialogue are satirical treatments of those events, not reports of actual statements or proceedings. The newsroom attributes these stories to an entirely human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer, neither of whom has ever successfully persuaded a golf ball to respect economic theory. From each according to his handicap, to each according to his sense of humour: comrades who finish this article early may redistribute their remaining strokes across our British satire.
