“It’s a great golf course to
play...It’s very fair. Something
you can play every day.”
Langston once again has a first-rate short-game
practice area, which is used frequently by First Tee
participants.
of one or two bunkers that were almost
playable, they have seven. It’s a first-rate
practice area.
“We needed to do something for the
kids, The First Tee and for all the adults
who play here. Our hope is to continue to
improve the course over time, knowing
that they have limited resources.”
Thomas then approached the Park Ser-
vice and said she was “pleasantly surprised”
about their willingness to quickly start and
finish the compliance process necessary to
approve the project. And that’s when the
Golf Course Superintendents Association
of America stepped in to make sure it was
done right.
Dean Graves, a past president of the
Mid-Atlantic Association of Golf Course
Superintendents and the long-time super-
intendent at Maryland’s Chevy Chase Club
just beyond the D.C. border, had been to
Langston many times over the years. He
and Thomas had also worked together
on First Tee projects, and he was terribly
enthusiastic about the effort to renovate
the practice area.
“We (the GCSAA) also wanted to do
something for National Golf Day, and this
was a natural,” Graves said. “I took it on as
vsga.org
a pet project. We asked people to donate
products and equipment to do the job, and
we got a group of a half-dozen superinten-
dents from the area to help us out.”
Donations totaling $25,000 came in for
sod, sand, equipment and the labor to run
the heavy machinery. And because the
Washington area had experienced such a
mild winter, the work was done in February
and completed in about a week. The fact
that it also coincided with Black History
Month was just an added bonus.
“The bunkers had grown over so much
it was grass, with no sand at all,” Graves
said. “We had to reshape them, work on the
drainage and put new sand in all of them.
All the banks also had to be re-sodded. We
had to lower the lips to them so they could
be playable. Over the years a lot of sand had
been blasted out of them, so we had to fix
that problem on the green. Now, instead
MORE IN STORE
Clearly, there is still plenty of work to be
done on the Langston course, a 6,500-
yard, par-72 layout with more than a few
shots over water, including the nearby
Anacostia River.
“It’s a great golf course to play,” Graves
said. “It’s very fair. Something you can play
every day. You can make pars there. It’s
very playable and enjoyable. But they also
need their [on-course] bunkers redone, cart
paths re-paved and a lot of other things. It’s
a big catch-up.”
And concessionaire Kim Thomas is opti-
mistic that many of those fixes can be made
over the next few years.
“We all want to see a positive change,”
she said. “I think the Park Service is trying
to figure out how to make the next chapter
happen. I’m confident they have a good
understanding of what needs to be done.
And what happened in February with the
practice area was a great start.”
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