A group of regulars will camp this weekend on the 16th hole of Glenn Dale Golf Club. The course’s owner has been tearing up for weeks. And every golf cart was taken Friday, with throngs of golfers weaving through the course, determined to get in one last round.
For more than 60 years, the family-owned course has been a staple of this Prince George’s County community. Glenn Dale will be shuttered Monday, following years of financial woes like those that led to closures at other courses in the county.
“We thought it would be here forever,” said John Shields, the course’s soon-to-be former president. “We were wrong.”
Shields’s roots at Glenn Dale run deeper than the turf that covers its rolling hills. His father and uncle — identical twins — bought it in 1958, and Shields, 71, grew up on the property in an antebellum manor house built by Gabriel Duvall, an early Supreme Court justice. He and his brother and sister still live on the grounds, where they raised families.