Winter Park Golf Course near Orlando has its game together. In playing a round there this week after the Monday reopening of the popular nine-hole municipal track – known far and wide as the WP9 – I didn’t have to touch a thing but my own gear.
The course set up a check-in stand outside the clubhouse. Because online payment is required, players never have to enter the clubhouse or come in contact with anything. Players are told not to arrive more than 10 minutes early for tee times, and they are told to leave immediately after the round ends. Starting May 11 the course will have four carts available for single riders who might have disabilities, but the vast majority of golfers walk. Social distancing is easy because it’s ingrained in the course’s new operational set-up.
If only every operation made it so easy, or at least gave the option of being so. Whether mandated by local or state ordinances or just operating out of a sense of safety for players and staff, many courses have made a round of golf a smooth endeavor without risking anybody’s health.
But not all courses. It’s a game of buyer beware, at least in the six rounds I have played at daily-fee or resort courses around Central Florida over the past six weeks.
I have seen discrepancies that can boggle the mind. Simply put, in my very small sampling of public-access courses, there has been a wide range of policies – and more importantly, operational practices – intended to keep players safe. Implementation at several courses was spotty at best.
Each of these six courses had proclaimed to be enforcing social distancing and to have implemented intense cleaning regimens. Each had something blocking the bottom of the golf hole, either a foam pool noodle or an overturned golf cup.
And each round was played under loose stay-at-home orders by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – golf in the Sunshine State was declared an essential business and was allowed to remain open except in a few Southeast Florida hotspots that closed the game on a county level. Social distancing was a mandate, not a suggestion.
I’ll name the best two experiences: WP9 and Streamsong Resort. Both made it seamless to get to the first tee with zero contact. Thought had been put into small details, such as how to give a player a scorecard if wanted. Both properties not only allow walking – a great method for social distancing – they promote it. Reduced tee times prevented the courses from being too crowded. My rounds there felt as safe as a stroll to my mailbox, only with better organization.
If these rounds were indicative of the new normal, bring it on.
Two of my rounds were at the opposite end of the spectrum. Players were crowded around tee boxes, halfway houses, practice greens or cart staging areas. Golfers had to go inside closed doors to pay. Tee times were stacked on top of each other, filling the courses to the brim and beyond. Course marshals were entirely absent except for on one particular par-3 tee box where three groups collided, waiting for the green to clear. The unmasked marshal watching from his cart said not a word.
One of these courses not far from the shuttered Disney World wouldn’t allow walking, with the starter saying it slows down the entire course – apparently pace of play was paramount. But even though each player had his own cart, my threesome preceded to wait 10-15 minutes at every tee box on the backed-up, overflowing course. Lightning mercifully cut the round in half and players stacked up on a patio, rubbing shoulders while waiting out the storm. My group didn’t linger to finish the round.
I’m not naming these courses, because my experiences might have been an aberration. Each had laid out policies – good intentions. But on the days I was there, nobody in particular seemed to be following the rules.
And two of my rounds were pretty solid but with a few headscratchers. At one course where I was free to walk and staff seemed truly interested in new safety measures, I still saw 16 guys sitting around a table on a patio next to a snack shop. At another, a sevensome caromed down the final fairway, each player in his own cart before congregating as a tight group on the green. Golf is played over vast spaces, but it is a social game with a 4.25-inch focal point at the hole – players tend to gather.
A consortium of golf-industry leaders has formed a new initiative, Back2Golf, to help courses lay out best practices. Representatives of the U.S. Golf Association, PGA of America, PGA Tour, LPGA and others worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop optional guidelines available for any course to follow.
And many states have implemented specific rules for golf, such as walking only with the requirement of online payment. Massachusetts this week was the last state to reopen its courses, and officials there spelled out in great detail what it required for courses to reopen.
But it’s up to each facility to make good things happen. Golf has an opportunity as one of the first recreational activities to reopen around the country to promote safe practices and put a spotlight on all the great qualities of the game. If professional golf resumes in June as planned, that spotlight will be even greater, as golf will be the first major sport available on television or streaming.
With that kind of spotlight comes scrutiny as coronavirus infections and deaths continue to rise across the nation. It will take effort on the part of participants, staff and course operators to make the sport’s reopening run smoothly.
“Part of the operators’ responsibility, once they put those rules in place, is to make sure the players are operating by it,” said Jeff Morgan, CEO of the Club Management Association of America and a participant in the Back2Golf initiative. “It’s not only about their safety, it’s about the staff safety and everyone else that is playing. I would hope that operators are aware of the entire experience and have an obligation to make sure that everybody is abiding by the rules that that facility sets up.”
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And it’s up to the players to follow the rules.
“Were fortunate to have an opportunity to start playing again that really is dependent on our collective ability to follow social distancing guidelines and to make the right choices when we’re out on the golf courses,” USGA CEO Mike Davis said on the call that launched the Back2Golf safety initiative. “We’re all in this together, so be responsible.”
There’s no telling how long the safety guidelines will be needed. In the meantime, there’s a great opportunity for golf to not screw this up. In the end, the value of any safety guidelines is only as strong as the will of courses operators and players to engage them.
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