MAY WE PLAY THROUGH?

It is heartening to golfers everywhere that Saskatchewan’s plan for reopening the province after its COVID-19 timeout includes a 22-point checklist for courses to open, if they wish, as of May 15. P.E.I. and New Brunswick also include golf courses in their restarts.

I don’t know enough about Saskatchewan golf to say how far behind schedule May 15 is. Given my typical Easterner’s impression of Prairie winter, I would have thought it might be a month early. But May 15 would work just fine for millions of Canadian golfers anxious to see their seasons begin. At the current price of gas, it almost makes sense to drive from where I am (Montreal) to the nearest Saskatchewan course. Wikipedia lists 283 in the province. Who knew? I may have to move there.

No one would claim golf is an essential service — unless of course they make their living from it, as more than 100,000 Canadians apparently do. On the other hand, many of us do have a relationship with the game that verges on dependency, and dependency was often mentioned as a reason for not closing liquor stores during the emergency. That and fear of riots.

Dependent or not, we are only too aware of golf’s limitations. “A good walk spoiled,” was Mark Twain’s judgment. Churchill called it “a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.” One of the most common judgments you hear on the course is that the game teaches humility, which is a strange thing to say about something people supposedly do for

SAFETY COMES FIRST IN DECIDING WHETHER SOMETHING OPENS OR NOT. BUT GOLF QUALIFIES.

fun. If it’s true, though, it makes golf a very Canadian game: we seem to enjoy reminding ourselves of our shortcomings, even if we are, oxymoronically, proud of our humility.

Many people would argue that, being an essentially frivolous game — people whacking a ball about the countryside trying to guide it into a hole — golf should be among the last things to reopen. (My spouse may be one of these people. I haven’t asked.) Of course, reduced to their essentials, many things seem ridiculous. People applying dyes and pigments to stretched canvas in order to create a representation, or purposeful distortion, of reality (i.e., art). People blowing into pieces of wood, strumming on cat gut or hitting tightened leather with sticks (i.e., music).

In deciding what to open, should we really be prioritizing according to the popular or average, or bureaucrat’s or politician’s view of an activity’s inherent worth? My frivolity may be your passion and vice versa. The point of an economy that is not centrally planned is that people get to choose for themselves.

And yet, we obviously can’t reopen everything at once. The ICU numbers look good for the moment. Most places in the country are below capacity. But reopening will bring more cases. In part, that’s its purpose: you want the curve to be flat but you also want to move along it. Still, we need to feel our way carefully, gradually, experimentally.

From this perspective, safety comes first in deciding whether something opens or not. But golf qualifies. It’s played outdoors. Physical distancing is easy. (In my own game it’s natural: I usually play 30 yards behind the rest of my foursome.) Some of us already wear one glove. A second would not be a great adjustment. We could wear masks, too. There have been many times on the golf course I’ve wished I’d been wearing a mask, as my ball hooked or sliced toward a group in the next fairway over. (I can do either, though not on request.)

Saskatchewan’s guidelines make golf even safer. No walk-on players. Payment only in advance by phone or online. Tee times 20 minutes apart (though that will reduce courses’ incentive to open). Elevated cups with play on a hole ending when the ball hits the cup. No rakes or ball washers on the course. Washrooms closed. One person per cart, except for members of the same household. No club or pull-cart rentals. No food and beverage service. Locker rooms closed. And so on.

It may seem silly that golf courses should open before high schools, colleges or universities. We all, even golfers of a certain age, agree young people’s education is more important than older folks’ recreation. But at the moment the classroom is a more dangerous place than the golf course.

Perhaps, as we move away from general quarantine into a more targeted lockdown, we older folk should face greater restrictions, mainly for our own good but also to protect the front-line workers who will care for us if we fall ill. Fair enough. But if that’s the case, put the restrictions on people themselves, not the activities their age group tends to favour disproportionately.

There may be few pursuits sillier than golf but right now there aren’t many safer.