It’s time for real change for the game of golf
Here are three ways courses could change for the better in the post COVID-19 era
With such unprecedented upheaval in our economy, in our jobs and schools and in our personal lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic comes the opportunity to make changes on a scale bigger than one might normally consider.
There’s something about seeing such change happen all around you that can make you less beholden to the old way of doing things.
We will see this unfold in the weeks and months ahead. In fact, we already are. The year 2030 has landed in our laps and we must learn to live with it, whether it means a quicker migration to all things digital, a new level of respect for the personal space of our fellow citizens, or a new appreciation for local versus global.
So what about golf. How do we turn lemons into lemonade? Or as my grandma would have said: “How do we make a purse out of a sow’s ear?” How can we make this seismic shock to the system the impetus we need for real change to our beloved game?
Here are three places to start. Let’s make golf more a game of the everyday man and woman. For golf to do its most good, for our minds, our bodies and our souls, golf clubs must feel more like YMCAs and less like yacht clubs.
They need to be more Scottish and Irish than American.
Where we celebrate what we all have in common and how we can help our community, not where we distance ourselves from other parts of society in some pretentious air of superiority. More people paying less instead of fewer people paying more. Membership not as privilege but as a responsibility to pay it forward by doing your part to sell the game and bring more people into the fold.
Let’s make golf quicker? Even four hours is too much. It would be interesting to see if the data proves this, but my impression a month into golf under these new conventions is that it’s faster.
I’ve only played three times, but I can tell you that two of those rounds have clocked in at three hours and 45 minutes instead of four hours. Is it because we’re wasting less time on the greens with the pin in? Or perhaps we are just more into our friends and less into our scores because we’re grateful to be out of lockdown.
I would be shocked to learn that this speed gain has caused any increase in scoring, probably the most compelling bit of evidence slow players need to speed up.
Let’s welcome more girls and boys through our gates and onto our fairways. Not just sons and daughters of our longtime members, but kids whose parents don’t play golf or who don’t appreciate the power it can have over a young person’s growth and development.
I have always had a soft spot for caddy programs and making kids earn their spot on the tee sheet through hard work, learning the rules and knowing their way around adults. But, if that’s too oldfashioned for today’s kid, let’s find the children in our community who would benefit from a summer on the golf course, and let’s make it happen.
We may never have this time again. To use the fact the ground has changed dramatically under our feet since March. As we are forced to relook at everything from the gap between tee times to fiddling around with rakes and flags, let’s plot a path forward that once and for all addresses the limitations of our great game and puts us on a completely new trajectory as a sport, a pastime and as an important life experience.
The governing bodies of our sport such as the USGA, The R&A and Golf Canada are doing their part to simplify the rules and make handicapping more fair. But so much of what needs to be improved is in the hands of those of us in the trenches, closest to the golfing community — club owners, boards, general managers and key staff. Let’s not blow this once-in-a-lifetime chance.