Could we be heading back to the golf course soon?
IN these difficult times, living under lockdown conditions, there may just be a little light at the end of the tunnel, and we all could yet be back on the golf course sooner than you think if the government takes the advice of a leading medical expert.
When the GUI and ILGU advised affiliated clubs on Tuesday, March 24 to shut temporarily due to the spread of the Coronavirus, many of us wondered would the summer months pass without any golf?
Thousands of golfers protested at the time on online forums, saying that playing golf on your own or with another person while maintaining social distancing, on a quiet golf course, is far safer than jogging past others in a busy park or street.
Whether or not golf courses should have been allowed to stay open seems to be an ongoing debate, but a leading health professor believes that courses could now re-open their doors if it’s done in the right way and obviously under strict social distancing conditions, purely for recreational and not competitive purposes.
Before the unions advised shutdown, golf clubs up and down the country were doing their bit to keep players as safe as possible, by removing rakes, closing clubhouses and asking people not to touch the flags, but once the shut-down came it immediately put clubs in financial trouble, and as we have seen here in Kerry, Killorglin and Castleisland clubs shut down permanently, while others continue to struggle.
How much longer courses will remain shut for, is a question that no one really knows the answer to, but Professor Samuel McConkey, the head of the Royal College of Surgeons’ department of international health and tropical medicine in Ireland, who also sits on the scientific advisory committee of the European Vaccine Initiative, told a leading Irish daily newspaper over the weekend that he thinks golf courses could now open their doors again.
“Golf is played outside in the open air, and almost always two metres away from other players, so my opinion is that playing golf, even two or four players from different houses together, could be done relatively safely, if sick people and their contacts stay away, and people come dressed to play and do not use changing rooms or the clubhouse facilities,” Professor McConkey said.
The Professor, however, believes it could take a little longer for spectators to return to live sport, but says that with the right guidelines in place - such as wearing masks and staying two metres apart - spectators could attend sporting events in the coming months.
Irish people, in general, have obeyed the restrictions and done all of the right things in these past five or six weeks, and it has certainly made a huge difference in slowing down the spread of the deadly virus, but we’re not yet out of the woods so to speak, and if curve continues to flatten and the lockdown is lifted (fingers crossed) on May 5, then perhaps we could see a return to the golf course in some shape or form not too long after that.