Golfers set to reclaim their course at Presidio
Neighbors will miss using fairways to stroll, sunbathe
On the first day of the Bay Area’s shelterinplace orders in March, schoolteacher Mouna Harifi left her home in San Francisco’s Richmond District to take a run on the soft fairways of the Presidio Golf Course one block away. The course was closed to golfers.
As the shutdown went on, the run became Harifi’s routine, and every time out she would see more people walking the fairways and cart paths until the crowds peaked this weekend, when the course was “like Dolores Park,” she said, exaggerating to make her point.
“I really would like it to stay open for the families,” Harifi said Sunday. “You can see them out there picnicking and running and playing. Kids can ride their bicycles on the path, and it is easy to have social distancing.”
But the Presidio Golf Course will not stay open for families because it is opening again for golfers at 7 a.m. Monday, and it cannot be open to both. New, slightly less stringent shelterinplace directives are set to take effect this week in six Bay Area counties, including San Francisco. They allow golf courses to resume opera
tions along with nurseries, car washes, flea markets and other businesses that conduct most of their activities outdoors.
These newly allowed activities are considered lowrisk because they provide sufficient space for social distancing and are unlikely to hasten the spread of the coronavirus. Last week, public health officials in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Marin counties and the city of Berkeley agreed to extend regionwide shelterinplace guidelines through May 31, but deemed it safe to ease certain regulations.
As a result, the Presidio Golf Course is booked for 193 of the 200 daily tee times on Monday because of demand that has been picking up since the public course closed March 17.
That means the end for couples spreading picnic blankets on the tightly mowed greens, Frisbee players triangulated across large spans of the fairways, and kids using sand traps as if they were at the beach. Strict rules will be in place both to protect the general public from errant golf balls and to protect the golfers from the coronavirus.
“We are getting all hands on deck to patrol the course and ask people to stay away,” said Dani O’Keefe, assistant golf professional for Touchstone Golf, which operates the course.
The clubhouse will remain closed until further notice, and no lessons will be given. Golfers cannot share a cart.
The holes themselves will not be used. Cups will be set atop the greens, and golfers will hole out by hitting the cup, like in croquet. This removes the need for golfers to reach into the hole or move the flagstick and potentially spread germs to the next golfer.
Starting at 7 a.m., foursomes will tee off at 10minute intervals to maintain social spacing, and as such the carts probably will not clog the paved paths the way baby strollers did over the weekend.
The course begins by the Arguello Gate to the Presidio, and people have tended to congregate on the first few holes. If you got to the farthest reaches of the course, it was generally quiet. Absent the sunbathers who had spread towels in the middle of the fairway, people were generally well behaved, as if they formed the gallery for a tournament.
Sue Toland has lived six blocks from the course for 27 years and only in the past few months has had the nerve to walk it.
“It is just incredible to be out there,” said Toland, who made the last of her daily course walks on Sunday.
Other than scofflaw dogs running amok, “people were being very careful and respectful of the course,” she said. “You feel like a guest because you were never allowed to be out there.”
Toland has heard that the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland is closed for golf every Sunday and the public is invited to wander around, and it has been there since 1873. An arrangement like that could work, though Harifi would like to up it to seven days a week.
“It should be open to the general public at least until the end of the pandemic,” said Harifi. “Golfers should be patient. It makes no sense to close an open space where people can maintain social distancing.”