■ Golf courses get ready for tee time,
Play allowed with people outside household, but wear a mask in the cart
As soon as the words came out of Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott’s mouth, Golf Ontario pressed send on the email it had been waiting weeks to deploy. Golf courses in the province can open again Saturday.
“Ontario’s We Are Golf partners are very pleased with today’s announcement that golf and other outdoor activities will be able to reopen on May 22,” the email said in part. We Are Golf is a consortium of golf’s stakeholders, including Golf Ontario. “We have worked tirelessly to ensure that our messaging to the Ontario government was clear: Golf is safe.”
Elliott and Premier Doug Ford announced a variety of measures Thursday regarding the gradual reopening of the province, and lifted restrictions on golf courses and tennis and basketball courts. Until Saturday, Ontario will still be the only jurisdiction in North America where golf is not allowed.
“We believe golf should never have closed and we recognize this lengthy shutdown has created some challenges for your business. We do believe, though, that demand will be stronger than ever, and we hope golf can play a key role in helping kick-start the economic recovery in Ontario,” the We Are Golf statement continued.
Booking systems were chugging slowly across Ontario after the announcement. Brian Decker, the director of marketing and communications for TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley, a 54-hole facility in Caledon, said his facilities’ booking site was briefly down due to “extremely high demand” and the phones, he said, have been “ringing nonstop.”
Decker said the biggest challenge for most Ontario golf courses will be to get the facilities up to speed again. Questions still remained late Thursday about opening driving ranges and warm-up areas, while numerous courses across the province, although excited, took to social media Thursday to make golfers aware of their system struggles.
“Less than 48 hours isn’t a tremendous amount of lead time,” Decker said. “Thankfully our full-time staff have done a great job having a plan for this scenario in place, but it’s certainly a challenge to go from 0 to 60 like this.”