Golfers unite to protest absurd ban
IT TAKES a lot to rouse England’s silver-haired army from their golfing contentment but seek to close their beloved courses for no logical reason and watch them rise.
In little more than 24 hours following Saturday’s announcement more than 250,000 golfers had called the Government to account, signing a petition pleading with them not to go down a path that will plunge so many people into wholly unnecessary despair.
England Golf’s CEO Jeremy Tomlinson managed to encapsulate the silent fury with statesmanlike phrasing, declaring his intention to ‘respectfully challenge the Government’s rationale’.
The rest of us are left shaking our heads at what is being proposed from Thursday.
So you can drive to a park and exercise with a friend for an unlimited period of time but you can’t drive to the golf course and play 18 holes with someone else? As incoherent policy-thinking goes, that takes some beating.
‘The purpose of the tougher proposals is to reduce social contact,’ said a Government spokesman yesterday, seemingly oblivious to the fact that, with golf, there doesn’t have to be any social contact.
It really isn’t difficult. Yes, close the clubhouses, if you must. Close the pro shop. Stress there should be no socialising in the car park and players should come dressed to tee off. Play in two-balls, to keep within the parameters of what’s being proposed elsewhere regarding outdoor exercise.
Heck, play in singles, if you really don’t want any contact at all. But don’t close the courses. There are tens of thousands of people in their 60s and beyond for whom playing the game is not just the centre of their world, but practically the whole of it.
You’re sending these people down a path of mental turmoil and threatening their very wellbeing.
I know. I play golf with some of them. ‘I don’t know what I will do, if they close the course,’ one of my friends, a septuagenarian widower who plays 18 holes every day, confided last week. Every club in the country must have 50 players at least with the same outlook.
The irony is that golf has been one of the few sports that has picked up players during this pandemic. Everyone can see that it was a game made for social distancing. Well, nearly everyone.
Let’s hope common sense prevails and this proves to be one more U-turn the Government makes.
Most people are prepared to cut them slack for the difficult decisions they are being asked to make. It would help, mind, if they didn’t make a mess of what should be the easy ones, like playing golf.