GOOD NEWS: (Some) New York Golf Courses Are Reopening

On Friday, April 17th, the Empire State Development—the state authority in charge of determining essential and nonessential businesses—updated its guidance for golf courses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by New York State Golf Assoc. (@nysga1923) on Mar 26, 2020 at 9:13am PDT

While golf courses were initially deemed non-essential on April 10th, only a week later (Thank God), the New York Clubs Association was able to coordinate with New York officials and reach an agreement with them that would reopen privately-owned courses.

The updated guidance for Item 13 states as follows:

However, golf courses are not essential and cannot have employees working on-premise; notwithstanding this restriction, essential services, such as groundskeeping to avoid hazardous conditions and security, provided by employees, contractors, or vendors are permitted and private operators may permit individuals access to the property so long as there are no gatherings of any kind and appropriate social distancing of six feet between individuals is strictly abided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by New York State Golf Assoc. (@nysga1923) on Apr 15, 2020 at 8:11am PDT

To help provide further insight into how to comply with the revised guidance, New York State Clubs Association president Charles Dorn further confirmed that privately-owned clubs can open for play and should adhere to the following mandates, which were discussed and agreed upon with the State:

• No recreational facilities (e.g., the clubhouse, pool, halfway house, etc.) can be open and, therefore, there can be no employees working in the recreational facilities on-site
• Each club must have a security personnel to strictly enforce social distancing rules
• No person is permitted access to course facilities, including but not limited to the clubhouse, pro shop, bag room, and locker room
• No caddies, golf carts, or course-provided push carts; each golfer must carry their own bag or use their own push cart
• All golfers must strictly observe social distancing requirements (e.g., 6 foot distancing, no physical contact, etc.)

Several club personnel have welcomed the good news with open arms, such as Brad Batthees, the General Manager at Rockville Links in Rockville Centre, who stated: “I spoke to all the area clubs and everyone is opening up.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Anthony Magaraci (@anthony_magaraci) on Jun 21, 2019 at 6:15pm PDT

However, club golfers shouldn’t expect things to be “normal”, as certain clubs will enforce additional requirements to ensure neither the golfers nor the club are found in violation (and, presumably, punished). Indeed, Meg O’Connor, the General Manager for Nassau Country Club (Glen Cove, NY) stated: “We’re open for play with twosomes walking only.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Thomas Treiber (@ttreiber14) on Oct 1, 2018 at 6:39pm PDT

With respect to privately owned, non-country club courses, Charles Dorn explained:

Municipal and other government-run courses can be open if the municipality or other government agency allows them to. Public courses owned by a private operator can reopen as long as they do not have a recreational transaction. No cash or credit card can be taken on-site. This is the one caveat.

However, this is entirely up to each course and its management, as it’s highly likely that some courses will not be willing to take on the risks. At the same time, we were very fortunate to have a mild winter and with a “long” golf season in the Northeast lasting 5 months, it’s hard to imagine that privately-owned courses will forego the revenue.

With respect to public courses, such as Bethpage (Farmingdale, NY), Montauk Downs (Montauk, NY), and Sunken Meadow (Kings Park, NY), many appear to be still closed. Indeed, both the Montauk Downs and Sunken Meadow websites still have a disclaimer, stating: “Courses are closed through May 15. State Parks will continue to evaluate the situation and will announce when the park facilities will open.”

While New York has already flip-flopped on whether golf courses can be open, it’s nice that golfers received some good news and that, for the time being, some courses are open.

That said, to help make sure courses stay open (and, hopefully, more public courses follow suit), golfers need to accept and actively do their part to adhere to and enforce social distancing requirements to ensure courses can continue to remain open. All it takes is a handful of stupid people to ruin this for everyone.

As a result, if you see someone breaking the rules, do us all a favor and call them out.