I have recently received many emails and phone calls concerning what the direction Metro Seniors is taken to ensure the safety of all the members in each weekly tournament, Special Events and Metro Plus golf outings for the remainder of the year.
2020 will go down as a difficult year in Metro Seniors golf. The climate is changing almost weekly, so what we tell you now, in a week from now may not apply. We negotiated in May, in good faith, for all our events in June to be single cart only. When the governor of Missouri opened the state up on June 15th, all bets were off and courses could use their own judgement on how they wanted to operate. Our agreements/contracts were no longer applicable, and if we wanted to play at the courses we had to adjust or the courses would move on.
The golf industry as a whole has seen a tremendous upswing in participation and many country clubs have membership levels they haven’t seen in many years. We no longer have, hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, to attend as fans and everyone is looking for a release…an outlet. Public courses during the week, usually their slow period, are having 250-300 golfers playing daily. The demand for tee times are high, therefore there are many that will play by whatever the rules the course sets, regardless if scientists say this is not safe. Its business! Online tee times are the future and if the demand is high the price will increase significantly. Believe me when I say this “once the prices goes up, it’s never coming back down.” The computer tracks everything. The higher the demand, the higher the price will be.
There are some courses that are still conservative in their approach and are allowing single carts out at no additional fee, but some that are allowing single carts some are charging an additional fee for this, that is significantly higher. Soon all the courses will get rid of their rental carts which are costing them a lot and implement rules requiring 2 in a cart.
The pandemic is far from over, and I will not get political. Many believe the best policy is to error on the side of caution. When making decisions on golf rules they did not confer with me. Everyone will approach it differently. I get it, believe me. My wife is very high risk, so I must be safe, so I do not bring home anything that she may get. It’s a choice. If you want to play, you need to find someone who is comfortable with you and vice versa and play/ride with them cautiously, pay the rate if available for a single cart (some places are not offering this) or do not play that week, Special event, Metro Plus outing.
On June 23rd the entire board met for the first time since January. A long and spirited meeting where the theme by the end of it was “Change.” For the remainder of the year we will continue with assigned tee times, and until Illinois and Missouri mirror in the rules and regulations, we will play by the same pin and bunkers rules we have been using since June 1st. No one knows when that will be, and it may be sooner than some of us want. A committee of many members is looking into a future registration process to be presented to the board in August with implementation for next year. We may go back to doing things the old way. We just don’t know.
Look for continuing changes in your weekly tournaments and when the rules are relaxed enough, we will allow CTTP’s again. Stay in touch with your VP’s for they will be informing you of additional changes as we find out, and pass that info on to them.
This week is an off week for all of us. No golf on Thursday and Friday in observance of July 4th week. This has been the policy for years. Promise me you will all be safe out there. Enjoy the holiday but please don’t do anything foolish. I want to see all of back playing golf starting week July 6th.
Larry Roth President Metro St Louis Seniors Golf Assn