When the coronavirus pandemic began running unchecked across the United States in March, golf deemed itself uniquely immune from the virus’ risks. Although convenient, time mostly has vindicated that diagnosis: the game is played outdoors (where the risk of transmission is lower), and by its nature, it never requires players to come in close contact. When players use their own equipment and don’t share carts, “it’s probably going to be safe,” Baylor College of Medicine Prof. Jill Wetherhead told Golfweek in March.
With so many normal activities now off-limits, golf’s long-declining popularity has enjoyed a resurgence: the National Golf Foundation estimates that Americans played 6 percent more rounds in May 2020 than the same month a year prior, and that the trend has carried over into summer.
Self-isolation on Pinehurst No. 3.
That’s on the course, though. At some of American golf’s epicenters — golf resorts — the risks are more unknowable and complicated. No-touch flagsticks and single-rider carts are well and good on a resort’s courses. But the accompanying restaurants, hotels, shops, and gathering spots that make golf resorts such attractive travel options present layers of risk that aren’t so easily mitigated. Throw in the multitude of employees needed to staff a resort — plus the reality that many guests just stepped off an airplane — and the opportunities for transmission are far less avoidable.
And golf resorts’ inherent transitory quality makes correctly attributing transmissions unlikely, if not impossible. Imagine, for example, that a traveler flies from his home state for a golf resort in another state for a four-day visit, during which he’s infected with coronavirus. Since the average COVID case doesn’t show symptoms until 4-5 days after exposure, the traveler almost certainly will be home by the time he realizes that he needs to be tested — and the results of that test will be attributed to his home state, not to the golf resort’s state.
Memories, then, aren’t the only thing golfers bring home.
. . .
I was supposed to be in Pinehurst this week.
It was going to be my third straight summer in the North Carolina Sandhills — and honestly, I could go every summer for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. Outside the golf (which is ungodly good), the vibe of the place is exactly the right speed. Even for a first-time visitor, it feels like home. And after two summers of reconnaissance, my buddies and I had landed on the perfect itinerary: two rounds on Pinehurst No. 2, two rounds on No. 4, a trip over to Mid Pines, plus plenty of time for the Cradle and the criminally underrated Thistle Dhu putting green. Just to be sure, we locked down our reservation nearly seven months in advance, in early February.
Then came COVID. In March and April, we held onto our optimism. “I’ve heard from a reliable source that the country will be back in business after Easter,” one of my buddies e-mailed with tongue in cheek.
Grey clouds and unseasonably cool weather in Summer 2019 on Pinehurst No. 2.
Summer was supposed to be when we brought the outbreak under control. But the numbers kept moving in the wrong direction, in North Carolina and everywhere else.
I remained unable to abandon the trip; my friends and I decided to avoid the airport and drive instead, but we figured that we’d be fine once we got to the resort.
Then, in mid-June, a Pinehurst caddie wrote on No Laying Up’s Refuge message board that positive COVID tests at the resort’s Carolina Hotel had been kept quiet. “I had to pry to get an answer and none of the caddies were alerted about the cases,” he wrote. “I can’t say if the [resort] employees were notified, all I know is that the caddies weren’t. Which was the last straw for me.”
That was troubling, but it was also the sort of thing that demanded confirmation. So I reached out to Pinehurst’s public relations staff to ask whether any resort employees had tested positive, and whether other resort workers had been told about it.
I wasn’t expecting a response from the resort’s president, but that’s what I got.
Tom Pashley, the president of Pinehurst Resort, confirmed that a Carolina Hotel employee had tested positive in early June, but claimed (without explanation) that the case was “due to exposure outside of work.” He wrote that the resort notified other employees who’d made “indirect or possible contact” with the positive case, but that “[t]here was no risk of exposure to guests due to the work location of this employee and the safety protocols we already have in place” (again, without explanation).
Pashley also confirmed that caddies hadn’t been told about the test, but insisted that “there was no potential direct or indirect exposure with any caddies” — a remarkable assumption, yet again offered without explanation. Pashley wrote that the resort “verbally informed” Caddiemaster (the company that provides Pinehurst’s contractor caddies) of the positive test, but not the caddies themselves.
I waited another month before canceling my reservation, but after Pashley’s e-mail, the idea of visiting Pinehurst in 2020 never felt safe again.
. . .
To be fair, this is not entirely a Pinehurst problem: it’s an everywhere problem. After the annual motorcycle assemblage in Sturgis, S.D., officials warned that coronavirus infections would be difficult to track because many cases would not show symptoms until bikers returned home. Even for a resort doing everything in its power, many factors are simply out of its control.
So when, then?
I love Pinehurst. I love traveling to play golf. And the impossible views of Bandon Dunes during the U.S. Amateur only stoked golfers’ desires to seek out wild, far-flung courses. No one wants to forgo those adventures any longer than necessary.
The final walk home on Pinehurst No. 4.
Demand for air travel is expected to remain below pre-pandemic levels until 2023, and global air travel might not return to normal until 2024. In early August, though, Bill Gates — whose foundation has put enormous sums of money behind the COVID vaccination effort — predicted that non-developing countries will have moved past the pandemic by the end of 2021. And Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that he expects the first vaccinations in early 2021. Even when the vaccine becomes available, though, groups most vulnerable to infection — front-line medical workers and the elderly — will be prioritized over healthy, middle-aged, would-be golf travelers.
“Ultimately,” a Fortune magazine commentator wrote in June, “resuscitating commercial aviation must start by restoring public confidence in the industry’s ability to make the end-to-end travel experience as safe as possible.” In other words, travelers might not feel safe even after they probably are safe.
That might — might — make 2020 an aberration. Golfers might be able to return to golf resorts without significant risk in the second half of 2021.
Whether they’re ready, though, is another question.
. . .
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