Late this afternoon Los Angeles County Public Health reconsidered the language governing “individual” golf under the terms of the State “Stay at Home” order and that County’s separate “Safer at Home” overlay.
Per that reconsideration, Los Angeles County Parks & Recreation has informed the operators of its 20 municipally owned golf courses that “tee times are limited to no more than 4 players who need not be from the same household. Additionally, both group and private golf instruction are permitted based on the required protocols.”
Those “required protocols” and the protocols governing all else about golf in Los Angeles County, both public and private, under the terms of all extant health orders are contained in the last revision of Los Angeles County’s “Re-opening Golf Courses” order (December 2). We provided it in our last Update, but you can click here to access it again.
We would be remiss (or more accurately, colossally ungrateful) were we not to publicly acknowledge just how hard Los Angeles County Parks & Recreation worked to persuade Public Health of the need to craft language capable of effectuating every safety component of the state stay at home order in a manner consistent with how golf is actually played in the wide open spaces of its 100 plus acres. A big “thank you” on behalf of not just the golfers of Los Angeles County, but the golfers of Southern California’s other 9 counties as well. From the start of the pandemic Los Angeles County, mostly due to its sheer size, has been the most cautious and dilatory among the counties. What it has just done will reverberate with the others in ways that can only inure to golfers’ benefit as we slog through some very difficult days.
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We have been collecting information from around the Southland about the ways in which different jurisdictions and golf facilities have navigated the opaque language contained in the state as well as various county golf health orders in an effort to discern some sort of consensus or set of best practices. We will share that with you next week as part of a greater report that shares information about some of the other pressing public policy concerns we’re looking at as we finish 2020 and get ready to tackle 2021.
But for today – let’s soak in the good news from the state’s largest county.
Are you interested in becoming an advocate for golf in California? The CGCOA is seeking amateur golfers who are passionate about protecting the game of golf and promoting public policies that enable golf to flourish in California. Take the next step to becoming an advocate for golf by completing the attached Golf is Good Ambassador Application.
Read More →FORE - The magazine of the SCGA. Find archived Public Affairs articles on the website of the SCGA's award winning quarterly publication.
Read More →Charles Dickens’ famous opening of “A Tale of Two Cities” comes to mind as a good descriptor of where California’s water situation and golf’s place in it stands after back-to-back record precipitation years: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...".
Read More →Four Los Angeles City Council members introduced a motion yesterday that seeks to crack down on what the motion describes as “black-market tee time brokers” who book and resell city golf course tee times for profit.
Read More →When introduced by Assembly Member Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) February 16, AB 3192 contained a provision that would have banned the use of all nonorganic pesticides and fertilizers on golf resorts in California’s Coastal Zone.
Read More →A cautionary tale from semi-rural Santa Barbara County to remind you that the pressure to repurpose golf courses is not just a phenomenon in California’s densely packed urban cores.
Read More →The National Golf Course Owners Association’s (NGCOA) Harvey Silverman may have characterized the City of Los Angeles’ uncommonly quick reaction to intense media scrutiny (five separate Los Angeles Times stories including a Sunday lead editorial) of the depredations of tee time brokering with his quip in the organization’s “Golf Business Weekly” about the city having reacted “faster than fixing potholes.”
Read More →Every year there seems to be one bill filed in one house of the California Legislature that keeps the California golf community up at night.
Read More →Here's the difference this last week made, and it’s a difference not just in terms of the alacrity with which we can expect the major municipal golf systems to begin implementing mitigations, but also in terms of what the week means in terms of disabusing all notions of golf somehow being underutilized and golfers not as passionate about the object of their affection as others are about theirs.
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