This was never going to be an ordinary round of golf. That was apparent the moment I lay my head on the pillow Friday night,…
This was never going to be an ordinary round of golf.
That was apparent the moment I lay my head on the pillow Friday night, my mind already racing thinking about playing golf at 8 o’clock Saturday morning in what was going to be my first round in the COVID-19 age.
I had a difficult time sleeping, anxious about what I was going to do in the morning — excited to play but at the same time apprehensive about putting myself or anyone else at risk.
With New Jersey golf courses closed by order of Gov. Phil Murphy as the shelter-at-home measures were being pushed in an effort to flatten the curve of the virus, golf has not been a recreational option as the weather has warmed this spring.
Until Saturday morning.
This past week, Murphy lifted the restrictions and allowed for golf course and parks to reopen as of dawn Saturday.
It had been 51 days since I last played golf. The last time I’d played before Saturday, I shot 76 (a rare break of 80 for me) at San Jose Country Club in Jacksonville, Fla., with some golf writer colleagues on the eve of The Players Championship.
The next day, I covered the opening round of The Players at TPC Sawgrass, and by 10 o’clock that night, the tournament was canceled and nothing in the sports world — the entire world for that matter — has seemed normal since.
With all of us craving some sense of normalcy again, I hoped that playing golf Saturday morning would return me three or four hours of that — even with the COVID-19 restrictions on the golf course calling for no rakes in bunkers, no touching of flagsticks and raised cups, so there’s no need to reach into a cup to retrieve a holed putt.
