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Dear Editor:

This year of 2020 has come with so many changes in our daily lives.

Here we are dealing with COVID-19. We all have to do our part in stopping the spread of this deadly virus. The CDC and the health experts have guidelines to fight this spread.

We are allowed to certain activities if we practice social distancing. For those of us that love the game of golf, that is a welcome relief.

The group of guys I played with, we travel in radius of 90 miles to play. Some of these courses are practicing social distancing with their golf carts, meaning one rider per cart. Four hours of golf on one cart with two players, there is no social distancing.

At these other courses we visit, the only requirement they ask is if you rode in the vehicle together you are expected to ride on the cart together. Also there is no extra fee to social distance.

At the Babe Zaharias Golf Course, if you want to social distance on a golf cart, you are required to pay an extra fee. At the start of this policy, the fee was $12.

I spoke to management about this fee. I explained how other courses were not doing this because of this pandemic.

The management reconsidered and lowered the fee to $6. The reasoning for the extra fee was lost revenue when it was state-ordered mandatory.

Also in the months leading up to the pandemic and the early stages of it, there were a lot of walkers out on the cart paths walking. I spoke to management about this. Their responses were:

1. “Who was walking?”
2. “This is a park. We can’t stop them.”

At the beginning when all the parks were shut down and so was the golf course, we saw just how quick the management at the Babe got a restraining order to reopen.

Everyone was to get back to normal but we all have to do our part, even businesses.

Also they have put signs up to alert people that they can’t walk, ride bicycles or fish on the golf course.

How is it that all the businesses and counties got the same order from the governor’s office and follow them so differently.

Could it be just being good stewards and putting public health first?

 

William Wells, Port Arthur