What new?

HOW HAS GOLF IN THE MIDDLE EAST COPED WITH THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC? AND WHERE DOES IT GO FROM HERE? KENT GRAY INVESTIGATES.

- KENT GRAY

GOLF IN THE COVID ERA IS DIFFERENT, NO QUESTION.

We’ve played in ‘bubbles’, socially distanced ourselves from our playing partners, even socially distanced our hands from the bottom of the cup. Who’d have ever thought there would be an under-ground OB added to the rules of golf? We’ve used our feet to rake bunkers, golfed with the humble flagstick in – or with no pin at all - and at times, golfed with masks on. And it seems we’ve taken it all in our stride and golfed and golfed and golfed some more.

If there is an upside emerging from the global pandemic, it’s that we’ve all had pause to remember how lucky we are to play a game that even epidemiologists agree is about as safe a public pursuit as any in this new world in which we live.

After a cataclysmic drop off in April, the number of scores posted to the U.S. Golf Association’s Handicap Information Network rose 22 percent (month-on-month) in May. Shares in Titleist and FootJoy owner Acushnet Holdings Corp. gained 67 percent from a March 23 low as investors looked past supply-chain disruptions and retail-store closures to a brighter future. The leading sports retailer in the U.S., Dick’s Sporting Goods, saw a 250 percent increase in golf-related e-commerce sales in May and a particularly pleasing spike in junior sets flying off the shelf. USGA CEO Mike Davis calls it “a boom right now” and across the Atlantic in the UK, where tee times are hard to come by and membership forms are being thrust into the hands of increasingly busy managers, there is optimism the influx of new and rejuvenated golfers can sustain itself.