My Sunday Socially Distant Feeling

Finally, some halfway decent news.  Golf courses and driving ranges are opening back up.  The USGA put out some guidelines a week or so ago about how us hackers can return to stinking up the real estate consistent with safe practices during the current plague. 

In general, courses are confining folks to one in a cart.  The flags are to be left in.  Bunker rakes and ball washers  are removed.  Starters are sending folks out every 10 minutes instead of 5.  Clubhouse access as well as food and beverage service are curtailed.  People playing together are expected to keep their distance.  

This is doable.

 I went to the range twice last week in an attempt to reconstruct a swing.  The guy nearest to me was 50 yards away easy.  I wanted to actually try to get in a round yesterday but I didn't feel like getting caught in a rainstorm.  There will be plenty of opportunities.  Especially since there's nothing much else to do.

It was good to be out there.  It felt like normal.  Like life as I knew it had returned.

Obviously, that's not true.  But it was good to let my concern limit itself to why I keep pulling everything with the new driver.  If only for a little bit.

As for us we are doing OK.  We have a big house.  So we can practice social distancing even for anti-social reasons.  The Deacon has kept busy with her school stuff.  I have been busy actually practicing law.  And Joe will start his online classes next week.  It's good to have things to do.

In fact, the biggest problem I have encountered is that the present crisis must have rendered my speech unintelligible.  At least my speech while ordering take out.  The last 4 orders I have placed have all gotten screwed up.  As far as problems go, there are far worse.  I know.  And I'm not complaining.  The restaurant folks are under stress of the worst sort.  They are doing the best they can.  But still.

As far as the virus directly affecting me, as far as I know I don't know anybody that has tested positive.  My brother Bob doesn't have any cases at the hospital.  Yet.  That will change.  It is bound to.  But so far so good.  

Like you, we are inconvenienced.  We are bored.  We are probably a little more apprehensive than we would like to admit.  We are ready for this to be over even if we know intellectually that we cannot know the day or the hour.  

There was an interesting piece in the paper yesterday written by some military type.  He was writing about which POWs did worse in captivity during the war with Viet Nam.  He wrote that it was the guys who always looked to a date certain-Christmas or Easter say-for their release.  He wrote that the guys who fared the best were the ones who remained hopeful but did not repose that trust in a date on the calendar.  

I think that's the best way to approach the present crisis.  Which of course is precisely the opposite of what the Moron-in-Chief has floated recently when he said he wanted folks back to work by Easter.  According to what I've read most public health experts find this to be a dubious proposition.  So naturally, he will probably ignore them.

Going back to golf, here's my prediction.  I predict that that the PGA and LPGA will be the first professional sports back.  For the same reasons that golf courses and driving ranges are coming back on line.  Golf can be safely played given rudimentary sanitary precautions.  Now there may not be any spectators allowed to walk the course with them.  But I see no reason why professional golf can't start staging events in front of cameras. 

I believe Major League Baseball will soon follow golf.  A prominent epidemiologist was quoted in last Sunday's New York Times that baseball could be likewise safely played in outdoor venues with no spectators in the stands.  That may be true.  And spitballs would be cut way down if for no other reason than catchers won't want to have to throw them back.  These issues could be worked out in the locker room.

So there are my predictions.  About things that don't much matter all things considered.

I also predict that someone other than me will be phoning in the takeout orders around here for the foreseeable future.  As far as problems go, we don't have any.