Tee time is back on at two of the City of Vancouver’s three municipal golf courses.
The Vancouver Park Board re-opened the Fraserview and McCleery courses Friday, with a suite of new social distancing measures meant to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
“At some point in time we have to return to some version of normal, and golf is a wonderful opportunity to do that,” said park board general manager Malcolm Bromley.
Bromley said tee times for opening day sold out in an hour, and that rounds are about 90 per cent booked for the next several weeks.
The city closed its three courses mid-March, but initially left its three pitch and putt courses open. Those courses were later closed, but Bromley said the board is now investigating how to reopen them with supervision.
The Langara Golf Course remains closed. The city has been using Langara’s clubhouse to prepare about 700 daily meals for people in the Downtown Eastside.
The game will look a little bit different for golfers hitting the links at the two re-opened courses.
All games must be pre-booked online, and players must remain in their vehicle until it is their turn to play.
Golf cars will be limited to one rider per game, and will be sanitized at the end of every round.
The board has removed rakes and ball washers, and added pieces of foam into the golf holes to limit the surfaces that players can touch.
The number of golfers on the course at once will also be limited.
“We’ll see how this goes, we’ll learn from this,” said Bromley.
Bromley also hinted that tennis may soon be allowed again, with increased signage and education to promote proper physical distancing.
Golf courses are one of the city’s most profitable park properties, generating about $10 million in annual revenue — cash the city needs badly as it stares down a massive deficit due to the pandemic.
Not everyone is excited about the city reopening the courses, though.
Many locals had taken to using the greens and fairways as walking spaces, due to the ease of maintaining physical distance from others.
About 300 people signed a petition titled “Keep Fraserview Golf Course Open to the Community” asking the board not to restart its golf program.
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