By Craig Kessler, Director of Governmental Affairs, Southern California Golf Association
“Recreational” golf is back. Everyone, golfers and facilities alike, have gotten the hang of what it means to manage and play golf per social distancing and common touch point controls. The rest – the business and social – are rapidly coming into focus as counties enter various phases of the re-opening process. Of course, they’re coming back in severely truncated forms, but they’re coming back, nonetheless.
Keeping it for the duration of the pandemic is in the hands of golfers and golf facilities. So far so good, which is more than some other outdoor recreational activities can claim. But unless the Novel Coronavirus is unlike every other virus in human history, there will be a second wave of COVID-19 later this year; how severe is anybody’s guess. Complacency is not an option. The industry fought too hard to be the first activity restored to allow that to happen.
Okay; we developed a theory of golf’s “recreational” case and at least in Southern California’s ten (10) counties, that “case” got us reintroduced literally before every other outdoor recreational activity, including hiking/walking trails. We should be rightly proud of having done that. But we all know that this is but the beginning of a long slog through some very difficult terrain.
According to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, we are facing 20-25% unemployment this summer and a recovery that will look more “U” or “L” shaped than the “V” shaped one that some predicted at the dawn of the pandemic shutdown. We are facing staggering local/state budget deficits. We are staring down the barrel of a 2nd wave of the novel coronavirus of unknowable dimensions this fall/winter, which at best will sustain this economic grief and at worst lead to a 2nd lockdown. Many of golf’s sectors, particularly the municipal sector, were struggling pre-COVID-19 – struggling at the tail end of the longest economic expansion in American history. We are picking up the pieces before all the pieces of our pre-2009 puzzle have been restored.
Golf is a discretionary leisure activity disproportionately dependent upon aspiration and confidence about the future – two things not exactly on anybody’s radar screen right now; indeed, all polls show that the biggest challenge as we enter Phases II and III of the reopening process is the general population’s reluctance to incur much risk in patronizing restaurants, malls, or any of the other businesses that require congregating in cozy confines. As long as that remains true, it’s hard to see how an economy that is 70% consumer-driven is going to escape the doldrums anytime soon.
We are going to be challenged – to say the least! So is everyone else, most of whom are less well positioned than golf, which has been up and running and running on more cylinders than most others. That can be an advantage, but only if we recognize it and alter our arrangements accordingly. What exactly does that mean? I don’t know; no one person is smart enough to venture that guess. But I know this. Status quo arrangements are not going to cut it. Those sectors and activities prepared to pivot quickly toward recognizing that times like these pose challenges but also opportunities are the sectors that are going to survive the coming detritus and thrive on the other side of this mess.
I also know this. Rising above challenges and finding opportunities within them are not the stuff of isolated individuals, solitary organizations, or chance; they require something called leadership. Not the leadership of heroic effort, but rather the much tougher and more effective variety in which personal and organizational ego are set aside in favor of collective action.
In the coming weeks and months I’ll be watching to see whether golf and its “leadership” organizations step up to do the uncomfortable and unfamiliar things necessary to snatch opportunity from challenge or fall back into familiar arrangements and patterns all but guaranteed to elevate challenge over opportunity and in the process reduce golf to one of COVID-19’s victims.
I plan to more than “watch.” I plan to engage. I hope to see some of you join me in the effort.
Craig Kessler is Director of Governmental Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association (SCGA) and Chair of the California Alliance for Golf’s (CAG) Legislative Committee. He can be reached at ckessler@scga.org