Golf Rounds Surged as Coronavirus Advanced. Now the Game Is Retreating.

Drawn by open-air acreage, free time and new social distancing guidelines, recreational golfers in the U. S. were playing in droves this month. Then courses started shuttering.

As recently as a week ago, recreational golfers flocked to the fairways of public and private golf courses as a respite from stay-at-home guidelines and lifestyle prohibitions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Golf, with its wide open spaces, still seemed safe. In New Jersey’s Somerset County, the five municipal golf courses recorded 6,501 golf rounds in the first 19 days this month, a 300 percent increase over the number of rounds played in all of March last year. A similar surge in play, with players observing social distancing and other limits on close interactions, was happening all over the United States.

“The turnout almost overwhelmed us,” said Matt Kammeyer, the director of golf for Salt Lake City’s seven courses. “Just a lot of happy, grateful people enjoying a round. ” This week, it increasingly appears that golf’s reprieve was short-lived. With stricter measures on public gatherings, our games, like everything else, live in realms of past and present.

Over the weekend, dozens of cities and counties overseeing hundreds of golf facilities closed or indefinitely suspended play on their courses, usually at the direction of government agencies. That included the courses in Somerset County and in Salt Lake City and at some Trump resort properties. Scores of courses remain open, but every day the roll call of shuttered golf complexes mushrooms. “A few guys I play with are talking about going to Pennsylvania because some of their courses are open,” Tom Avers, who plays about 100 rounds annually at the Somerset courses in New Jersey, said Monday morning.

“But I think they’ll probably close down soon, too. ” Kari Phenix, the head pro at the municipally owned Fort Myers Country Club in Fort Myers, Fla. , said she was still seeing about 250 golfers at her course daily, but she wasn’t sure how much longer that would last. “It’s day by day, who knows?

” she said. Fort Myers is home to the spring training complexes of the Boston Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins and is a popular winter destination for Canadians. But in a span of two weeks, the baseball fans and tourists have left. Nearby beaches, tennis courts and community pools have closed.