Golf in the Time of Corona

Playing golf is safer than playing basketball during the coronavirus pandemic, four public health experts say. Golf is safer than going bowling, too.

Golf is not safer than tennis.

The MLive website recently asked four public health experts to assess the risk 36 activities pose to spreading the coronavirus, and golf courses were deemed one of the least risky – but not the least, and not even the least risky sport.

The experts rated the activities on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most risky and 1 being the least, and MLive averaged the numbers. The least risky activity was “playing tennis,” followed by “getting takeout from a restaurant,” each scoring a one. The riskiest activity was “bars,” followed by “large music venues,” each scoring a nine.



All spring, companies like ours tracked numbers like “golf course openings” and considered the potential effects of the coronavirus on the industry. But as we learned more about the virus and about our collective response; one thing became more and more clear: golf had the potential to serve as an ideal quarantine outlet.

The whys are fairly intuitive. We’ve learned that staying outdoors means a lower risk of transmission, and golf is entirely outdoors. We’ve learned that keeping other people at a distance helps, too, and golf requires no real proximity. You can play golf alone, and you can play without ever going inside, and there’s a good chance you can play without driving too far from your home, too. Golf course operators had reasons to be cautiously optimistic that if they were able to reopen, golfers would flock to the fairways. And the numbers show that’s exactly what they’ve done.

All year, the National Golf Foundation has done excellent work tracking the effects of the coronavirus (which you can check out here!) on the golf industry. Their latest numbers show a massive uptick in play; U.S. golfers logged 20% more rounds in August 2020 than August 2019. The increase mark the fourth consecutive month with a year-over-year increase and underscores a trend: People are playing a lot of golf.