My favourite scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War depiction, Apocalypse Now is when Robert Duvall utters those famous words, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’.
Stripped to his bare chest and crouched down on his hunkers, Duvall rallies his troops with a rousing speech of hope, oblivious to the trail of carnage being caused in his wake – the lethal blasts and flying debris, the strewn bodies being recovered on stretchers and the devastation of war staining the sand.
I feel the scene captures the attitude of a lot of golfers during this pandemic. From the day our sport was lumped in with the rest of them by Government restrictions, there’s been an air of entitlement wafting in golf circles at least. As the death toll mounted and cases multiplied and intensive care units were overrun, golfers expressed their outrage that for a few weeks in the grand scheme of life, they wouldn’t be able to count their score against par.
It was on Tuesday, March 24th that the fairways were recommended to close by the GUI and ILGU. That’s 42 days ago now. A little over a month of no golf. Is that significant? It certainly is for the clubs themselves who’d only arisen from a winter’s hibernation before being told that their slumber would be extended through what should be their busiest period of the season.
How we support local businesses – our golf clubs included – when things get back to “normal” will be the making and breaking of many of them here in Ireland. Which is why comments like ‘if my club doesn’t lift the 5-kilometre restriction for me to play golf on May 18th, I’ll cease my membership’ is so disappointing to read.
Personally, I can’t see the benefit for an already struggling golf club to increase its running costs to accommodate what is surely a minute percentage of its membership living within the 5-kilometre radius of the course. And that’s coming from someone fortunate enough to live within said parameters. For me, it would’ve made much more sense to wait until June 8th when the Government extends the travel limit to 20km before giving golf the green light, thus granting clubs a much greater scope to increase vital revenue.
The game’s governing bodies in Ireland have confirmed that they will be releasing safe return to play protocols this week and no doubt golf clubs will be protected by whatever guidelines are published. One thing we shouldn’t expect, however, is for the GUI and ILGU to lobby to Government to allow special dispensation for golfers living more than 5 kilometres from their home club.
“I don’t think anybody could say that playing a round of golf is critical in terms of overall public health. We would be advocating the 5km limit for golf is maintained and that’s what Government guidelines are saying,” ILGU CEO Sinead Heraty told RTE Radio News at One on Monday.
“I think it is critically important that all players who have the opportunity to play within the regulations issued by the Government adhere to those regulations; and, particularly in golf, we are very fortunate it is a sport where people are very used to following the rules.”
During that Duvall speech in Apocalypse Now, as a bomb went off seemingly unnoticed just over his right shoulder and prisoners of war were marched mercifully along the beach, he said that to him, napalm “smells like victory. Some day this war’s gonna end,” before getting to his feet and casually walking out of shot.
OK, so the Vietnam War didn’t exactly go to plan but for golfers, that end day is fast approaching and how we respond to Government directives and those soon to be published by the GUI and ILGU might be the difference between normal service resuming this summer on the fairways and not.
Leave a comment