Friday, June 12, 2020

Divots

It's no secret that COVID-19 has impacted the golf experience. For one, we've eliminated as many common touch points as possible. This includes ballwashers, trash can lids, bunker rakes, and removing the flagstick is no longer an option. Obviously, the most significant change as a result of following CDC guidelines is the use of single-rider golf carts. Combining a very busy golf course along with a cart for each individual player, the number of golf carts that must not only be cleaned but sanitized is double. As you can imagine, this requires a lot more time from the cart attendants every day to complete their work. Many times they aren't able to go home until after 10pm!

Another touch point that was removed in response to COVID-19 was the divot sand scoop from each golf cart. In order to keep these in use, they would have to be sanitized between each golfer. With the cart attendants sanitizing in excess of 150 carts per day, it was determined that sanitizing scoops and filling sand buckets is not feasible at this time. It doesn't sound like much but even if it takes just 1 minute to sanitize two scoops and fill the buckets with sand on a cart, that equates to 2 1/2 additional hours of work everyday.

After more than two months of creating divots without filling them with sand, the cavalry came to help. Organized by Mary Waller, we had two groups of more than 25 ladies in total who volunteered on Tuesday mornings before playing golf. These ladies, armed with sanitized scoops, did a fantastic job filling the thousands of divots on the golf course. Thank you ladies!

Today we began distributing sand bottles on the first tee. These bottles are your own personal bottles and are yours to keep. PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE YOUR BOTTLE IN THE GOLF CART OR RETURN IT TO #1 TEE. IT IS BEST IF YOU STORE IT IN YOUR GOLF BAG AT THE END OF YOUR ROUND. You will be able to refill your own bottle from the sand bin located by the Oasis by 6 & 14 Tees. Through your cooperation we can keep up with filling our divots and caring for our course.

A group of ladies filling divots on #16
These water bottles make excellent sand containers
Depending on the size of the divots, it is possible to fill 8-10 divots from a single bottle