Are Flagsticks and Bunker Rakes Worse Than Electric Scooters?

Over these months of quarantine (or years? I don’t know—time has lost much of its meaning lately…), with a wide variety of businesses (including golf courses, which are my area of concern) forced to close for months, and then to reopen only with wide-ranging restrictions in place, and under threat of closure for non-compliance, I have noticed one sector that seems to have sailed right along with no slow-down or even significant interruption in their business: the operators of those ubiquitous little electric rental scooters and bikes, outfits like Lime and Bird (which are the most common in San José, California, where I live.)

Except for a slight slowdown in their business as a secondary effect of fewer people going to work and going out to eat, etc., resulting in some reduction in the usage of their vehicles, nothing seems to have changed for these companies. I know that I still see them littering the landscape in my suburban neighborhood on my daily walks with our dog—which is what prompted me to wonder, “If I can’t touch a flagstick or a bunker rake when I go play golf, why are these little scooters and bikes still out and about, where anyone can touch them, and with no one rounding them up and disinfecting them?”

Given that a little bit of common sense and the observance of appropriate hygiene protocols are all that is really required to guard against the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, it seems awfully unfair that golf courses were shut down for two months, putting a lot of financial stress on their employees and owners, when these scooter & bike companies were not. And while golf courses are now open they are under strict protocols, such as no bunker rakes in use, flagsticks must be left in the hole, restrictions on the number of people in the clubhouse/pro shop, etc., and they can be shut down for non-compliance—yet the use of rental scooters & bikes is totally unrestricted.

I sent a query to the my local County Health Department about the situation, which yielded this response:

“There are currently no restrictions in place such as those that you have described unlike a grocery store that can assign workers to clean and sanitize the carts between users. For anyone that wants to use these devices for travel, it is strongly recommended to wipe the surfaces that must be handled/touched by the user before riding a scooter or bike. Also consider wearing gloves* as a precaution as well as washing your hands before and after riding.”

* ( The reference to gloves is disappointing coming from the county health department, as it has been widely advertised that gloves are just another surface to pick up the virus. Unless you remove and discard them before touching another object, or your face, they are pointless.)

Scrolling through the website for Lime scooters I found this statement on a support page entitled “Keeping cities safe during COVID-19”:

“We have enhanced our cleaning methods and increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting our scooters.”

Elsewhere on their site they have this:

Steps we’re taking to keep our communities safe

• We have enhanced our cleaning methods and increased the frequency of cleaning and disinfecting our scooters.
• We are distributing hand sanitizers in our facilities. All of our mechanics and operators in the field are required to wear gloves and wash their hands regularly.

I have contacted Lime asking about their protocols for “cleaning and disinfecting” their scooters and received only a parroting of the statements on their website in response. Frankly, I don’t see how they can keep up with maintaining cleanliness on such publicly accessible vehicles, which stay out on the streets for long periods of time and are handled by untold numbers of different people.

Compared to a golf course, which is a contained, controllable environment, and one in which, with a little common sense and attention to hygiene protocols, a safe environment can be maintained, rental scooters and bikes which are widely accessible to the public at large, and which are not regularly accessed by the business which owns them for maintenance or cleaning (only when they are reported broken), are a relative menace.

I don’t intend to condemn the scooter-rental folks here; in fact, I feel that the application of common sense by folks who make use of them—such as a quick squirt or wipe-down with an alcohol-based cleaner, would make them perfectly safe to use. No, I am taking to task the local health authorities for an uneven and prejudicial approach to locking down businesses as part of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 The disruptive, and in my mind, over-the-top, restrictions which have been placed on golf-course operations, on top of the financial burden of two months of non-operation in prime golf weather (well, at least here in California) are indefensible in comparison to the shoulder-shrug response to the uninterrupted operation of rental bikes and scooters. Members of the public who use golf courses and other shared public-access recreational facilities have not been trusted to be proactive in their attention to hygiene when confronted with potentially shared contact surfaces, yet the county health department’s response to queries about the use of rental scooters and bikes is, basically, “You handle it.”

Update: On the evening of July 27th I received the following message from Lime customer support – “For now, we’re temporarily pausing Lime service to help people stay put and stay safe. We'll keep you updated.”

The quarantine has resulted in a significant financial hit to golf courses for the shutdown period, followed by operation under severe restrictions and hastily contrived half-measures such as raised cups or cup inserts to avoid touching the hole when retrieving a ball, removing bunker rakes, shutting off on-course water fountains, and requiring that flagsticks remain in the holes at all times—all under the threat of permanent closure if the operational restrictions are not adhered to

I expected better from the people whose business it is to look out for public health—but unfortunately I have, in recent months, become accustomed to being let down by public officials in whom I should be able to place my trust.

Golf in the time of COVID-19

Bay Area courses shuttered by Health Dept order
The coronavirus shelter-in-place order for six Bay Area counties – Marin, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, and Santa Clara – that was announced Monday, 16 March (with Sonoma County added the next day) has thrown Bay Area residents and business owners into a tizzy, and golfers and golf course operators are no exception.

The order allows certain essential businesses to remain open: healthcare, grocery stores, gas stations, etc.; those that fall outside of that definition are allowed to maintain “Minimum Basic Operations” (provided that employees comply with Social Distancing Requirements), which is defined as “The minimum necessary activities to maintain the value of the business's inventory, ensure security, process payroll and employee benefits, or for related functions.”

Most, if not all, businesses have some level of “minimum necessary activities” but golf courses have another problem to worry about: grass.

Turf maintenance is the biggest ongoing operational task at a golf course. Tee boxes, fairways, greens, and rough all require watering, mowing, and other tending, each with its own set of requirements. It’s an ongoing job which doesn’t stop just because no one is playing golf—and now they will have to do it with no money coming in to fund it.

I reached out to some golf course operators in the Bay Area to get a feel for what they are facing:

According to Jay Neunsinger, maintenance supervisor at Boundary Oaks Golf Course in Walnut Creek, in order to keep the course in shape for a resumption of play his crew have to mow greens three times/week; tees, collars. and approaches twice a week, fairways once a week and rough every 10 to 14 days. With this minimum maintenance schedule in place his “crew” consists of himself, his assistant, and one mechanic, working four to eight hours per day.

Tom Bugbee of CourseCo, a golf-course management company with 38 courses in six states, including over a dozen in the Bay Area, echoed this minimum maintenance schedule (Boundary Oaks is a CourseCo property), and said that their courses are using only about 20% of their usual maintenance staff while “shelter-in-place” is in effect.

Even with this ongoing minimum maintenance schedule, golfers can expect courses to need two to three days to get back up to speed once the shelter-in-place order is lifted and courses are given the go-ahead to reopen.

The flip side of the reduced maintenance schedule is reduced (or non-existent) income. While private clubs will generally still have dues coming in, public courses are taking a huge hit. The lack of green fees and the income from weddings and banquets represents a huge loss; Neunsinger estimated that Boundary Oaks will lose approximately $75,000 for the month of April.

The big question is, “Who will survive the shutdown?”, and the only answer to that is, “Only time will tell.”

But what about exercise?
The March 16 Health Dept order states that ‘… individuals may leave their residence only to perform [. . .] “Essential Activities.” ’, which includes “. . . outdoor activity, provided the individuals comply with Social Distancing Requirements as defined in this Section, such as, by way of example and without limitation, walking, hiking, or running.’

In case you were hoping that playing golf would fall under the “without limitation” qualification in that statement, you can forget it—at least for the local area. Santa Clara County’s online FAQs page (https://www.sccgov.org/sites/phd/DiseaseInformation/novel-coronavirus/Pages/frequently-asked-questions.aspx) shuts that line of thought down succinctly and unequivocally:

Can golf courses remain open? No. 

In some parts of the country golf courses are open, with strict limitations, but the selection is limited. GolfWorld magazine has been keeping up with the situation in the updating online article “Conflicting state directives create confusion for golf courses”. Here in the Bay Area, however, the direction is clear.

What does the future hold?
Polish up your crystal ball all you like, but my feeling is that, much like my quest to break 80, trying to predict what the golf world will look like in the aftermath of this unprecedented state of affairs is an exercise in futility. Some courses may close, and those that are able to remain open may see crowded tee sheets as deprived golfers rush back to the links after weeks (hopefully only weeks…) away from their favorite pastime. It’s a good bet that demand will certainly be high, so we’ll have to be patient—but won’t it be worth it to be out on the course again?