Local Golf Report: It's OK to want golf to come back

What a difference a year makes.

On Easter Sunday, I sat and watched Tiger Woods win The Masters. Except, it wasn't the 2020 Masters. No it was a CBS rerun of the 2019 Masters tournament, in which Tiger completed his historic comeback, winning his first major in more than a decade. It was fun to reminisce because, obviously, I'm a huge Tiger fan.

But, it also was a dose of reality smacking me right in the face - as if I needed one.

And the reality was, as I said to my friends on our weekly Zoom chat later Sunday night, I can't believe how different things are in one year. Of course, we owe the differences to the coronavirus, and how it's shaken our world in so many ways, a world that for many, include no golf.

Now, as I've said many times in the last couple of weeks, sports aren't important right now, or should I say, the loss of sports isn't. We're trying to save lives in this country, and that's the focus, and it should be, and it should continue to be for as long as it takes to put a beatdown on COVID-19. So in other words, keep social distancing, keep following all of the guidelines that are in place, and keep STAYING HOME. Please.

Having said that, just because sports are on the back burner right now, doesn't mean we can't miss them, can't be frustrated by not having them, and it doesn't mean we have to stop wishing they can return.

I certainly feel that way about golf. In fact, I still believe golf courses can be open during this epidemic, as I spelled out in a column recently. In fact, more than 50 percent of America's golf courses, are open today. Again, if done right, golf lends itself to social distancing anyway.

Now, the fact is, in Havre, given the current state of the weather, and the lack of spring, even if golf courses were allowed to be open, we wouldn't be playing right now anyway. As I write this column, it's a balmy 28 degrees on April 13, for crying out loud, and in a quick glance at the 15-day forecast I don't see any good golf weather in sight. So, it's kind of a moot point right now anyway.

But, no matter what the decision on golf courses in Havre is, I can miss the game. I can miss golf on all the levels I'm used to, and I don't feel bad about that. I miss watching golf on TV. I miss watching the best players in the world do what they do best. I miss it so much in fact, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that there was no Masters last weekend, and there isn't going to be a PGA Championship in May either. I still have a hard time fathoming that.

Probably more so than watching the game on TV, though, when the weather does finally break, I sure am going to miss being out there, if indeed we're still not allowed to play. I'm going to miss just throwing my bag over my shoulder and going and playing by myself during the day. You see, I have been social distancing with golf for a long time because I play during the day in the summertime, when a lot of my friends can't go with me anyway. And right now, I'm missing that, I'm really starting to get the golfing itch, and I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing that.

But, alas, there will be no golf for me, through April 24 anyway. And, as I also mentioned in my last column on the subject, even when golf is allowed to come back, we're all going to have to get used to some new normals for a while, and the most likely of those is, for the foreseeable future anyway is, no golf league, and no tournaments. That's probably going to be the way it is for a while anyway.

And, if we do get to that point, for now, I can live with that. If I can only golf by myself or with my wife, I'll be glad to do it because I suspect, I, like so many of you, just really want to get back out to Prairie Farms and Beaver Creek and play the game we love.

That's what I'm hoping to do soon, so let's keep doing the right things in regards to fighting coronavirus because if we do, then it will be safe for us to hit the links sooner, rather than later.