The Tradition Golf Club at Oak Lane in Woodbridge, Conn. has stayed open with no layoffs and proper adherence to safe play, and members of Grosse Ile Golf & Country Club brightened Good Friday for local hospital workers and first responders. Also in today’s roundup: furloughs at Bethesda CC; getting closer to golf in Minnesota?; and Augusta National GC requests that area schools create fall breaks around the rescheduled Masters.

Here is C+RB‘s latest roundup and summary of club-related developments surrounding the pandemic that have recently been reported. Please send updates on what your property is doing that you would like to share with the C+RB community to [email protected].

All of C+RB’s daily updates on the coronavirus situation can be found at https://clubandresortbusiness.com/category/covid-19/.

A Tradition Unlike Any Other

Gina Berrafati, Director of Operations for The Tradition Golf Club at Oak Lane in Woodbridge, Conn., sent a photo (above) of golfers enjoying the club’s course while also adhering to proper social distancing, and included this message:

“We are a family-run public daily fee course in Connecticut and we are grateful to be able to stay open. I snapped this shot of a group getting it right and thought I’d share it and take the opportunity to thank you for keeping the spotlight on the unique benefits of golf in this time of crisis. It is also one industry that does NOT need to be destroyed, before being rescued.

“We are The Tradition Golf Club at Oak Lane in Woodbridge, Conn. NO one has been laid off and we desperately want to keep it that way. Thanks again for your support.”

Good Friday Made Great

Members of Grosse Ile Golf & Country Club in Grosse Ile Township, Mich. contributed over $12,000 to the club’s Easter Flower Champaign for First Responders. Their generosity enabled General Manager John Paul, CCM to buy 3,500 Easter lilies and mumms to give to every employee on Good Friday at several local hospitals—Henry Ford Wyandotte, Henry Ford Brownstown, and Beaumont Trenton—as well as the Grosse Ile Police and Fire departments.

Special stickers were made for every flower that read, “THANK YOU FOR TAKING CARE OF OUR COMMUNITY.”

“First responders are the warriors in this fight against the COVID-19 virus,” said Paul. ‘The commitment and dedication of all the doctors, nurses, emergency, police, fire and all hospital staff that have made sacrifices during this unprecedented time is incredible. THANK YOU is just a very small token of appreciation we can say. The Easter flowers that were distributed did put a smile on some faces.”

Furloughs at Bethesda CC

Bethesda (Md.) Country Club has furloughed 128 employees after closing last month because of the coronavirus pandemic, its General Manager/COO said on April 13^th, Bethesda Magazine reported.

The club closed on March 16 after Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued an executive order closing all bars and restaurants for sit-down service, and banning all large social and recreational gatherings of 50 people or more, Bethesda Magazine reported. Restaurants can continue to serve through takeout and delivery.

At that point, the club’s General Manager and Chief Operating Officer, Saeed Assadzandi, told Bethesda Magazine, the club sent its employees home, but paid them for two weeks.

“As soon as the restaurants closed, we had no idea it was going to last,” Assadzandi said. “So since restaurants were closed, we informed all of our staff to stay home for the next two weeks until we had further information

But when Gov. Hogan then issued his stay-at-home order on March 30 that restricted travel to essential trips only, the club was forced to furlough the 128 workers, Assadzandi added.

“When the stay-at-home order came on the 30th, we realized there was no end date and from that point, we realized from a business standpoint we couldn’t continue paying them,” he said.

The employees will be called back to work when the club reopens. Assadzandi said, but will not be paid retroactively, because the club can’t afford to do so.

The furloughed employees, Assadzandi said, include golf operations workers, as well as those who work in the tennis facilities and the club restaurant, and  both full-time and part-time staff.

Some workers, such as the maintenance staff and some accounting and administrative workers, have remained employed, Assadzandi said, but the 128 who are furloughed represent the majority of the club’s workforce.

“It’s one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do here,” he said.

Bethesda CC, Assadzandi said, is not eligible for financial relief under the $2 trillion-plus stimulus package passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump last month in response to the pandemic.

The legislation’s paycheck protection provision gives forgiveable loans to qualifying small businesses that allow them to keep workers employed, Bethesda Magazine reported. But Bethesda Country Club is classified as a 501(c)7, or “social club,” under the Internal Revenue Code, Assadzandi explained. Those types of clubs, he said, are excluded from the paycheck protection part of the stimulus program.

Getting Closer in Minnesota?

Few days go by now, the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press reported, without Governor Tim Walz being asked a simple question: When can Minnesotans golf?

The question came back up on April 13th despite a weekend snowfall that hit the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area and other parts of the state, the Pioneer Press reported, and Walz provided some hope by saying that his teams are still “working on that” issue.

“I, for one, think if we can make it so there is no health reason or the risk can be mitigated as well as we can, we should allow people to do as much as they can,” he added.

Walz thinks that the more activities the state is able to open, the more steam residents are able to let off, the Pioneer Press reported. “I’ll be honest with you, in a month that hasn’t had a whole lot of things to look forward to, I’m certainly trying to do the best I can to give people those types of opportunities,” he said. “I hope to get you an answer in the very, very near future.

“My team is listening now,” he added. “They know this is an issue, among so many others, that we keep asking [about]. We hope to get you an answer as quickly as possible.”

School’s Out for…the Masters

As the latest indication of how much revolves around the Masters tournament, The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle reported that Augusta National Golf Club has requested that schools in the region establish a fall break to coincide with when the tournament has been rescheduled. The Masters, typically played during the second week in April, was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic and rescheduled for the week of November 9-15.

Schools in and near Augusta typically coincide their spring breaks with the Masters so that students and others can work during the tournament. The Chronicle cited a statement issued by the Aiken County (S.C.) Public Schools in reporting the club’s new request for a fall break, and added that the Richmond and Columbia county school systems in Georgia are also considering adjustments to their fall terms.

Houston Open Gets in Line

Organizers of the Houston Open announced that the tournament will be played one week earlier than originally scheduled and will now be held from November 5-8 this fall as part of the PGA Tour’s revised 2020 calendar. The move restores the Houston Open to its longtime spot one week before the Masters, which has been rescheduled for November 12-15. Houston Open officials agreed to the move after Augusta National Golf Club requested the November 12-15 dates as optimal for the rescheduled Masters.

The Houston Open, which had been held at the Golf Club of Houston since 2003.  will move this year to the renovated Memorial Park Golf Course, a 1936 John Bredemu-designed municipal course that had hosted Tour events in 1947 and 1951-63. Memorial Park, part of a nearly 1,500-acre urban oasis just west of downtown Houston, recently underwent a $33 million renovation overseen by Tom Doak.

The Houston Open had been the lead-in event to the Masters since 2007, but the tournament was demoted to the fall portion of the schedule beginning last year after having lost longtime title sponsor Shell Oil, which is headquartered in Houston.