© ffgolf

The press release from the ffgolf:

Dear golfer, Dear golfer,

Dear Club Officer, Dear Club Officer,

Dear volunteers,

Dear professional players in the golf industry,

Like everyone else, we may have been surprised, following the announcements by the Head of State and the Prime Minister, to see our country enter a new phase of containment.

Anticipating the impact that these measures would have on our activities, over the past few weeks we had increased exchanges with the Ministry responsible for Sports as well as with our institutional contacts at Matignon and at the Elysee, to ensure that golf, like other outdoor sports, can continue to be practiced, despite the travel restrictions that the health context may impose.

I wrote personally to the Prime Minister and the ministers concerned, Economy, Finance and Recovery, National Education, Youth and Sports as well as to the Minister Delegate in charge of Sports for this purpose.

Unfortunately, the strong epidemic resumption with contaminations of between 40 and 000 new cases per day, led the authorities to take drastic measures and to favor the strongest possible limitation of circulation of the virus, with the consequence of a new confinement and the ban on outdoor sports, including golf, but also indoor sports. Only an individual activity limited to one hour per day within a radius of one kilometer around home, remains authorized.

We can imagine that the brutal closure of golf clubs leads to a form of incomprehension and anger among the players or the managers of the structure. We have to collectively master these feelings, which are sometimes aggressive, if we want to give ourselves the maximum chance of quickly finding our way back to the fairways. We practice a sport whose values ​​are recognized by everyone, often with envy. Respect for others as well as for regulations, etiquette and humility make it our duty today to show solidarity and common sense.

Exposing your club members to a fine, being imposed an administrative shutdown, will not help anyone or bring any improvement.

On the contrary, such attitudes will penalize the entire golf community when activity resumes.

Having experienced it during the months of March and April, the federal teams are once again particularly mobilized to sensitize the public authorities to the cause of golf and outdoor sport.

You have seen the work accomplished with the authorization to return to practice as of May 11. So why do you want this great involvement in defending the interests of clubs and licensees to no longer be appropriate today?

The Federation has never had the habit of abandoning its clubs and its licensees during the delicate files that we have dealt with for you and with you.

We often continued on our own when other federations had eased their footing on these subjects.

It seems unlikely, given the seriousness of the health situation, that our government will give in to injunctions. It is more likely that a reasoned, educational and responsible speech, as we always do, is more effective in convincing the public authorities to let us find our golf courses which know how to guarantee compliance with health protocols.

Our Prime Minister, Jean Castex, is a connoisseur of sport. He knows the virtues of sport in general and ours in particular. Before taking office in the government, he was also the President of the National Sports Agency.

With Pascal Grizot, especially in the context of hosting the Ryder Cup, we had the opportunity to work alongside him, as well as with our Minister Delegate in charge of Sports, Mrs. Roxana Maracineanu.

They appreciate our sport and are among the public players who help us a lot to develop its practice.
I am convinced that they are doing everything in their power to allow outdoor sports activities to resume as quickly as possible.

As we can see, other countries have already taken decisions comparable to France. Thus, in Ireland and Wales, countries in which the practice of golf is one of the most popular sporting practices, the country's re-containment has also been accompanied by the closure of golf courses and even tennis courts. England, Belgium, Austria, Greece and other European countries are preparing to take comparable measures, depriving players of access to golf courses.

In all these countries, it is never golf, as such, that is targeted, but the limitation of travel and social interactions. This logic thus applies to many sports. 

It has not escaped anyone, and not even the public authorities, that the practice of golf was not as such a vector for the spread of the virus. Moreover, many scientific studies attest to this. This is precisely what we managed to demonstrate by working closely with public authorities and health authorities last spring. This is how golf was one of the first sports to be able to resume on May 11.

In addition to the aforementioned letters and daily exchanges with the various public players, ffgolf, alongside professional groups in the golf industry, undertook a series of actions last week aimed at allowing the game to resume, in the best possible conditions. deadlines. We are working closely with our councils and ministerial cabinets to prepare for this recovery. The clubs demonstrated their ability to implement a strict health protocol during the deconfinement last May. This state of affairs constitutes an important pledge of seriousness vis-à-vis the government.

We are also fully aware of the difficult economic and social situation our club managers face. As we were able to do during the first confinement, we are ensuring that golf clubs can benefit from the aid and compensation to which they can claim, given the loss of activity caused by this new administrative closure.

In addition, as early as last April and on various occasions, the Federation contacted the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Recovery, Mr. Bruno Lemaire, as well as with the relevant State services. by these subjects in order to request the creation of a specific golf solidarity fund. We will continue along this path by measuring the economic impact of the crisis we are going through on our golf courses through surveys carried out among club managers in close collaboration with our professional associations.

We call now for the benevolence and solidarity of the players vis-à-vis their clubs who experience for the second time in the same year a closure of their establishments. We all need our clubs!

As always, we will keep you informed of our work and any development of the situation.

Finally, I read here and there, that the Federation should be "punished" for not having succeeded in ensuring that golf is spared by the containment measures, by not renewing its license in 2021. I find this process quite disloyal.

Indeed, it seems to me quite questionable to hold the Federation responsible for the fact that the golf courses cannot be opened, while a strict confinement has been decided by the government and that all sports are housed in the same boat.

It is not the golf courses which are explicitly targeted by the government measures but the Establishments receiving the public in the open air (ERP-PA).

The Federation acted appropriately last spring by allowing clubs to reopen on May 11 during the first phase of deconfinement. To do this, it has mobilized significant resources. Ironically, some now want to deprive it of resources, while they call for the "immediate" reopening of the clubs.

This reasoning may seem paradoxical!

We are a sports federation which supports its clubs within a legal framework to remain legitimate in our demands.

We know how much you care about the practice of golf. We also know all the qualities in which our sport abounds and in particular its benefits on physical and mental health, its integration into a natural environment, or its benefits on socialization for all ages and all audiences. It is by continuing to demonstrate this, by showing responsibility, solidarity and common sense, in these difficult times for our country, that we will grow our sport.

To know more : https://www.ffgolf.org

To read our last article on the same subject :

The ffgolf mobilized with practitioners and clubs