Corona Daily 038: The Ideal Pandemic Sport

With most other sports shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, one sport that prospered was golf. It was the safest sport, played outdoors, with more than the required social distancing and the players still able to compete athletically.

Across the USA, in 2020, the rounds of golf were up 32%. Golf clubs said they had never seen the tee sheets fill up as far in advance. As per the records of the National Golf Federation, 3 million new golfers across America hit the course for the first time. Many people dusted off their golf clubs, unused for several years. Now they had time on hand. Grips, shafts, club heads, even push cart sales boomed. Like for bicycles, buyers needed to wait for a few weeks to get the ordered push cart.

In the UK, 2.3 million extra golfers got on course. The average age of participants went down by five years to 41. Golf is one game that can be played till the end of one’s life. The pandemic brought many young people to the golf course. Those who could afford golf found it better for mental and physical health. 25% of female golfers in the UK tried it for the first time because of the pandemic.

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Lucas Herbert, 25, is an Australian professional golfer. A two time winner of the European tour, he won the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open this week.

When the pandemic started, Lucas was in Orlando, Florida. His coach Dominic Azzopardi lives in Queensland, Australia. Australia’s strict regulations made it impossible for Lucas to go back. He was separated from his coach for the first time.

The two started using Skillest, a golf teaching app. The app filmed Lucas’s swings. For live sessions, Lucas was swinging at 08.30 in the morning, while Dominic, his coach watched the live session late at 10.30 pm. The system worked surprisingly well. The coach could see the swings on the app, draw lines on them, and do a voiceover. The time zone difference turned out to be a blessing. Dominic had enough time to analyze what Lucas was doing right and wrong. His detailed feedback would reach Lucas much before the following morning session. It was different from the instant feedback that the two were accustomed to over the years.

The Skillest app also allowed the coach to save all the videos of Lucas’s swings, go to that library and analyse when he was playing well and when poorly. Even professional players have bad days, sometimes bad seasons. The library had everything: putting, chipping, everything else.

The use of this app has tripled during the pandemic. Elite players usually seek daily coaching. The stay-at-home orders forced them to seek feedback remotely. It also opened up new avenues for coaches and players to seek anyone from the world. Some players admitted they had not thought of paying for a foreign coach, because before the pandemic, the thought of a smartphone coach was not popular.

Golf coaches are traditionally not as hands-on as the coaches in soccer or tennis. They use their eyes, and analytical brain. Last year, many of them started using the camera instead of eyes.

It is not only the elite players, but also the novices who benefit from having coaches. The online golf coaches belong to a rare profession that flourished during the pandemic.

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Golf clubs are hoping that a sizeable chunk of the golf newcomers would continue playing golf after the pandemic. For those who get hooked, golf can be as addictive as any other sport.

Ravi