COVID-19 Safety Measures Being Taken at Myrtle Beach Golf Courses

Dave Genevro, general manager at Barefoot Resort & Golf in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., walks us through the thorough procedures his golf course staff goes through to maximize your safety during the global pandemic, from upon your arrival to the completion of your round.

 

 

*UPDATED INFORMATION IS PROVIDED IN CAPTIONS IN THIS VIDEO, AND IN THE TRANSCRIPT TEXT BELOW (FEBRUARY 2021)

Dave Genevro:
Hi, I’m Dave Genevro, general manager at Barefoot Resort & Golf here in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, home of four championship courses designed by Greg Norman, Davis Love III, Tom Fazio and Pete Dye. I wanted to just have a brief conversation with you to let you know what we’re doing to make sure you feel safe when you come to visit and play a round of golf at Barefoot. I’m standing right now in the bag drop area, as you can see over my shoulder our staff is wearing masks to keep themselves and to keep our customers safe. We have our shuttle truck, our shuttle driver, same thing. We want to make sure that when we are close to you, if we get inside that six-foot social distancing, that we’re keeping you safe. The golf carts that you also see in the background, once every 30 days (we just implemented this a few weeks ago) we have an anti-microbial, it has a residual value of up to 60 days so we spray all the high-touch areas with that.

And then, each night at the end of the day, we wash and clean and then sanitize the carts again just to be safe. The high touch areas on the golf carts include the steering wheel, the ball washer, the cup holders, where you grab onto the cart, the screen on the GPS, any areas where going in and out of the cart that is touched on a regular basis by the guest, yourself, or the guests prior to you or the guests after you. So, when you do show up and you get loaded onto a golf cart, you can feel comfortable that that cart is clean in all the touch areas and you’re ready to go.

The second part of the process here would obviously be checking in for your golf round. You’re in the pro shop right now. We have the floor marked to keep proper social distancing. We have the guards up, standing in front of the guard we have it now that you’re seven foot away from our golf professionals as they’re checking you in. So, we’re keeping that social distance to protect both our staff and you as our customers. We want to make sure, again, that you’re comfortable. A lot of people we have check-in … our members … they’re checking in from bag drop. They call up, we put it on their account to try to keep the least amount of people possible in the clubhouse at the same time.

We’ve moved into the grill room here at Barefoot Resort. A lot of times prior to your round, whether it’s coming to get a quick meal, breakfast or even a few cold drinks before your round, or you’re visiting us after your round, as you can see the social distance aspect. We’re at 50 percent capacity here with our tables. You have plenty of room in between when you come in here to keep social distance from other guests that are visiting. You’ll notice that the bar we don’t have our bar stools. We have that space if somebody wants to come up to the bar, but they’re not getting in big groups at the bar, which at this time is something that they’re asking us to make sure we don’t allow. Our staff wears masks in here also, because when serving food obviously they have to get inside that six-foot social distance, but we’re doing everything we can do, again, to protect both our staff and our guests that are here visiting.

(UPDATE: BAREFOOT’S GRILL ROOM CAPACITY LIMIT NOW EXCEEDS 50 PERCENT; GRILL ROOM SEATING GROUPS ARE CURRENTLY LIMITED TO 10 PER GROUP. BAREFOOT’S GRILL ROOM HAS SINCE RESTORE BAR STOOL SEATING ACCOMMODATIONS.)

Our guests here at Barefoot coming into indoor space aren’t required to wear a mask, but we suggest that they do. Any time you get an indoor environment, there’s more of a chance that you’re going to get inside that six-foot social distance with somebody walking by, somebody coming into the same area that you are. So, it’s suggested that you do that to protect yourself.

(UPDATE: CITY ORDINANCES NOW REQUIRE MASKS TO BE WORN FOR ACCESS TO INDOOR PLACES OF BUSINESS.)

You’re ready to go out on a golf course now. So, our golf carts, as I said, we spoke earlier about sanitation so you feel comfortable being here. Pencils are put in the night before during the sanitation process. So, when that golf cart comes out, that pencil has been sanitized and it’s ready to go for you. We go down to our starter. Our starter will more or less just direct you and get you a scorecard. He’ll have a glove on when he gets you that scorecard to make sure that you feel comfortable with going out on a golf course and having something to do your scoring obviously. The cart itself has ice in the cooler, and then we have beverage carts on the golf course that have been sanitized and the girls are … you’re out in an outdoor environment, but when they get inside that distancing then they will also have masks on to make sure that you’re taken care of when you’re out there.

A lot of you will be coming down, and we get a lot of people on vacation who are all by themselves and they want to come out and play golf, but obviously they’re worried about being paired with somebody. If you’re here, you make a tee time and you’re all by yourself, we may pair you in another group, but we’re not going to put you on another cart with someone you don’t know. You’re going to get your own individual cart when you visit us. And we do take care of anyone else who is looking for an individual cart when they’re here visiting, especially people who have health issues, and we want to make sure that when they leave here, they’re in good shape.

(UPDATE: SINGLE-RIDER CARD ACCOMMODATIONS VARY BY TIME OF DAY AND SEASON. CONTACT THE COURSE CLUBHOUSE FOR MORE INFORMATION.)

Out on the golf course we want to also try to do the best at keeping you protected. We have noodles in the bottom of the cup so when your ball drops in the hole, you’re not sticking your hand (in too far). You can reach down and grab the golf ball without touching the flag. We want people to leave the flag in, no reason to take it out. In the background you can see we have bunkers. We have bunkers on all four courses here at Barefoot, a lot of bunkers. We pulled all the rakes from the course. Every morning we go out and we dress the bunkers to make sure that they’re good for the players. If you’re one of the first groups out, you have nothing to worry about.

Your ball goes in a bunker, you should have a perfect lie, but as the day goes on without having bunker rakes, that might not happen. We ask our guests when they play a bunker shot, just smooth it out with your foot, but sometimes somebody gets in a hurry and may forget to do that and you go up and find your ball in a footprint. Don’t ruin your day. That’s bad luck, and it’s a part of the safety with the pandemic we’re all dealing with. Grab that ball, find a good place in the bunker, drop it and play your shot. We’re just trying to make this a fun game and keep everybody safe at the same time.

You’ve just finished your round at Barefoot Resort and hopefully you had a great experience on the golf course. You enjoyed the round of golf, the design, and then also from the beginning of the experience to the end of the experience, you realize we’re doing everything we can to keep you safe and protect both you and our employees to make sure that you feel comfortable playing golf and visiting the destination here in Myrtle Beach.

So, we hope to see you again soon. If you have any ideas or suggestions of what we can do better, obviously we’re willing to listen to those because we want you, the customer, to be comfortable coming to visit us here at the Beach!