EDMONTON -- Local golf courses were given the green light to open last weekend with some new rules of play.
"First person you'll see is our greeter and he'll give you the information about what is going to happen for the day," said Todd Paquette, Superintendent of Mill Woods Golf Course.
"Then come up to the window over here and pay with tap or a credit card."
"Then he goes up to this next fence over here and he waits there until he's told to come to the first tee."
Paquette said so far the new rules are being followed.
"I'm not going to lie, I was concerned but people are following the rules and i haven't seen anybody blatantly breaking the rules."
"One person on the tee box at a time, flag stays in the hole, there's no rakes in the bunkers, and no ball washers anywhere on the course."
The rules, set out by the Alberta government last week, include limiting the many touch points and one golfer per golf cart, unless you can prove you're from the same household.
"Our carts are sanitized in between every round, top to bottom."
Tee times are spaced out every ten minutes.
"Everything else is just social distancing; it's just staying six feet away from people."
"You can't really pick up your buddies club, you can't pick his ball up for him, and you gotta stay away. That's the weirdest thing about it is you feel like a jerk without getting in trouble for it," one golfer told CTV News Edmonton.
"It feels so good. But not being able to hit beforehand, can't go to the driving range, it feels strange but it's working," said another.
Any way you slice it, the return of golf is a sign that things are slowly getting back to normal.
"If we can get 100 or 150 people out here each day enjoying it and getting their minds off of this, then yeah that makes us all feel good," Paquette said.
