PHILADELPHIA _ Playing golf isn't essential. Often, it isn't even fun.
But it's one of the few things we're allowed to do during the lockdown, and, as a journalist, it's my responsibility to enlighten the reader to the dangers and hazards of the world we share. So on Monday, purely in the interest of the greater good, I played golf.
After seven weeks of sheltering in place, I had a 10:12 a.m. tee time at Talamore Country Club, and it delivered a magnificent mix of sensations, mostly olfactory: the cut grass, the magnolia trees, the dung in the newly laid mulch. Smelled like freedom.
I risked hypocrisy in this expedition. After all, it was I who begged fans to stay away from basketball and hockey games two days before Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus and effectively shut down the country. Could I, in good conscience, now play golf, even as the total number of cases in the United States remained above 1 million for the seventh consecutive day, and the number of deaths climbed toward 70,000 with no real sign of slowing?
Yes I could, if I was smart. And if everyone else was smart, too. I was. They were (for the most part). It was weird. And frightening.
