Five Questions with Geoff Lofstead, Executive Director of the South Florida Section of the PGA of America
In this month’s edition of Five Questions, we sat down with Geoff Lofstead, the Executive Director of the South Florida Section of the PGA of America.
1. The Florida stay-at-home order permitted golf courses to remain open statewide, but three counties in the South Florida Section decided to close courses out of an abundance of caution for the COVID-19 crisis. With some courses closed and others operating under modifications, what have been the biggest challenges in helping your members navigate such an uncertain time in our history?
The biggest challenge has been that the state has allowed golf as an essential recreation activity throughout the pandemic but some of the counties have enacted local orders prohibiting golf or particular guidelines that had to be followed. We have a very dense population of golf facilities and there have been different rules for facilities that are literally right across the street from one another because they are in different counties. The other challenge has the been the interpretation of Executive Orders whether released on the local or state level. We have worked very hard to try and get clarification and send that out to our PGA members. Our local and state officials have such extraordinary responsibilities right now that it has sometimes caused a challenge in trying to get clarity on the orders.
2. As one of the largest PGA Sections in the U.S., how are you ensuring all professionals and clubs in your Section have updated information related to government orders, best practices and other resources?
Early on in this process we created a dedicated page on our section website to gather and post as much information as possible so it could be a one stop resource for our members. We have some experience in dealing with crisis situations because of the amount of Hurricanes we have faced over the years so we reverted back to some of the same strategies we have used in the past. In addition, our number of direct emails to our membership throughout this process has been dramatically increased and in many cases we are sending correspondence on a county basis since so much of the decision making has happened on the local level. Lastly, we have tried to work through a phone chain to call and check in with our PGA members to see how we could best assist them during this time.
3. What have professionals in the South Florida Section done to support their respective communities through these difficult times?
Almost all of our Charitable Foundation programs came to an immediate stop in mid-March so we have tried shift our charitable efforts to help where we could. We worked with golf facilities throughout Palm Beach County to adopt one of the 20 hospitals in the county and have been able to provide thousands of meals and gift cards to our healthcare facilities. We are also delivering food to the Quantum House to help the kids and families that are staying there as they receive care at nearby St. Mary’s Hospital. Like most others we have shifted to some virtual golf instruction for our programs as well. Lastly, we have many of the kids that participate on our Junior Tour writing thank you letters and sending them to healthcare workers in an effort to hopefully brighten their day a little.
4. The SFPGA also puts on a number of tournaments throughout the year, what are the status’ for those events?
We have postponed or cancelled all of our events into late May. It has been a challenge to really even plan a date to resume since golf facilities were closed by local order in several counties. Effective (April 29) those counties are back open. We certainly will not look to stage any golf events until we are clear it is as safe as possible for our competitors as well as our staff and we have been given the clearance by local heath officials.
5. Although the world may never look the same, what will “the new normal” look like for members of the South Florida Section?
This is such a challenging question for all of us to answer right now. For the past 6 weeks the pandemic has resulted in such an enormously quick “rate of change” that is has been so difficult to really even forecast past the current day. I think we all feel there are going to be many things currently done that will continue such as; enhanced sanitary efforts, more walking, and changes in customs like handshaking after rounds. I think many golf facilities have had to innovate to stay in line with local orders and have in some cases done technology updates that will help them in the future.
