New York City golfers have balls — and they are going to great lengths to use them.
While municipal golf courses are closed due to the coronavirus crisis, duffers are simply strolling onto the links — or cutting through chain-link fences — to golf for free, saving upwards of $90 per round.
On Wednesday, a Post reporter counted 22 golfers without a corona care in the world at Dyker Heights Golf Course in Brooklyn.
“I don’t know why golf courses are closed. It’s the best social-distancing sport there is,” insisted Bensonhurst’s Andrew Barbaro, 35, before brazenly teeing off.
Barbaro, who says he’s a 4 handicap, plays Dyker Heights three to four times a week and wasn’t going to let a deadly virus spoil his fun.
The online shoe salesman said he’d sold one pair of Jordans in three weeks and needed the exercise. “My life hasn’t changed at all,” he opined.
One hot-headed duffer denied there was even a ban. “They got the gates wide open, so why don’t they close the gates if they don’t want nobody in here?” snarled the Joe Pesci soundalike, clad in a Mets cap and sweatshirt emblazoned with “Barracudas” across the chest. “This is more social-distancing than anywhere else you go. You go to the grocery store you’re two to three feet away from each other. Over here, you’re a hundred feet away from each other!”
The guilty golfer pulled his hoodie over his head and skulked off the course.
“You should mind your business, man!” warned another club-wielding interloper, who defiantly played on. “Social shaming can mind its own business and go f–k itself!”
A groundskeeper at shuttered Silver Lake Golf Course in Staten Island said devious duffers were cutting holes in the fence to gain access to the 18-hole course.
An incredible 85 golfers were booted off South Shore Golf Course on Staten Island Wednesday and six were escorted from the borough’s LaTourette GC on Thursday, said Crystal Howard, a spokeswoman for the city Parks Department, which oversees the 20 full-service and mini courses.
She said eight duffers were removed from Clearview Golf Course in Queens April 5 and five were issued $50 summonses for trespassing.
Howard noted that all Parks golf courses are run by third-party operators via license agreements and closed on March 22 “out of an abundance of caution and to assist in promoting social distancing.”
“We have increased patrols at courses across the city in response to these infractions,” Howard said.
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