Golf course opens facility to general public for park use and recreation during pandemic
Published 12:15 pm Tuesday, April 14, 2020
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The Country Club of Texas golf facility in Beaumont is opening to outdoor park use for the residents of Jefferson County during the shelter in place practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The golf course has 5 miles of paved sidewalks and 150 acres of land with an abundance of trees, landscaping, ponds, and wildlife, including hundreds of ducks and other birds. The golf course is part of the expansive Brentwood Entertainment Complex at the Willow Creek Edition off of Interstate 10 between Walden and Brooks. The course is still open to public and member golf play with prudent social distancing practices during normal hours.
For non-golfers who are feeling cooped up at home and may not have many options to get outside, providing the facility for these recreational activities gives individuals and families a lot of space to get out and still comply with recommended physical distancing from others. We don’t want to provide access that impedes golfing traffic and imperils non-golfers so the golf course will be open for this outside use, free of charge, on Mondays after noon until dark, and for all other days of the week from 6:30pm until dark. Other times are still reserved exclusively for course maintenance and golf play.
In order to monitor public use of the course and enhance overall safety, there are a number of basic rules that everyone will need to be aware of which will be posted at the golf course. This includes supervision requirements of all minors, staying away from some restricted areas, and other basic considerations. This information will be available at the facility, located at 4201 South Major Drive in Beaumont. Any guests are requested to park in the main club parking lot, and call our pro shop to check in and obtain basic instructions. The number to call is 409.840.9440.
Brent and Lisa Coon are the owners of the facility and live in the neighborhood. Brent is a nationally recognized trial attorney and entrepreneur. And Lisa has been extremely active with area charities and foundations and serves as a CASA court advocate along with an association with Riceland Health Care facility.
“We want to offer a helping hand to our friends in the community who are dealing with so much from the impact of this pandemic. Shelter in place, loss of jobs, major sickness across our country and the world is stressing everyone out. And with shelter in place and physical distancing necessary to curb the spread of the disease, there are not many options for anyone to get away from the isolation. We are blessed to essentially have the largest park in the region well-suited for the ability to get out and enjoy the outdoors for a little while and still exercise prudent distancing practices. Individuals can come out and walk the course on the concrete paths or the fairways, fly a kite with their kids, walk the dogs, feed some ducks, and just enjoy being outside. For those who want to get out in the fresh air but not walk, we are arranging for access to some of the fleet of the golf carts utilized by the golfers at the facility,” said Brent Coon.
Brent continued, “We initiated this concept at our course for everyone in the neighborhood recently and it is a big hit. So we wanted to expand the option to the rest of our community during these stressful times. Lisa and I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with many of the charities throughout the community over the years, providing meals to thousands of stranded folks from hurricanes and floods, and distributing thousands of toys to needy kids at Christmas who had lost everything from the recent natural disasters that have plagued our region. We both grew up here and Southeast Texas is home and doing things like this are very enjoyable for us. Having kids stuck at home all day with school closures and no outlets is something we deal with as well. So we hope that this offer is something that a lot of folks will take advantage of to help maintain some level of sanity in our lives when so much bad news is hitting us all at once.”