When finally we reach the safe side of this void, there will be losses that are painfully apparent in the world of golf. Lives, most likely. Livelihoods, certainly. Courses, companies, tournaments. Those are the known ones. The unknown losses are frivolous by comparison.
Some golfer will one day slip into a green jacket as the winner of the 84th Masters Tournament, but we’ll never know who would have done so had the event taken place as scheduled two weeks from now. Same goes for May’s aborted PGA Championship. For now at least, dreams of Rory McIlroy’s career grand slam and Brooks Koepka’s three-straight Wanamakers belong on the same beaten docket.
There are no winners because there are no races when the thoroughbreds are confined to their paddocks.
Brett Quigley deployed a racehorse analogy when we spoke a few days ago. “Golf-wise, I’m ready to play. Absolutely chomping at the bit to get back out there,” he said. After a lengthy but winless PGA Tour career — one trammeled with injuries in its last decade — Quigley registered his biggest victory on Feb. 1 at the PGA Tour Champions stop in Morocco. It came in only his second senior start. He contended the next two events as well. Then the season ground to a halt.
Like most professional golfers, Quigley has spent the last couple of weeks eking out a semblance of normalcy at home with his family while hoping the good old days will come again. That’s a familiar experience for him. Before turning 50 last August, he had made just nine PGA Tour starts since 2011 owing to a couple of major injuries, including a stress fracture in his left leg and three fractured vertebrae.
He recently received a text message from an acquaintance. “You’re getting screwed,” it read. “You’re going to lose a year and you don’t have that many years.”
“I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I’ve already hit the lottery,” Quigley said. “I’m playing golf again and I’m competitive. I’m loving it. I don’t look at it that way at all. In some respects I am so ready to play, but I’ve been off for so long I’m okay with being a little more patient. I’ve waited this long, no big deal if I have to wait another three, four, six months.”
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Uncertainty around his next tournament start is second nature by now, so Quigley spends days with his daughters (aged 11 and 12), hitting balls at Medalist in Hobe Sound, Florida (at least until the club is ordered to close) and watching the news. “All these terms that a month ago I had no idea what they meant, now all of a sudden we’re all experts on flattening a curve,” he says with resigned humor.
A competitor in form must find it difficult not to anxiously scan the horizon for an event that survives the cull, I suggested. “I’m trying not to go there,” he replied. “I thought an outside chance was the U.S. Open…” His voice trails off. The U.S. Senior Open is still scheduled for June 25-28 at Newport Country Club in Quigley’s native Rhode Island. The dominoes in line ahead of it on the PGA Tour Champions schedule have been falling: three events canceled, one postponed and the first silver major, the Regions Tradition, shunted from early May to late September.
“If they can play it at all, it wouldn’t matter when they play it,” he said, more with hope than optimism.
Playing a major championship in Rhode Island would be a bonus in this environment. Playing anywhere would be welcome. “I guess if I had to put a date on it I’d say August, but I don’t know. Hopefully we’re playing golf by then,” Quigley said. “Hopefully we won’t lose too many more, but there are bigger issues than golf for sure.”
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