PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Sunday is customarily the day on which uncertainty and stress is laid bare at a PGA Tour event, but it’s a sign of the times that such was evident even before dawn broke over TPC Sawgrass and the opening round of the Players Championship.
By the time Commissioner Jay Monahan took the podium at high noon, the leaderboard showed Rory Sabbatini — a South African who plays under the Slovakian flag and lives in Florida — tied at the top with seven others from places like Japan, Australia and the USA. Not that anyone was really paying attention. The Players is a global event, but one being swamped by another.
The sports world’s avalanche of cancellations, closings and suspensions linked to coronavirus and its attendant panic finally forced Monahan to announce the next three days of the Players — and the next three events on the schedule, the Valspar Championship, the WGC Match Play and the Valero Texas Open — will be played without fans present. A fourth stop in the Dominican Republic will be postponed indefinitely.
It no longer matters how thrilling the golf is this weekend. The most raucous finishing stretch in the game will be rendered a morgue.
“Obviously we’re an outdoor sport, we’re not in a stadium, and here this week at TPC Sawgrass our players are making their way over 400 acres,” Monahan explained. “And so we feel like we have, because of the nature of that and the fact that you’ve got 144 players here and over the course of a round our players generally do socially distance themselves, we felt like by taking this step to address the problem with our fans, we’re in a position where we can continue to operate the events as of right now.”
The concerns are as plentiful as they are perilous. The well-being of players, who come into close contact with fans, who are themselves bused in from distant parking lots to be greeted by volunteers, who are predominantly at-risk seniors — all are inextricably linked. Rory McIlroy pointed out as much Tuesday afternoon. The world No. 1 was chatting on the 18th green after a practice round when he pointed to a tightly-packed crowd of several dozen fans by the path to the clubhouse, each one eager for a signature, a selfie, a moment of some kind.
A PGA Tour event is intimacy on a grand scale.
Monahan is correct in saying players practice social distancing as they move around the course — some even do it in the locker room — but legislating for the immediate future is akin to gathering water with a sieve. Authorities may take decisions on whether events go ahead out of the Tour’s hands. Nor is every event created equal.
Take the WGC Match Play, which is scheduled for March 25-29 in Austin, Texas. The “W” in the name is misleading. It’s a local tournament, not a world event. That’s true too of most majors, which predominantly draw spectators from the surrounding region. But it is not at all true of the Masters, which is a trophy ticket for fans from around the globe.
There are already whispers that patrons will not be allowed on the grounds 25 days from now, that the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, the Drive, Chip & Putt and the Par-3 Contest will be canceled, leaving only the main event contested in a cathedral of pines amid a funereal quiet. Perhaps even the Champions Dinner will fall victim, since it features men in the most vulnerable demographic for the virus. In such circumstances, it would be a truly bleak Irish irony if McIlroy were to finally win his green jacket when no one is there to see it.
It seems inevitable that tournaments will be canceled, which is at least more cost-effective than playing them without fans since a purse won’t have to be paid. There is simply no safe harbor left in sport, not even the impenetrable fortress of Augusta National Golf Club. Is it really beyond the realm of possibility that the Masters will go uncontested for the first time since 1945? And what if a player tests positive? Or if several of them simply opt out and stay home, as Duke and Kansas have done with the NCAA tournament? March madness, indeed.
Deeper into the season, the PGA Championship at Harding Park in San Francisco is imperiled. The USGA and R&A will be quaking in their cravats. And the Ryder Cup? Sure, it’s only 24 players and could be done in a controlled environment, but when I asked former European team captain Paul McGinley about that he astutely asked what is a Ryder Cup without the crowd? And since the European Tour has canceled several tournaments and the PGA Tour faces a similar reckoning — perhaps even calling the Players itself, given how wildly things are changing — how would we even select teams if the qualifying process is badly compromised?
These are questions that demand answers later, when the corrosive effects of coronavirus have been contained, or not. The PGA Tour’s marquee event has fallen victim to circumstances, but it’s jarring to think the day may yet come when the Players is counted among the fortunate.