I’m a golf guy. I love the sport. I love being a part of two season-long golf pools where I pick a guy each week and then spend waaaaaaaaaaay too much of my time watching the player’s every shot via PGATour.com’s shotlink leaderboard. I love a good Sunday afternoon golf nap where I wake up and have no idea if I was asleep for three minutes or three hours.
I love it all.
Which is why today I woke up feeling excited (after hitting snooze a few times on my phone and downing a large iced coffee), because today the PGA Tour returns for the first time since the sports world hit pause back in mid-March.
The world since then, as we all know, has been an extremely rough one. Thankfully lately we’ve had more sports – UFC, NASCAR, some international soccer leagues – come back to give us some normalcy and some brief escape from the very serious and important issues that are going on all over the country.
As with everything right now there has to be concerns about whether this return is safe for those involved as we continue to battle the coronavirus. And you know what? I assume and hope it will be but I have no idea if it’s going to be safe. I’ve learned lately that I’m no expert on the coronavirus (or, really anything for that matter), so if others who know a lot more than me say things are set up safely, I’m going to believe them and hope for the very best for all those involved.
Golf makes its return without fans being in attendance at the historic Colonial Golf Club in Fort Worth, Texas, which might add to some unique moments in the broadcast. Some players are going to be mic’d up, which is cool. And all the best players in the world are going to be playing, well, besides the GOAT, Tiger Woods, who might be playing next week if you’ve been paying attention to rumors about where his boat has been heading the past few days.
Even if you hate golf, which I totally get, this has to excite you because it means we’re getting closer to other sports coming back. Well, maybe not baseball because they have some serious issues and some really sketchy owners.
But hopefully come the end of July the NBA will be back playing all of its games in Orlando, which will lead to an absolutely wild few months of basketball action that we’ve never seen before.
The NHL has a pretty sweet plan in place for a return, too, which will be fun to watch.
MLS is planning to come back this summer, too.
And F1! Which I fell in love with during quarantine thanks to the brilliant documentary on Netflix.
We love sports and having them back in our lives is really nice, especially since we’ve all watched everything there is on Netflix and need something fresh and new to distract us for a bit.
There’s a lot of heavy stuff going in the world today. If you’ve been on Twitter you know that emotions are running high all over the place and it’s easy to get caught up in it all and become furious a million times a day.
There’s also a lot of important things being fought for right now, which has been so great to watch happen across the country. There have also been some important changes being made – like NASCAR finally banning Confederate flags.
The return of the stupid game of golf, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t mean all that much when you consider what is happening these days.
But hey, some normalcy for a few hours will be nice.
Wednesday’s biggest winner: NASCAR.
Yesterday morning I called NASCAR a bunch of cowards for not banning the Confederate flag at their races. Well, on Wednesday afternoon NASCAR did just that, making the announcement that the Confederate flag will no longer be allowed to be flown by any fans anymore, which is awesome. Good for NASCAR to finally make this move, and boo-hoo to any fans who can’t handle this news. Because it was absolutely, 100-percent the right move.
Quick hits: Reggie Bush deserves welcome back… Deep dive into the Bills’ legendary playoff comeback… And more.
– Mike Sykes does a great job of explaining why Reggie Bush deserves his welcome back to USC after such an absurd ban by the NCAA.
– Steven Ruiz had fun breaking down the Bills’ historic comeback of the Houston Oilers in the 1993 playoffs and explained how Buffalo’s win was a peek into the NFL’s future.
– Hemal Jhaveri explains why it’s time for Gary Bettman to change his stance on protests.
– Ben Roethlisberger has blocked A TON of people on Twitter. But that is suddenly changing.