The Man Out Front has been practicing social distancing all his life so it’s really no big adjustment now that it has become more socially acceptable.
As professional sports ramp up again, one of the other big buzzwords is “the bubble” and TMOF commends the PGA of America for creating one big bubble for the players and taking social distancing to the max at the upcoming PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park.
When shelter-in-place restrictions in March halted the build-out of the infrastructure, the PGA did some outside-the-box thinking. What to do with the 60,000-square-foot merchandise pavilion at a fan-less major championship? Well, they reengineered the structure into the player locker room for the 156-man field. That should allow for plenty of space for pros to stash all their gear and stretch out.
“It was practically already built and we re-engineered it,” said Barry Deach, championship director of the 2020 PGA at TPC Harding Park. “It will probably be the biggest locker room ever.”
So, how did they repurpose the original locker room location? That’s now the on-site media center for the skeleton crew of approximately 50 media that will be in attendance while the rest of the Fourth Estate have been asked to cover the event using a virtual media center. (They also established a virtual volunteer experience so that the 3,000+ volunteers who signed up but whose services no longer will be needed can still be part of the event from at home.)
Instead of 50,000-60,000 spectators on-site each day traipsing after Tiger and Rory and Rickie, Deach says there will be well under 2,000 people on site.
“And never more than 1,000 at a given time,” he said.
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