In the decorous world of professional golf, it’s not that easy to identify an adversary so objectionable that you feel wholly justified in begrudging them the breath. For that reason alone, Patrick Reed’s name ought to be whispered as a blessing.
Historically, Bronx cheers in golf have been directed less at players than at governing bodies, so the USGA’s Mike Davis probably enjoyed a comparatively restful Father’s Day since most years he spends it dodging brickbats at the U.S. Open. In his stead, it’s Jay Monahan who finds himself stepping into what is known in Irish as the bearna bhaoil, the gap of danger.
As the first major sports league to resume play during the coronavirus pandemic, the PGA Tour finds itself under uncommon scrutiny, where even a minor misstep exposes it to censure. It took two weeks for the first positive test return — Nick Watney’s, on Friday — and the Tour’s handling of it presented critics just such an opportunity.
Watney’s suspicions were initially raised by a respiratory reading on his Whoop health monitoring device (proof that players these days can’t even get sick without the aid of technology) and he duly reported his symptoms to officials. The Tour has published detailed guidelines for such a scenario that run to several dozen pages, but its approach in the moment seemed altogether more slapdash.
Consider its own statement announcing Watney’s withdrawal before his second round tee time: “On Friday, prior to arriving at the tournament, he indicated he had symptoms consistent with the illness,” it read.
The key word is “prior.”
Tour officials knew Watney was symptomatic before he arrived at the golf course so they had an obligation to isolate him from other competitors and people. Instead, he was able to stroll to the practice area while awaiting his test result. Perhaps there was a misguided notion that he could prepare to play should his test be negative, but that’s a laissez-faire luxury the Tour can ill afford in this hyper-sensitive environment.
Watney should have been handcuffed to a chair in the medical office, not chatting with Rory McIlroy on the putting green.
At least one top player later called a senior Tour official to ask why Watney was permitted on the range in the circumstances. The player was told that Watney should have been wearing a mask, which he wasn’t. Watney’s punishment for his witless wandering is 10 days quarantine in South Carolina, but the foul here is charged against the Tour.
11 others tested, all were negative
In response to Watney’s positive test, the Tour announced tests of 11 people who were in contact with him, all of which were negative. (Secondary test results are pending.) All credit for the rapid contact tracing efforts, but given the incubation period when the virus might not be revealed in tests, and the incidence of false negatives, the Tour cannot declare case closed with all the haste of a Moscow coroner who finds Putin’s worst enemy on his slab. Any trickle-down impact of Watney’s positive rest might not become apparent for days, by which time the Tour circus will have moved on to Connecticut.
To be fair, it’s well nigh impossible to create an airtight environment in a sport that sees hundreds of people travel weekly to new sites. Positive tests are inevitable. But since the Tour presumably has in mind a tipping point when the number of positives is enough to force another shutdown, then it’s not good enough just to be responsive. The Tour needs to be proactive, and that has been a concern since play resumed last week in Texas.
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The Tour’s “bubble” is as porous as the West Wing. Too many players have spent significant time in the company of people deemed outside that bubble. Like swing instructors. Coaches will be designated inside the bubble and tested regularly beginning Monday in Hartford, but many have spent the past two weeks traveling, staying and eating with their guys while regulated by nothing more than terse emails about social distancing.
Players assume a certain level of risk now if they want to work — many of us do — but the Tour needs to be more mindful of its status as a guinea pig for the return of sports. Enforced protocols should replace mere expectations that players and their inner circles will behave appropriately.
Like Mike Davis most years, Commissioner Monahan will be thankful to see the end of Father’s Day without more bad news. And if he does, he should take a moment to thank Sergio Garcia for drawing some of the incoming fire this weekend. Because even in this time of great uncertainty, it’s reassuring that Garcia can still be relied upon for infantile bellyaching.
“Unfortunately, it had to happen to him,” the Spaniard said of Watney’s diagnosis. “There’s a lot of other people that probably deserved it a lot more than him.”
Given that Garcia’s list of enemigos is a doorstop to rival the Beijing phone book, it must seem like cruel fate that a friend was afflicted and not a foe. Just another bad break for Sergio. Perhaps his comment was tongue-in-cheek, though Garcia is known for a disposition that’s more sullen than satirical. He did at least attempt a late save.
“We’re hoping that no one gets it, but I’m sure that, unfortunately, he won’t be the first and he won’t be the last,” he said nobly. “There’s so many unknowns about this virus. … We think we know a lot about it, but there’s a lot of things we don’t know.”
Indeed there are many things we don’t know, about epidemiology and about people. But there are some things we do know, Sergio. And some of those never seem to change.
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