While the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancelation of the Players Championship, and several other PGA Tour events in March and April, the 2020 Travelers Championship, slated for the end of June, is still on. In fact, in the minds of tournament director Nathan Grube and his staff, it has already been played several times.
“Once we felt that shockwave of events actually (getting) canceled and that many events, of course, all of a sudden (we) went, ‘Holy cow, what if we get canceled,’” Grube said in an exclusive interview with Golfweek.
After working on different scenarios, seeing where the event stood with its vendors and contractors, as well as its charity partners, options were played out. What needed to happen in order for TPC River Highlands to host a PGA Tour event?
“We worked back from canceled, to limited build to no build,” Grube explained. “From just fans on the property to limited fans to this made-for-TV situation. We joke that we’ve got about five versions of the Travelers Championship that if anybody wants that, we can pull it out of a drawer.”
With no fans in attendance at this year’s Travelers Championship, TPC River Highlands will look very different. No one will be lining the ropes along the fairway. In fact, there won’t be ropes. Or grandstands. Or concession stands. There may be some television towers, but the course will be more open than ever.
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Connecticut governor, Ned Lemont, was the honorary chairman of the 2019 Travelers Championship and Grube has a solid relationship with him. They’ve talked several times since the pandemic started, and everyone agrees on the priorities.
Right now in Connecticut, and many other places in the United States, testing is still a challenge that has to be improved.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahon told Mike Tirico in an interview last week, “We need to have widespread, large-scale testing across our country. We are going to need to test players, caddies and other constituents before we return.”
While that is not possible today, in two months it might be. That’s what Grube and other tournament directors are banking on.
“If it’s not safe, we’re not going to do this,” Grube said. “We are being, I would say, very aspirational that all of this is going to be possible to do in mid- to late June. We couldn’t host an event right now.”
Connecticut does not have an NFL football team, an NBA basketball team or a Major League baseball team. There are minor league baseball and hockey teams, the WBNA’s Connecticut Sun and UConn sports, but the Travelers Championship is easily the biggest annual sporting event in the state. On competition days, TPC River Highlands is filled with over 40,000 people. The vast majority are fans, but even with no spectators at this season’s tournament, aggressive testing needs to happen in order to maintain safety for the players, caddies, tournament officials, television workers, media personnel and a handful of volunteers.
“We’re going to work closely with the tour on (testing),” Grube said. “We are a PGA Tour event and we are going to 100 percent take the lead from the tour on what to do with that, how to do that. And then we’ll take the lead from the state with the rest of the people on the property.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times reported nearly 20,000 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus in Connecticut. More than 1,300 have died since the outbreak started. Any large gathering is potentially risky, but if testing improves and tournament organizers can work out the logistics, there is a chance professional golf could return this summer to the Nutmeg State.
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