Organizers of the Porter Cup — an amateur tournament in Western New York that boasts Patrick Rodgers, Brian Harman, Phil Mickelson, Scott Verplank, Ben Crenshaw and Deane Beman as previous winners — desperately clung to hope that their late July start might afford enough time to salvage the event.
In the end, however, it was another of the many losses to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Officials announced on Friday that the event has been canceled for the first time since it started in 1959. It had been on the amateur schedule for the week of July 22-25.
“We are obviously extremely disappointed,” said Michael Vitch, one of the tournament directors. “We were really looking at welcoming a strong field this year, so it’s painful. But we started looking into specifics and it just didn’t make sense.”
PGA stars such as Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas, Adam Scott, Rickie Fowler, Davis Love III, David Duval, Tom Lehman, Hal Sutton, Justin Leonard and others have played in the event, which is hosted at Niagara Falls Country Club in the town of Lewiston, N.Y.
But the event also draws a number of international players, including many top Canadians who can make the short commute. Niagara Falls Country Club is just a few miles from a bridge to Canada, and Vitch said it was just another question that couldn’t be properly answered.
“Would the bridge be OK? Would we be able to house players? We would have to institute testing of some sort? There were just too many questions,” Vitch said. “All we can say is, we’re already looking forward to next year’s event.”
Organizers had previously canceled the Women’s Porter Cup, which had been scheduled for June 3-5.