If you’re a professional golfer, you’ve received some pretty good golf advice over the years. Four-time PGA Tour winner Keegan Bradley shared with Golfweek the best piece of golf advice he’s received is from his dad. “My dad used to always tell me …
If you’re a professional golfer, you’ve received some pretty good golf advice over the years.
Four-time PGA Tour winner Keegan Bradley shared with Golfweek the best piece of golf advice he’s received is from his dad.
“My dad used to always tell me to hit us hard as I could,” Bradley said on the latest edition of Quick Hits With.
Bradley, 33, competed in 12 events this season before the 2020 Tour season was put on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. Bradley was cut in two of his last four events. His highest finish this season was T-12 Sony Open in Hawaii in January.
Bradley, who last won on Tour at the 2018 BMW Championship, also shared with Golfweek what his favorite on course snack is and what he’d be doing if he wasn’t a professional golfer.
Rory McIlroy and other PGA Tour players said they’re headed home to spend time with family and re-evaluate plans for the altered season.
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – One by one, players arrived at TPC Sawgrass Friday morning.
None had a tee time.
Instead, players came to clean out their lockers and head home. The Players Championship, the flagship event for the PGA Tour, or as commissioner Jay Monahan said, “our Super Bowl,” had been canceled Thursday night after the first round due to concerns of the coronavirus.
The next three tournaments on the schedule were canned, too. And then word came that the Masters was postponed to a later date.
One by one, the players tried to wrap their head around the extraordinary situation.
“This is one of these things where we just have to wait and see,” world No. 1 Rory McIlroy said. “Because it’s so uncertain, you’re obviously going to still keep playing golf, but you’re going out there practicing not knowing what you’re practicing for.
“I was supposed to have my coach, Michael Bannon, fly out next week and we were going to spend some time together, and that’s probably not going to happen, him coming from Ireland. Probably have time just to spend some time at home, evaluate the situation, and see where we go.”
Paul Casey leaves the clubhouse after the cancellation of the 2020 edition of the Players Championship. Kyle Terada, USA TODAY Sports
The decisions by the PGA Tour and Masters officials followed a shocking span of 48 hours in the sports world as the NBA and NHL suspended their seasons, Major League Baseball canceled spring training and delayed the start of the regular season, and the NCAA called off March Madness.
“When I’ve been home and watching TV and everything, it’s straight out of a movie. It’s like when the zombies have taken over. It’s really, really scary,” said Brendan Steele, the last player to get into the field after C.T. Pan, out of concerns for his health, withdrew Thursday. “Even when we’ve had really bad terrorist attacks, we’ve gotten back to sports pretty quickly to help people heal, so no, I don’t think you could have scripted this. This is pretty extraordinary.
“I just want to get my family home. We’re a long way from home being in Florida. We live in California, so just want to get them back and kind of hunker down for a little while and make sure everybody is OK and make sure my family and friends at home are OK and see where we go from there.”
Players talked about charities that will be impacted by professional golf’s absence, the communities that will miss their annual tournament.
“It’s just a sad day,” Billy Horschel said. “There’s a lot of charities and organizations that rely on the economic impact and the dollars raised by the tournament to support their charities and organizations for the entire year, and now they’re not going to have that, and I’m hoping something changes and we figure out a way to do that.
“I can ask my fellow Tour players, and I understand everyone is different in this situation, but that the money that they got paid this week, that they donate some way, whether it’s to the next week’s, next few weeks’ charities and organizations or to the charities around where they live, because they’re going to need it. That’s what I’m going to do. Hopefully my fellow Tour players understand the situation and do something, as well.”
Monahan said Friday that half of the $15 million purse from the Players Championship will be distributed equally among the 144 players who competed in the first round. The works out to $52,083.
But now the players are out of work.
“We’re going to have to stay ready in case we get to play,” Keegan Bradley said. “But I don’t know when we’re going to play again. I think the Tour ended up at the right decision. I know a lot of players were a little uneasy. I was asleep last night. I had an early tee time. But I had this urge to look at my phone at midnight and I had like a billion texts so I saw that it was canceled.
“I felt a little sense of relief.”
Graeme McDowell said it’s a surreal situation.
“Checking out of the hotel this morning, looking around, it was a ghost town, walking in here this morning, it’s unprecedented,” he said. “It’s just weird. We’ve got to do the right thing. We have got to be responsible, and we’ve got to be safe and get the world back on an even keel.
“It’s going to be a forced bit of time off, get a bit of time with the kids at home, which will be nice. But obviously it’s important to stay focused, stay sharp. There’s a lot of golf ahead. We still have a major championship potentially on the horizon. We’ve got to just focus on the now and stay ready and stay sharp, just keep monitoring and leave it to the powers that be that they’ll make the right decisions, and hopefully professional sport and hopefully life will be back where it needs to be here pretty soon.”
Justin Thomas will miss the Masters.
“That’s my favorite tournament of the year, so I obviously have hopes that we’ll get to play it, and whenever we do, we do,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s 25 degrees and nobody is there, I’m going to go play it with a chance to win the Masters.
“But that is down the road. At this point I’m just worried about trying to get home right now and figure out what I’m going to do for a couple weeks and wonder what I’m preparing for next. It’s just a wild, wild time right now.”
