We can all understand why the PGA Tour has tried to salvage the season, but sharing it publicly on a day well over a 1000 Americans died seemed, well, bizarre if not just, plain, tone deaf. Golf’s other families went along for urgent schedule news that a week later looks premature in both the optics and common sense departments.
Jubilation has followed, and even delusional cases have been made as to how a golf tournament essentially runs itself (“Players can enforce the rules (hell, that's part of the game) so no need for rules officials”). Only has reality set in over at Golf.com where this week’s Confidential questioned the premature announcement timing.
Subsequent reports say the PGA Tour is aware mid-May is out and are targeting June 11-14 for a return at the Charles Schwab Challenge, aka the Colonial in Fort Worth, Texas.
A state where Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered travelers from cities (Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Miami) and states (California, Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington) to be quarantined for 14 days upon entering the Lone Star state.
Everyone certainly hopes that changes because the virus slows, but given the low testing rate in Texas, it’s not clear yet if the state has kept the virus at bay. And in golf’s case, how many players from those areas or other areas added to the Governor’s order would be willing to quarantine for two weeks prior?
The second event back is expected to be Detroit’s Rocket Mortgage Classic. That’s in Michigan, where death tolls are high, the stories heartbreaking, and all signs say there is a long way to go before any crowd will be lawfully, willfully or joyously gathering.
The third planned event is the Travelers Championship in Middlesex, Connecticut where the county home to TPC River Highlands has been less hard hit. However, the rest of the state is facing an uphill climb returning to normalcy anytime soon.
And The Memorial, reportedly penciled into the cancelled Open Championship’s date, is played in Ohio where Governor Mike DeWine has been aggressive in taking measures while warning that testing is imperative to any return to normalcy.
Morning Read’s John Hawkins points out how the push to play the “playoffs” as up to twenty events are lost, may make the situation worse.
That neighborhood, by the way, is roughly the size of a driving range. Not nearly as large as the consequences of prematurely rebooting a schedule likely to lose 40 percent of its original bulk. At least 20 events are almost certain not to be held, which makes the decision to try and salvage the FedEx Cup playoffs a pathetic submission to the Tour’s money-grubbing sensibilities.
If that were not sobering enough, SI’s Stephanie Apstein talked to leading epidemiologists about the prospect of sports returning with or without fans and the conclusion is: not soon:
"We will not have sporting events with fans until we have a vaccine," says Zach Binney, a PhD in epidemiology who wrote his dissertation on injuries in the NFL and now teaches at Emory. Barring a medical miracle, the process of developing and widely distributing a vaccine is likely to take 12 to 18 months.
Again, it’s understandable to plan, but veering into the land of absurd to keep touting events to be played in matter of weeks, and in some of the nation’s most uncertain and hardest hit regions.
