PGA Tour show will go on at the Travelers Championship
HARTFORD, Conn. – The morning after the first PGA Tour tournament following the sport’s return from a coronavirus-related shutdown, Nathan Grube, director of the Travelers Championship, got a “top 10” list of observations from Michael Tothe, who’d successfully staged the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas.
The last issue Grube expected to hear about a tournament with no fans was a problem with noise.
“Michael said, ‘it’s quieter than you think,’” Grube said, “and you might actually want people to quiet others down, because sound travels way across the golf course. Usually, you have these structures to block sound, or you have a general noise level of people talking. Make sure your
volunteers know, your food service knows, everybody knows you can say something behind 18 and somebody on the 18th tee might hear you.”
So without the general level of chatter that usually becomes neutral noise to the golfer, any
conversation anywhere on the course could be a putter’s distraction. Signs imploring “QUIET PLEASE” will have an added meaning when the Travelers Championship goes off as scheduled, but under unimaginably unique circumstances, Thursday-sunday at
TPC River Highlands in
Cromwell.
Since April 16, the day the tour raised some eyebrows with its plan to restart, Grube and his staff have been working to reinvent the Travelers to fit these extraordinary times. With the pandemic reaching its peak in Connecticut, hospitalizations nearing
2,000 on April 22, plans were launched with hope, but nothing approaching certainty. “We don’t have all the answers as to how, but we will figure this out,” Andy Bessette, the Travelers’ executive VP and chief administrative officer, vowed at the time.
“There was a moment when we were all looking
forward saying, ‘Hey, this is aspirational,’” Grube said in an interview with The Courant last week. “We’re going to plan for it, but there is a lot that has to happen. We knew there was no guarantee we were going to be able to play this, but we need to plan as if we are. We had a very
open dialogue with the Governor’s office and the town health officials and we got to this point where we will be able to have it in a healthy, safe environment, but there were times along the way where we knew a lot would have to happen for us to be able to host the event.”