The human touch
As PGA Tour showed us, sports aren’t the same without fans.
Golf began its preview of what the rest of us are in for over the coming months, maybe even into next year. Of all our mainstream sports, it has to be the quietest, so if even the first round of the Charles Schwab Challenge felt odd with ropes along the fairways but no fans lined up against them, then what would, say, Alabama at LSU football feel like in November?
“Just kind of getting on the first tee and having your name called and not having anyone around to say anything,” Jhonattan Vegas told socially distanced reporters, “it felt like, ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’ ”
What went on in Fort Worth, Texas, is what will go on for the foreseeable future across American sports: competition at the highest level — with something missing. The COVID-19 pandemic has stopped sports in their tracks. As they return — slowly, at their own pace — it fundamentally will change the feelings around them.
Thursdays on the PGA Tour are not exactly electric affairs in normal times, so the difference between what happened at Colonial Country Club and what might happen in any other week was not as stark as the difference between, say, Staples Center in Los Angeles during the seventh game of a playoff series and an empty gym at Disney World, where the Lakers could be among the teams contending for the NBA championship this summer and fall.
Still, even the dull murmur of a golf gallery brings something to a first round. When Justin Thomas stuffed his approach in close at the par-5 first, he waved to his left, then to his right, mocking the circumstances of a kick-in birdie with no one there to acknowledge it. Nothing you can do about the environment, so might as well embrace it.
But that’s nothing like the difference that was felt Sunday, when the final group teed off with a tournament in the balance for a television audience only.
That’s what’s hard to figure right now as we’re just easing back into sports.
Anyone knows that Nationals Park on a Tuesday night in August against the Miami Marlins doesn’t feel like Nationals Park on an October evening with a postseason series in the balance. It’s because of the stakes, for sure. But it’s also because of the crowd — the size of it, the attitude of it, whiling away a summer evening vs. locked in on every pitch. The difference is palpable, and it matters to the players.
I’m longing for sports to return, as long as they can do so safely for all involved — competitors and caddies, officials and workers, they all count the same. I can tell how deprived I feel after three months with no games to wonder about — who will be the hero? — because I turned on the golf Thursday an hour before the coverage started and basically tapped my fingers until it did. The next six hours were pure bliss.
But what will it feel like when the key shots are struck on the back nine on Sundays? Take the most memorable shots of Tiger Woods’s career — maybe the chip-in from behind the 16th green at the Masters in 2005 or the putt on the 72nd hole of the U.S. Open in 2008. They’re worth watching again and again not only because of what they meant — pivotal moments en route to victory — but also because of the roar that punctuated them and the faces of people who were there to witness them.
Take all that away, and the athletic feats are just as remarkable. But the moment surely suffers.
What of a Stanley Cup hoisted aloft by a captain and skated around in front of — whom?
What of the Larry O’Brien Trophy kissed by the NBA champs? Would they bother with confetti?
These eerie, peaceful ghost towns will stage all the sports for as far as we can see. It will be great to watch competition again. It’s just hard to tell whether the most intense moments will feel at all intense.