City OKs PGA Championship at Harding — but without fans
San Francisco public health officials have approved plans to hold the PGA Championship in early August at Harding Park — but the event will take place without spectators because of the coronavirus pandemic, The Chronicle has learned.
The PGA of America is expected to make an official announcement Tuesday.
The event, scheduled for Aug. 69, will be the first major championship in Harding’s 95year history and the first in San Francisco since the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club. This year’s PGA also will serve as the first major of the reshaped 2020 season.
As recently as last month, PGA officials explored alternative venues in case San Francisco’s efforts to slow the virus prevented it from holding the event at Harding. In early April, two days before the PGA was pushed back from its original midMay dates to August, Gov. Gavin Newsom struck a pessimistic
PGA officials had hoped to attract nearly 40,000 fans per day to Harding Park, which last hosted a PGA Tour event in 2015
tone about holding sports events in California this summer and fall.
But Newsom shifted gears May 18, when he said sports could return in the state in June — without spectators. Then, on May 28, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced sports events could take place in the city, also without fans, starting Monday, June 15.
PGA tickets, which have sold briskly for the past two years, still were available online Monday. Spectators who bought tickets to the tournament will be given refunds.
Golf became one of the first U.S. sports to resume last week, after a nearly threemonth hiatus because of the virus and shelterinplace orders. Daniel Berger edged Cal alum Collin Morikawa in a suddendeath playoff to win the PGA Tour event in Fort Worth, Texas.
That was the first of five consecutive tour events to be held without spectators. Fans will be allowed for the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio, July 1417 — though only about 8,000 spectators at any one time, or 20% of usual capacity at Muirfield Village.
PGA officials had hoped to attract nearly 40,000 fans per day to Harding Park.
Construction on grandstands, a sprawling merchandise tent and other infrastructure started at Harding in late February, before the coronavirus outbreak caused the PGA Tour and other major professional sports leagues to suspend their seasons. The work mostly stopped after Bay Area officials announced a shelterinplace order March 16.
This year’s PGA will be the first tour event at Harding Park since Rory McIlroy won the Match Play Championship there in April 2015. Before that, Tiger Woods won the American Express Championship in October 2005 and the U.S. team, led by Woods, took the Presidents Cup in October 2009.
Brooks Koepka — the world’s fourthranked player behind McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Justin Thomas — has won the PGA Championship each of the past two years. Koepka outlasted Woods in St. Louis in 2018 and then beat Dustin Johnson by two shots last year in New York.
Koepka will seek his third consecutive PGA victory in August, a feat not accomplished since Walter Hagen won four straight nearly 100 years ago.