The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Matsuyama’s record-tying 63 lost amid decision to play on
Fans scattered around the ninth green saw Hideki Matsuyama finish with a 25-foot eagle putt to tie the course record and take the lead at The Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
Spectators filled the theater around the dynamic 16th and 17th holes at the TPC Sawgrass to see Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka salvage rough starts.
After Thursday, that’s all they’ll see — for the rest of the week at The Players, for at least the next month on the PGA Tour.
“At least they got to enjoy themselves for one day,” McIlroy said. “Now it’s going to look a little different.”
Even with the best in the world competing for the richest purse in golf, The Players Championship felt like an afterthought amid rapid developments with the new coronavirus that led sports around the world to stop playing.
Golf goes on — but without fans. The PGA Tour said it was banning spectators at all tournaments for at least the next month. The policy starts today, the first time one of the most entertaining arenas in golf will be virtually empty.
“That’s what makes this golf course so fun, so exciting, is all the fans cheering and booing when you hit a bad shot,” Koepka said after birdies on three of his last four holes for a 70. “That’s what you want. You want that excitement, that aura around you. And tomorrow we’re not going to have that. It will be a bit weird.”
Matsuyama opened with four straight birdies and closed with a 3-wood into 25 feet for eagle and a 9-under 63, the ninth player to share the record at Sawgrass.
He had a two-shot lead over University of Georgia product Harris English, former winner Si Woo Kim and Christiian Bezuidenhout of South Africa. For much of the day, they were just names and numbers on the scoreboard.
Graeme McDowell described a somber mood in the locker room and on the range as he tried to get warmed up.
“We just don’t really know how to react and didn’t really know what to expect,” McDowell said after a 68, his best score in his last 20 rounds at Sawgrass. “At one point, I was nearly expecting the horns to go off out there for us all to be taken off the golf course.”
Commissioner Jay Monahan said the tour received information that the virus was not yet a major threat in the area — his two daughters were in school, theaters and businesses remained open — but acknowledged the situation was fluid. Why not just shut down golf entirely?
He said golf was different because it was an outdoors event over a sprawling piece of property and noted that golf was a noncontact sport.
McIlroy, who’s had hand sanitizer attached to his bag for the past two weeks, approved of the decision. However, he said it would only take one player or caddie to get the virus and he felt the tour would have to shut down.
“I think for us to keep playing on tour, we all — the tour players and people that are involved — need to get tested,” he said.