Tour made call not to allow fans

Jack Nicklaus isn’t about to let the Memorial Tournament take the fall for this summer’s spectator shutdown.

Nicklaus said the somewhat lastminute decision not to allow spectators at the Memorial was the PGA Tour’s doing — with input from players who are uncomfortable being around fans in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic — not a collective decision between the tournament and tour.

“We didn’t make it, you did,” he corrected the PGA Tour media official who asked him how hard of a decision it was to keep fans out. “The tour made the decision. We didn’t have anything to do with it. We were approved by the state; Gov. (Mike) Dewine actually liked our proposal. He thought that we had really set out every safety issue that we could, and we were going to give it a shot.”

The Memorial’s original plan to allow spectators would have made it the first event to do so since the tour restarted June 11 at the Colonial in Texas, but the plan changed July 6 as COVID-19 spiked in Ohio and nationally.

“I don’t want to put it on the tour’s back, but I think you really have to look back to the players, and the players I think had objections,” he said. “If they happened to contract COVID-19, they’ve got two to three weeks mandatory that they have to leave. They’re trying to make a living, and that makes it very difficult for them.”

Ultimately, Nicklaus thinks the tour made the right call on not allowing spectators.

As usual, the Golden Bear covered a variety of topics during his pre-tournament news conference:

• Fans? What fans? As a player, Nicklaus knew galleries were watching him, but he was so focused on his game that he was able to tune out crowd noise when he needed to.

“As evidenced at Oakmont when I played against Arnold (Palmer) in ’62, I didn’t know anything that was going on,” he said. “I always had my mind so focused on what I was trying to do that I didn’t really hear a gallery. I was really more interested in what I was doing, my game, concentration, playing the golf course and shooting a score.”

That is not to say that Nicklaus was oblivious to golf crowds or did not appreciate them.

“Did I enjoy having people out there and applauding and admiring what you’re doing and congratulating you? Absolutely, everybody has got an ego toward that,” he said. “But did it make any difference to my game? Not really.”

• Nicklaus traditionally shakes the hand of the Memorial winner as they exit the 18th green in the final round, and plans to do so again, despite tour recommendations to refrain from handto-hand touching as a safety precaution against COVID-19. Unless the player doesn’t want to shake.

“I’m going to shake their hand,” he said. “I’m going to walk right out there and shake your hand. If they don’t want to shake my hand, that’s fine, I’ll give them a fist bump or an elbow bump, but I’m not going to give them COVID-19 — I wouldn’t put anybody in that position. I wouldn’t do that, and if I was in any danger of doing that, I wouldn’t shake their hands.” roller@dispatch.com @rollercd