PGA Tour still hoping Memphis WGC event will be held in July
Doug Barron felt good about playing golf.
Not in an unsafe way. Not by blatantly ignoring the coronavirus pandemic around him like some spring breaker.
After playing the final round of the PGA Champions Tour's Hoag Classic in Newport Beach, California, on March 8 (and taking three planes between there and Memphis), he self-quarantined for about a week.
When that was over, he still felt good enough about playing golf at Ridgeway
Country Club until the city's shelter-inplace order went into effect Tuesday night.
Barron felt so good about playing golf that he sent a letter to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland asking for private country clubs to stay open. It's easy to maintain 6 feet of social distance on a golf course or tennis court, Barron wrote, and “having a chance to take your mind off of the pandemic in a safe environment is pretty scarce these days and I think this would be a no brainer.”
So count Barron, one of the few active professional golfers in the area, among
those who feel good about Memphis holding the World Golf Championshipsfedex St. Jude Invitational as planned in July.
“Of all the sports, I would think we'd be one of the first ones to start back,” Barron said Wednesday. “I think it's no doubt we'll have it.”
The PGA Tour and tournament officials remain hopeful that holds true.
Both entities said this week they are proceeding as if the WGC-FEDEX St. Jude Invitational will go on as scheduled, despite the unknowns presented by the ongoing worldwide health crisis.
“We're planning to move forward at this point with the event as scheduled from July 1-5 at TPC Southwind,” WGCFEDEX St. Jude Invitational executive director Darrell Smith wrote in an email Wednesday.
“The PGA TOUR season is scheduled to resume May 21-24 at the Charles Schwab Challenge,” a PGA Tour spokesperson wrote in an email Thursday, “and we are planning to proceed as scheduled currently with the World Golf Championships-fedex St. Jude Invitational in Memphis.”
So the countdown clock is still there at the top of the official website for the WGC-FEDEX St. Jude Invitational. As of Thursday morning, only 96 days remained until the world's best golfers are scheduled to convene on Memphis again.
It is, for now, the next Memphis sporting event that still remains on the sports calendar.
Every professional and collegiate sports league in the country has either postponed or canceled its entire slate of games or events, including the PGA Tour, over the coronavirus pandemic.
Smith wrote that nobody on the WGC-FEDEX St. Jude staff has been laid off, but precautions like social distancing and working remotely are presenting challenges that weren't there during preparations for last year's tournament.
The economic repercussions associated with the virus, as well as how it upended the sports calendar, also are affecting ticket and sponsorship sales at the moment.
“The uncertainty from COVID-19 is having an effect on every business in this community, and our event is not immune from that,” Smith wrote. “But we're in this market year-round, and we have been successful in securing this community's support throughout the last nine months. We obviously have an incredible partner in Fedex and remain confident that we're in a great position to stage the best edition yet of the World Golf Championships-fedex St. Jude Invitational in early July.”
The WGC-FEDEX St. Jude Invitational called this “a very fluid situation” in a statement released last week when the PGA Tour announced the cancellation of all its tournaments and events through the weekend of May 10.
The PGA Tour's initial schedule changes resulted in the cancellation of the WGC-DELL Match Play event scheduled to take place in Austin, Texas, this week. In addition, both The Masters in April and The PGA Championship in May were postponed.
A PGA spokesperson said the PGA Tour ultimately will make the decision of whether to hold the WGC-FEDEX St. Jude Invitational based off information from the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health organizations, and in consultation with the five other major golf governing bodies that help run all WGC events.
Smith wrote that, as of Wednesday, no deadline was in place for when a decision about this year's event at TPC Southwind would need to be made.
The 2020 WGC-FEDEX St. Jude Invitational was advantageously positioned on the PGA Tour calendar two weeks after the U.S. Open is scheduled to be played at Winged Foot Golf Club in New York and two weeks before The Open Championship at Royal St. George's in England.
The PGA Championship could be rescheduled for July 30-Aug. 2 now that the Tokyo Olympics have been postponed until 2021, and the Masters is rumored to be eyeing an October date for its rescheduled tournament, according to ESPN.
Last year, TPC Southwind and Memphis hosted a WGC event for the first time after 61 years as a regular PGA Tour stop. American Brooks Koepka outdueled Rory Mcilroy in a final-round pairing of the world's top-ranked golfers.