PGA Tour happy playing a high-risk game to reboot sport in the US
The world’s best players are not prone to taking umbrage with the media. The gulf between levels of criticism – professional and personal – bestowed on a Ryder Cup golfer versus a Premier League footballer is extreme. Golfers lead a relatively charmed life.
So it becomes notable when they step on to a news agenda front foot. They did so virtually in unison during last week’s Travelers Championship, the third stop of the PGA Tour’s closely scrutinised resumption. Scepticism over the Tour’s approach to Covid-19, with positive tests still in single digits but rising, jarred with competitors.
“I’ve seen a lot of media coverage that is quite negative and I don’t like it,” said Shane Lowry, the Open champion. “I think the PGA Tour, Jay [Monahan, the commissioner], everybody involved has done a great job. As a professional golfer, I am very happy to be back to work and to be providing some entertainment for some people at home.”
Rory McIlroy branded suggestions the Tour should call a halt to its return as “silly”. The world No 1 added: “I think as a whole, it’s been going really well.” Sergio Garcia soon joined in. “Whoever thought that we were going to come out here and it was going to be zero positive tests was living in la-la land,” the Spaniard said. “That doesn’t happen.”
The theme was not so much recurring as constant. All hail the Tour, be damned all those not signing from the same hymn sheet etc, etc.
To sceptics, this represents the sentiment of out-of-touch multi-millionaires who care little for real struggles as they race to meet sponsors’ commitments. But for all Lowry, McIlroy and Garcia are not immune from the occasionally daft theory, theirs is a trio perfectly cognisant of the big bad world.
McIlroy was among those who raised millions for coronavirus relief through an exhibition match. It is also a considerable stretch to say featuring in the Travelers Championship, RBC Heritage or Charles Schwab Challenge makes such a fundamental difference to the lives of leading players that they would blithely ignore wider concerns.
More interesting than the level of play within the PGA Tour’s restart has been the marked contrasts in attitudes towards it. And those attitudes, since the Players, have shifted. As something of a metaphor for the United States itself, the Tour seems willing to live with Covid-19.Even though approaches in the UK might feel markedly different, Stoke City FC did not abandon their restart in the Championship because their manager, Michael O’Neill, contracted coronavirus.
Assessing broader risk should be key for a sport which moves from state to state. Yet Monahan is not inconsiderate, rash or lacking in sound judgment. He closed down the Players Championship in March, at high cost, after just one round as coronavirus closed in. As the leader of the PGA Tour, a body essentially leading US mainstream sport back to the frontline, Monahan is playing a game of high stakes.
He is doing this with, apparently, the full support of his membership, sponsors and local government officials. That seems to resonate more in the US than some crass attitude distinct to golf.
That players owe a debt of gratitude to the PGA Tour is obvious. They can build up pension pots equivalent to the GDP of a medium-sized country. There is also a danger of those within golf overplaying its wider value as a mid-pandemic resource. To sports gamblers, competition is handy. Seasoned fans have enjoyed watching the world’s best players, to a point. The absence of galleries has unquestionably diminished the spectacle. The hitherto little-known Will Gordon has now earned temporary Tour membership after his performance at the Travelers, to provide endearing insight into how tournaments can positively alter lives.
Golfers are fiercely protective of their health. They run a mile from even the perception of off-course risk. That much is likely to become clear later in 2020 when the field is set for a World Golf Championship in China. Nick Watney, Cameron Champ, Harris English, Dylan Frittelli, Denny McCarthy, Chad Campbell and two caddies have tested positive for coronavirus yet this show, undeterred, ploughs on. It is a fascinating case study.
There were glaring holes in the PGA Tour’s initial protocols. On the course, there was plenty of social and very little distance. That Watney or anyone else could go near a tournament venue when ill or seeking a Covid-19 test was nonsensical. Champ has returned a series of negative tests – so too Ricky Elliott, Brooks Koepka’s caddie – which seems to undermine the robustness of that process. A golf tour, though, is susceptible to uncontrollable variables, changing fields and players missing cuts among them.
This week’s field in Detroit is the weakest of the rebooted season. Inevitable positive tests will again be heralded as a success of PGA Tour policies rather than justification to shut down. La-la Land or a new reality? The truth may sit somewhere in the middle.