No spectators in attendance for first major of the season

Empty courses in PGA restart provide some benefits for fans watching on TV

Brooks Koepka will be going for his PGA Championship threepeat this summer without spectators in attendance.

The PGA of America announced on Monday that the season’s first major will be held with no fans at TPC Harding

Park in San Francisco Aug. 6-9.

Koepka is coming off a seventh-place finish at the RBC Heritage — his best result since last year’s Tour Championship — and will be in the field again this week at the Travelers Championship.

“This is the best my body’s felt in years,” Koepka said after shooting a Sunday 65 at Harbour Town. “It’s been a long road. It just feels like I haven’t been healthy for a very long time. My body feels great. I feel like I can really move through the golf ball. The knee feels great. Finally able to do things I wasn’t able to do for a very, very long time.”

Koepka had a stem cell procedure done on his left knee just after the Tour Championship last August before re-aggravating it in October when he slipped on wet concrete at the CJ Cup in South Korea.

The four-time major champ feeds off of the energy of fans and says that playing on a near-empty golf course is weird, but the PGA Tour restart has already proven there is very little lost for the home viewer without fans in attendance.

In fact, in some ways it’s better. Let’s start on the tee, where nobody on earth misses the “MASHED POTATO!” jerk or his “BA-BA-BOOEY!” buddy. Onto the approach shot, where there are no more perfect lies in trampled down rough when a player misses the fairway. Finally we get to the green, where, without grandstands surrounding the putting surface, we actually get to see players forced to play their big misses with creative shots from 20 or 30 yards beside or behind the green. Two weeks ago at Colonial, we watched Koepka hit a lob wedge over the cart path to the green from a spot he would never be if fans were there to protect his ball.

The last and perhaps most entertaining benefit — and a bit of a sore spot for Brooks — is that we’re able to hear what players are saying. During week one of the restart at Colonial, Rickie Fowler was miked up during play and added plenty to the broadcast. Last week, Adam Hadwin was miked up and proved that television cameras are indeed capable of showing Canadian golfers even when they aren’t leading a tournament. Hadwin came off great and undoubtedly gained plenty of fans during an entertaining exchange with a rules official where he closed the conversation in a very Canadian way by saying, “Screw you, but thanks.”

Don’t expect Koepka to agree to a microphone. He and Justin Thomas have both been vocal opponents of this evolution of golf broadcasting, and they appear to be in the majority. Koepka says there are already plenty of microphones on the golf course and we could all hear plenty if the commentators would just shut up. Analyst Nick Faldo called him on it and stayed quiet following his drive at the 18th hole on Friday, only to hear Koepka inaudibly mumble something, prompting the six-time major champion Englishman to respond, “Yeah, fascinating stuff.”

As entertaining as the ensuing Twitter war is sure to become, one reasonable middle ground could be to limit the miked up moments to before a player hits.

Joel Dahmen explained Sunday why he decided not to wear a microphone.

“I mean, some of the things said post-shot that came out naturally would not come across very well on air,” he said.

That’s fine. Make post-shot comments off limits, it’s the preshot exchange between player and caddy that adds insight into the game. Knowing exactly what a player is trying to do with a shot is far more valuable than hearing him cheer on a good shot, or curse a bad one.

None of this is to say the PGA Championship will be better without fans.

Major championships aren’t regular tournaments. They have the ability to be once-in-a-lifetime sporting moments for both players and fans, and history deserves witnesses.

All we can hope is 2020 is also a once-in-a-lifetime moment.