New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Tournament giving fans a glimpse of normal again
CROMWELL — The snap shots ended up looking familiar with waves of fans, those in the back tip-toed or with craned necks, gathering around greens and tee boxes to see the best golfers in the world.
“People are actually having the glimpse this year of, ‘This feels normal,’” tournament director Nathan Grube said Saturday afternoon during the third round of the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands. “When was the last time anything looked normal? I haven’t felt normal going to the grocery store in a year and a half. To actually walk around, hear a roar and think, ‘Oh, that’s normal’ and to be part of that simple word, normal, for just a moment feels amazing.”
A version of our state’s annual PGA Tour event took shape this week and concludes Sunday — a scaled back version compared to what the event had become over decades, but a ramped up version compared to what is was in June 2020 as the nation grappled with safely reintroducing sporting events to the dangers and monotony of a pandemic.
And, yes, it looked and felt the same as it had many years — those snap shots, anyway. Because even with 10,000 fans, well shy of the 40,000 average prepandemic, the bulk of the crowds flocked to the same few highprofile groups and the galleries were large, vibrant. The echoes rolled over the hills, serving as the finishing touches to an event planned, and re-planned time and again, in the time since Dustin Johnson finished up on the 18th hole to win the 2020 event.
In preparation for 2021, Travelers initially expected to allow 2,000 fans, then 3,000, then 5,000, then 7,500 … and so on. It typically takes 100 days to solidify much of the infrastructure so, by April, Travelers had to make a call on capacity, which was set at 10,000.
In May, virtually all COVID-19 restrictions were lifted by Gov. Ned Lamont.
Which leads to the question, couldn’t Travelers have made an 11th hour change to accommodate more fans? The tournament works closely with the state and the PGA Tour — and both entities this spring asked Grube about expanding capacity.
The tournament, though,
builds and budgets every year to certain expectations. With the clock ticking — and with entire industries shaken by the pandemic — it would have been impossible to rearrange the facility and put the proper staff in place. From companies constructing spaced-seating to food vendors with diminished supply chains to the amount of restrooms and plastic trash receptacles needed, nothing beyond what took place this week was quite possible.
“In a normal year, we know projections and build to that and sell into it,” Grube said. “We couldn’t build to 20,000 and waste $1 million in infrastructure, and hope. We had to build to a responsible size. People are like, ‘You can fit more people out there. It’s outdoors.’
“Think about the mall at Christmas. Can you fit more people in the mall? Sure, but what’s the experience like? Are people going to be standing around, nothing left, saying they can’t go to the bathroom and can’t eat? Or think of a plane. When you’re in the air, could you fit more people in the aisles? Probably. But what happens when you try to land? Nobody’s safe. I hope people understand. Could we? Maybe — if you promise me nobody is going to eat and nobody is going to go to the bathroom and everybody is going to walk to the course.”
The tournament was sold out Friday, Saturday and Sunday. There were, or were to be, about 10,000 fans on site each day, about 13,000 in total when figuring in volunteers, players, caddies, families, PGA Tour staff, support staff, vendors, others. It was complicated enough to make this happen. There are about 1,000 volunteers at the tournament, down from the usual 4,000.
“It’s like we started playing basketball and then they moved the goal so we had to deal with the new court size,” Grube said. “And then they allowed eight people per team, then threw in a jai alai ball, a badminton racket and clowns in the middle and I was like, ‘I don’t even know what game we’re playing anymore.’ I love that we’re outdoors and I love that we can reinvent ourselves every year. The hard part is we’re not in a stadium where we can just turn the lights. Everything here is temporary.”
Last year’s snap shots? Bizarre.
“It was Nathan and me and maybe 30 others,” said Andy Bessette, Travelers executive vice president and chief administrative officer. “Nathan and I were high-fiving but it was very weird, depressing, strange. You’re out in these fields with these great golfers, and nobody’s there. D.J. won, we did the trophy ceremony, Nathan gave him the jacket. The trophy, I couldn’t pick it up. I said, ‘There’s your trophy.’”
They exhaled. That the Travelers made the 2020 event happen in any form was a victory. It was the third Tour event held after a COVID-19 pause. Much of the sports world was still dark. All eyes were on Cromwell, where nine of the world’s top 10 players were in the field, though two (Brooks Koepka and Webb Simpson) had to withdraw due to potential COVID exposure.
On the eve of the tournament, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan arrived — a long-planned visit, one still with an ominous tone. Would he skid a private jet down the 18th fairway and cancel the event? There had been a handful of player withdrawals.
Canceling was never on the table, Bessette said Saturday. The course was left bare, every single person on site was tested and golfers chased shares of the $7.4 million purse through 72 holes. The planning for 2021 was underway immediately afterward.
“Last year was, in some ways, so much easier than this year because we knew we were going to have nothing — or something with nothing,” Bessette said. “We were either going to have no tournament, or a tournament with no fans. This year, between January and now, we’ve been through probably 12 iterations of this thing.”
Said Grube: “We were going to build to 100 percent for ’21. But really quickly you realized, things aren’t moving fast enough.”
Not fast enough to plan for 40,000 fans a day at the 70th edition of the tournament, anyway. But 10,000 a day gave it a pretty standard feel — albeit with spaced seating, open air merchandise sales areas, no climate-controlled corporate sponsorship suites, where sometimes 30,000 fans gather.
Phil Mickelson on Saturday drained a 37-foot birdie putt on 18 to finish thirdround play. The gallery roared.
“Now that is music to my ears,” said Bessette, who was standing just beyond a hill and out of sight. “That is just great stuff. They’re going wild.”
Last year there was silence, even if simply holding the event was, metaphorically, a loud return to something three months into a pandemic.
“We needed to take pride in our role and take it seriously,” Grube said. “If we were going to be part of the story, we wanted to be part of it in the right way. There was something bigger, to help take a step forward. But it was hard, standing on that 18th green, and you know how loud that place can be and you’ve met people who say, ‘I was there when ...’
“Those stories, there are thousands of them, people who within a small distance of a champion and they can tell that story. I knew all those stories wouldn’t be told last year. ‘I was there when Dustin ...’ There was a void. Those stories were not going to be told. There was a mix of being part of something so special and the responsibility of bringing something back, but there was this hole in the community. And I stood there last year on 18. It was knuckles, then ‘What are we going to do next year?’”
Every year, close to 100 people who have a hand in organizing the event on the Travelers side of the production meet in mid-July for a debriefing and celebration. The theme is always “How can next year be better than this year?” This July, the theme will be “How can 2022 be better than 2019?”