All quiet on the West Coast links
Golfers miss the feeling of having a crowd with them
SAN FRANCISCO — For three days of the PGA Championship, golf 's first major of this discombobulated sports year, the world's best players were introduced at the start of their rounds by a publicaddress announcer with no public to address.
It is a tradition, a chance to send players out onto the course with a wave of energy and admiration.
“Now on the tee, please welcome …,” the announcer said for each group at TPC Harding Park. One by one, the biggest names stepped up: Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson.
One by one, there was silence, at most a few scattered claps from the tournament volunteers.
When the players returned each day from their 18-hole outings, they found, instead of a warm homecoming and a green surrounded by fans, no one there, mostly. They were greeted by the same thing they had experienced the entire round: silence.
“I flat-out don't like it — plain and simple,” said Paul Casey, among the leaders heading into the weekend. “Nothing I can do, obviously, but I miss it. I play golf at home with nobody around, and I much prefer it out here. This is why I love what I get to do, and it's changed the dynamic of it.”
Come Sunday evening at Harding Park, a champion will be crowned to a quiet reception on a virtually empty course. If a championship is won in a silent bubble, seen only through pixelated screens, does it count, at least as much?
The PGA Championship is the first major American sports event to test that question. The fan-free experience has been part of this summer's sports schedule for weeks now.
In the weeks ahead, the national landscape will be filled with playoffs and major championships performed without fans and in relative silence: the NBA and NHL playoffs, the U.S. Open in tennis, the World Series, certainly the U.S. Open in golf at Winged Foot next month and, in a few months, maybe even a Super Bowl.
But it is golf where the physical and visceral connection between athlete and fan can be as close and personal as any — up close, face to face, thousands standing in utter silence and then erupting in noise.
No sport goes from crickets to cacophony like championship golf.
And it's not just a sound effect that is lacking. The absence of fans has altered the competition. Some players, like Casey, complained that the course's low energy was affecting their performance. Others noted that Harding Park's fierce rough has not been helpfully trampled by the feet of fans. An unlucky few have lost balls that would not have gone missing.
On Friday, Xinjun Zhang tried to cut the corner with his drive but instead hit his ball closer to the fifth green, which in another year would have been surrounded by fans. The one or two officials nearby never saw it land; a search turned up nothing. Zhang was penalized a stroke, bogeyed the hold and the next two.
A day earlier, Justin Thomas had hit a drive into trees along the seventh fairway. No one was nearby, and after a search of the rough, the ball was presumed to have lodged in a tree. No one was sure.