Get a PGA Tournament Going Again…Soon
By Bill Felber
There’s no medical reason to wait …and the political reasons all stink. The PGA Tour needs to start playing again.
One month after the Corona virus-forced shutdown, it’s time to begin seriously talking about re-starting the PGA Tour and playing a tournament.
There is simply no valid medical reason to postpone a restart … and many excellent reasons to do so. While it’s true that the virus has not been eliminated, the trends in most locations are moving downward.
Beyond that and most importantly, society has implemented effective measures – notably social distancing – to further control the virus’s spread.
The sport of professional golf – a non-contact game that does not require its players to be in proximity with one another – raises no medical issues that would compromise its athletes’ abilities to play in a tournament both safely and well.
Combine that with the fact that the nation’s major officials, notably President Trump, are calling on institutions to begin laying plans for a quick return to normalcy and Tour officials should have all the impetus they require to do so.
In fact due to the way the game is played and to the vast nature of the stadiums on which it is conducted, the Tour is probably the best-positioned of any sports entity to lead the way in re-starting the sports tournament schedule.
There is one other significant motivation for getting going and it should be obvious. Whichever sport takes the lead in getting live events back on TV will reap an absolute ratings bonanza. Golf, a game that needs fans, has a chance to manufacture oodles of them. All it needs to do is get a tournament back on TV first.
Obviously for the foreseeable future at least this would have to happen in the absence of live, paying galleries. The President and his team of experts as much as said so during their rollout of the re-opening strategies last week.
But no sport is going to be playing games in front of large crowds for a while. And few if any other sports – tennis being the other possible exception – can be conducted as comfortably in a context of social distancing as golf.
Player on-course safety concerns can be satisfied by testing players and caddies for the virus ahead of time, by requiring caddies to wear gloves, and by minimizing both the numbers and movement of course preparation personnel.
At this stage, there are only two other reasons to delay. The first is money and the second is politics.
The Tour may not wish to start out of concern for the lost revenue from crowds that are not on the premises. But of course that revenue is being lost right now along with sponsorship and TV revenues…which, given the dearth of live sports being shown may actually rise in the short term if the Tour can provide a monopolistic form of entertainment.
The political aspect is a tougher nut. The Tour cannot conduct tournaments in some locales if it would be barred by state orders that restrict gatherings of more than inconsequential size.
Still there now appear to be plenty of states prepared to lift such orders, some possibly in the next few days. In many states, in fact, golf courses have operated — albeit with some changed rules — right through the crisis.
It is also possible that politicians may view acceding to a Tour request for permission to play as signaling to its citizens generally that citizens no longer need heed restrictions on movement. That the crisis, in other words, is over.
That line of reasoning does not logically follow, but politics is often illogical.
But there are 50 states, and it is also true as Trump noted last week that some areas are ready or close to ready to open up to something more nearly resembling life in the very near future. For the reasons noted above, golf is the sport best positioned to lead that movement.
It would also provide a superb morale boost to a nation that needs one right now.
The Tour should be drawing up contingency plans to conduct a tournament – any tournament – at the earliest possible moment in a location judged to be safe for such purposes … and in front of a mammoth television audience.