PGA Tour's Return To Golf Now A Matter Of When, Not If The Pause Button Gets Hit

Bro-Bump: Jay Monahan and Rory McIlroy at Last Week’s 2020 RBC Heritage

Kudos to PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan for expediting his wheels up time to be out front on today’s hectic virus news at the Travelers Championship, apparently earlier than expected.

Also, kudos to the PGA Tour media team for axing all press conferences to focus on the matter at hand: more positive tests, more signs pro golfers are not immune to the virus, and more signs the tour officials hear the bubble bursting.

And that’s about it for the compliment department.

The day that started with the news of Whoop’s for everybody! (Contrary to reports, the wrist devices do not inject you with anti-bodies OR zap you after walking into the Tour’s physio area without having tested negative).

The CEO is “onboarding” one-thousand of them, pricey subscription price not mentioned.

Then we learned the bubble was expanding to instructors, upgrading one set of tests and physio trailers would all be on site because, apparently, players were stupid enough to be hitting gyms in a time of a coronavirus easily spread in…gyms.

Speculation started after the obvious signs of trouble. More players withdrew from the Travelers Championship, including both Koepkas—and now the field is a little less stacked.

Ewan Murray sums it all up well here for The Guardian before the proceedings wrapped with a Monahan news conference reminiscent of March’s Players Championship. (That’s when the PGA Tour was the last sport to shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Now? The PGA Tour now appears destined to be the first major sport to shut down, again.

The most painful part for golf and those who love it or make their living in the game? This impending debacle was all so preventable. So before we get to a couple of pieces from Golf.com that say it all, a few standout moments from Monahan’s press conference broadcast live on Periscope and Golf Channel.

Here is what Monahan was not asked in the limited invite, low-technology back-and-forth that had him questioned by a small pool of writers:

—Two PGA Tour players have tested positive—Nick Watney and Cameron Champ—for COVID-19 and both have ventured away from guideline-required areas while awaiting test results at active PGA Tour venues. What went totally wrong here Commissioner and what have you done to assure this ridiculous breach does not happen again?

—You just arrived from Florida here in Connecticut, how was the airport screening process on a day that the state of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut imposed restriction on travelers from America’s many hotspots?

—Why not enhance Tour guidelines to mandate face coverings for all but players on the course?

Visually, Monahan leaned on his water bottle repeatedly and tip-toed around the room’s elephant: how many tests is too many before this Return To Golf becomes the Brief Return To Golf?

His first go was about…the brand.

Q. Do you have a position even privately whereby it would not be viable to continue with this or other tournaments on the grounds of reputation, if not health and safety?

COMMISSIONER JAY MONAHAN: Listen, I think that there is -- that's something Ewan, that you're mindful of every minute of your working life. The brand and safety of our players are -- the safety of our players is our No. 1 concern, and our brand is our greatest asset.

The amount of time, Ewan, that we put into the plan that we developed; the plan we've executed; the dialogue we're having with our board, our Player Advisory Counsel; the feedback we're getting with our players; everything we are doing we are doing in concert with our membership; and based on our board call on Monday night; based on our Player Advisory Council call on Tuesday night; based on conversations that myself and our team members are having with our players, we feel a great responsibility to inspire people and to be in their living rooms on Saturday and Sunday -- Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We feel like we're on a path that's going to allow us to continue to sustain our return to golf, but rest assured, there won't be many sleepless nights; there usually are.

Will, won’t.

When you're working in a world of uncertainty, these are the things you worry about. But also rest assured that the PGA TOUR will always do the right thing as it relates to our players, our fans, our constituents and make sure we create the safety environment possible.

Alright we’re just going to chalk that all up to bad proofreading in PVB. Next try:

Q. I know you've been reluctant to list a tipping point over the last couple of months, and even so far today, but is there a point when you get to enough positive cases within the bubble where you say, "Hey, look, we need to curtail this, we need to shut it down," and if so, is there a specific number, or how do you determine that?

COMMISSIONER JAY MONAHAN: I think that we -- Jason, on that front, where I go back to where we are right now, and the system that we have in place, and there are all kinds of scenarios that could play out.

We feel like we've tried to contemplate all of those scenarios in creating the program and the protocols that we have such that if you are going to have positive cases, there can -- they are contained or they are containable, and we are going to avoid that scenario.

But if you start to -- I mean, there certainly are scenarios where if you had a significant number of positive tests, or you could play scenarios where that would come into play and you'd have to be thinking along those lines.

But for us, we're confident with the plan we have and we are very hopeful that we are not going to be in that position.

And third time’s not the charm…

Q. Secondly in conversations with health officials or experts, what does this look like exponentially, you know, X number of days or weeks from now for the TOUR in testimony of what the statistical data tells you; in other words, where, you know, within the last six days, there have been a handful of positive tests, be it caddies, players or people within their quote, unquote, bubble. I'm curious how you look at it two, three, four weeks down the road from now?

COMMISSIONER JAY MONAHAN: We tend to look at it day-to-day before we get into several weeks down the road, because while we've completed our testing protocol so far this week, obviously we have other measures that our players, caddies and staff will take between now and the end of play on Sunday. That's something that we will continue to be focused on executing.

And then as it relates to going forward, I think it's important that you understand and that we convey that our team, myself, we are spending a lot of time talking about where we are.

I think we understand you all spend a lot of time worrying about how to save the FedExCup, but the overall sport?

What’s best for golf where the rest of the sport has done an incredible job navigating this perilous time?

You know, when you go through the contact tracing and when you think about individuals that tested positive, and you think about the environment, you know, what are some of the additional things we can do to mitigate risk, and you've heard me say that probably too many times.

But that has been our focus, because if we focus on that, we feel like we put ourselves in a position where we can have a controllable number of -- we can have a controlled environment or a controlled number of cases or positive cases going forward.

We can't wait for the number. We have to be proactive in doing everything we can to keep that positive number as small as possible, and that really is just about executing our health and safety program.

Minus, distancing, masks, enforcing our own regulations or maintaining a legitimate bubble. (Especially as the mask data becomes more powerful by the day).

Then there was this blown opportunity to tell players they could send better signals.

Q. We've seen the players fist-pumping high-fiving, standing next to each other on tee boxes; going out to dinner, we hear, as well. Do you feel let down by the players?

COMMISSIONER JAY MONAHAN: Not at all.

Now that’s some pampering.

Regarding previously mentioned stories, both come from Golf.com and sum up what appears to be a massive failure by players and caddies to appreciate their role in making this return work.

First is Luke Kerr-Dineen, on site since Tuesday at the Travelers and watching as the tournament officials, PGA Tour staff and volunteers all do their part, while players and especially caddies ignore the basics. The piece reinforces just how much the “Return to Golf”underestimated how caddies stubbornly resisting guidelines and recommendations could undermine the whole thing.

On Wednesday afternoon, coaches roamed the range with impunity. There were countless fist bumps and handshakes, and equipment changing hands. At one point, I witnessed a group of eight players and caddies huddled on a small tee box, waiting to tee off, one of the players killing time by going through another’s bag, grabbing his clubs and making practice swings before putting them back.

It’s easy to laser-in on individual anecdotes and cast wide generalizations, but the truth is, at least from my two days on site, that through some combination of not caring enough and feeling comfortable enough, the players simply aren’t, in the words of the PGA Tour’s most recent statement on the matter, “doing their part.”

Kerr-Dineen’s colleague Alan Shipnuck later in the day filed a piece titled “Why the PGA Tour should hit the brakes on its season again”, saying Wednesday’s WD-fest threw “into sharp relief the hubris of the Tour trying to barnstorm the country amid a raging pandemic.”

He writes:

The Tour has trumpeted its own bubble but, really, it’s more like a breezeway, through which hundreds and hundreds of people pass every week. There are the players and caddies, of course, but also the many folks with whom they interact: swing coaches, trainers, agents, Tour officials, chefs, equipment reps, wives, girlfriends, nannies and sundry others. The collective level of vigilance to preventative measures is varying, to say the least, and all of these people are traveling across a country in which the number of coronavirus cases is still spiking three months after the first mitigation efforts began.

Making it now a matter of not if a player will test positive, but when the Tour will put the brakes on in their premature return.