PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – An unnerving air hovered over TPC Sawgrass nearly a year ago today, the suitable date being Friday the 13th, as the home of the Players Championship was shuttered and the opulent venue became a ghost town.
As a monstrous virus named COVID-19 was spreading across the globe, the PGA Tour joined all professional sports leagues in going dark. As players cleaned out their lockers that bright, silent morning and headed home, they toted extra baggage of unknown with them.
The Tour’s flagship event – or Super Bowl as commissioner Jay Monahan calls it – was canceled after one round and the season put on hold. One day, Hideki Matsuyama’s taking the Players lead with a 63; the next day his bags are packed.
“I don’t think anyone was as upset as Hideki,” Xander Schauffele said with a smile. “I saw him in the parking lot the next day and he was flying back to Japan to sort of collect his thoughts. He was in good spirits about it.
“But all of us were rattled. No one really knew how serious this whole virus was. I think reality really set in when we were all quarantining at home.”
Back then, there were less than 1,000 documented cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. but the ghastly numbers started to spike and right quickly. The number has now exceeded 28 million, with thousands more still getting infected each day. The death toll has reached 525,000, with hundreds more still dying each day.
As grisly as those numbers are, the infection and death rates are much better than just three months ago, and millions of vaccines have been shot into arms with tens of millions more coming. Hope has been spotted on the horizon.
But as players tee off Thursday in the 2021 Players Championship appreciating the improving condition of the country and the Tour, they will think back to that gloomy day a year ago and realize, despite golf’s remarkable journey the past 12 months, no one can let their guard down.
“There was a lot of concern about whether we would be able to play golf in 2020 and beyond,” Jordan Spieth said. “I give a lot of props to Jay Monahan for the work that he put in. It’s easier to see how good a leader is when you’re in tough times than when you’re in good times, and when I look back, if I could have had any more respect for Jay Monahan, I think I speak for most of the players in saying that this last year has proved that we have phenomenal leadership.”
After a 13-week hiatus, the Tour and its traveling circus returned and eventually found solid footing wandering from city to city, state to state, from one time zone to another. Amidst all the safety measures – testing, tracing, social distancing, the shunning of indoor dining – the players rallied around one common goal – do what we have to do to keep playing.
And play on they did, providing a country starving for live sports entertainment a little slice of joy. This week’s Players will be the 37th PGA Tour start since the 2020 Players shut down and the roster of winners is stunning – world No. 1 Dustin Johnson won four of the 36 events including the Masters; Bryson DeChambeau became a monster hit with three wins, including the U.S. Open; Collin Morikawa won the PGA and two other events.
Also among the victorious were Jon Rahm and Daniel Berger, each winning twice, and Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed, Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland.
Fans have returned at a limited capacity – about 10,000 per day will be attending The Players this week. Rory McIlroy is the defending champion, as he has been for 725 days. The Tour and tournaments have lost millions of dollars, yet millions were raised and dispersed to charity.
Players have adapted to a new routine and little by little, there are more and more signs that something akin to normalcy isn’t the pipe dream it was six months ago.
“It’s never comfortable getting something shoved up your nose, so it’s not like I go there and can’t wait and enjoy to get a Q tip shoved up my nose,” Thomas said. “It’s fine. It’s just a part of the norm now. It sure beats staying at home and not being able to play. I hope that everybody continues to do their job and their part and everyone keeps staying safe.”
The PGA Tour has done just that for months now.