From ‘normal’ to ‘really terrible’ in 4 days

Beach Ponte Vedra, Fla. – “It was like a normal tournament.”

If the Championship 2020 players is anything, but “normal” is the question of the historical fact, but as Tom Hoge reminded of the week began with a business and usual vibration. Wednesdays will mark a five-year anniversary of the Rest Day in the history of the game, if not the history of the modern world, when the PGA tour has declared a completely stopping as a pandemic.

But a journey from “normal” anything, but it was dramatic and unexpectedly as circumstances. Even such as storm clouds built in March 2020. years, the tour pushed in advance to play their leading event on TPC saw.

“Everyone else was somewhat confused trying to figure out what was happening around the world,” Lucas Glover recalled.

Two days before stopped Play, the Jay Monahan Commissioner told the media, “it is sufficient that it is a very dynamic situation, but not only do we obtain as we can, and the candidate on a continuous scenario, considering that this is an unprecedented situation.”

Even Thursday as well as other sports leagues, closing operations in the middle of the warning from local and federal governments, the tour of the schedule team, although with a limited crowd at the stage and the superior vibe.

“I didn’t actually take it too seriously, but on Wednesday when some other leagues turned off, the first time I thought it was quite strange,” said Adam Scott. “I started thinking it could be hard to play this week. The pressure was built, but the General PGA tour does not call anything.”

After the first round, Rory McIlroy asked what the tour should be done if the player or Caddy should be tested for Covid-19: “We must then close. Yes, I think, more than anything else, we need everyone to test.” He said.

As the day wore in the situation across the nation, it became more touched and at 16:00 ET Major Liga Baseball announced the cancellation of all training games and pushed the beginning of the regular season in two weeks.

As Turna announced to respond to the rapid development of the crisis, Hideki Matsuyama announced 9-mal 63 to bind the record records and occupied the command with two shots. It was a circle of life and possible footnotes largely forgotten in the chaos that followed.

Initially, the tour continued the game on Friday, but without fans on property and dramatically reduced print, but before most of the players went to sleep on 12. March, the carpet was pulled out of the legs.

At 21:50 ET, players were informed through the text that the tournament abolished due to “rapid change in the situation” in connection with Covid-19. In tracking the text, the tour said that the next three events (Valspar Championship, WGC-Dell Botch Play and Valero Texas Open).

“We usually send us a message after we finish over time, and they sent us that day” Adam Scott, 2 below, T-9, $ 400,000 payouts. “Because they paid after the first round and I remember he thought Hideki just got a text message (saying he won) $ 2.4 million for a circle,” Scott laughed. “And then after another moment the following message comes, waste last message – no payout. Everyone was probably excited, and then the next message came.”

There were inevitable and understandable speculation after the decision of the tour of the reverse course.

“I thought it was too late day,” Glover said. “With everything else that happens I didn’t think we should have played on Thursday.”

But in the end, golf, as well as the rest of the world began to adjust to the world’s fast changing.

“I was alone,” Glover said, who drove home in southern Florida from TPC sawmills. “I remember stopping at Walgreens in Luca orange (Florida) looking for paper towels and such things that will be like a snowstorm. And there was nothing, and no one knew what to do – Bizarro world.”

Hoge managed to get his family on his flight home in Texas, but Scott, who owns homes in Europe and Bahamas, but he was very harder.

“I think we knew quickly (on Friday) that (abolishing) wouldn’t be fast and I started making the best plans,” SCOTT said to take his family home in Australia despite global insecurity. “They turned it off quickly, and my wife was pregnant at the time, so if they really got stuck and I wanted to be there.”

It would be almost three months before the tour would start playing again at Charles Schwab Challenge in June, although without fans and mountains of protocols and testing.

Lost in a professional golf policy is how fast tour is to navigate the uncertainty of the pandemic and returned to the action.

“I feel like it is one of the few proactive things that tour returns return to”, said Glover. “Kudos im, I said it for years that he was quite impressive, we were the first sport to really return. The logistics that entered it was impressive.”

Circumstances and unseen Tours from Live for Golf Saudi in Saudi financing, these memories were caused to fades, but for those who lived through the most real episode in the history of the tour, it is something that will never forget.

“It was like a world-type of apocalyptic type in which we lived,” Mackenzie Hughes said. “I think where we were, he makes you really appreciate where we are now. It was really terrible.”