Five Years Exactly From The Darkest Dark In PGA Tour History

1 month ago by Comments Off on Five Years Exactly From The Darkest Dark In PGA Tour History

Friday 13th March, 2020 – the darkest day in the history of the PGA Tour.

The day the PGA Tour, and at their very home in Ponte Vedra, Florida and the hosting of the 2020 Players Championship, led the major US-based sporting authorities with news the Tour was going a CovEid pandemic lockdown.

Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama had posted an opening Thursday first round with a course record equallying 63 on the host Stadium course at TPC Sawgrass but no sooner had play ended for the day and rumours were surfacing that the Tour was going into lockdown.

That rumour was confirmed mid-evening via an email from the Tour that Commissioner Monahan would be addressing the media at 9am the next morning while the Tour released a Tweet at 2.59am (Yes, just before 3am) and three hours into Friday, 13th March advising the Tour was going into lockdown for two months.

I had the overwhelming joy to attend my first PGA Tour event at the 1988 Players Championship and 32-years on this Friday 13th, 2020 everyone stood around wondering what was going to happen to the world.

Myself and my journalist colleagues then spent the remained of that Friday morning speaking to players who were arriving to clean-out their lockers within the TPC Sawgrass course.

I filed appropriate player ‘reaction’ stories to the UK and Irish news outlets I was working before leaving the ’emptiness’ of clubhouse and the golf course, and headed off to the nearby Sawgrass Village shopping centre to find something to eat.

And who should we bump into but  Henrik Stenson and his wife, Emma. The couple were shopping and with the 2016 Open Champion following his wife in pushing the shopping trolley. Henrik being Henrik joked in making a comment how being a champion golfer meant nothing when it came to any seniority and avoiding pushing a humble shopping trolley.

Please read:  

I wrote an article on what unfolded on those two days – 12th and 13th, March 2020.

And not wishing in anyway to sound bias though five years on reading the article makes interesting reading, and also considering that more than five-years the Covid virus struck and it is still with us.

However what the Covid virus did was change forever the manner how the world connects what with the introduction of Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp and so many other forms of computerised communication.

As a dedicated golf journalist and having attended my first PGA Tour event at the 1988 Players, it was the end in many ways of the newspaper, as we knew it.

I was in attendance at the 2020 Players filing to some six UK and Irish newspapers while nowadays I am lucky to have work with just one and that is not always guaranteed.

Also, having travelled regularly for so many years reporting in person at some 25-30 events a year, I have not returned to the PGA Tour since the 2020 Players as everything is now online immediately, such as yesterday’s (Tuesday March 11th) Monahan annual press conference that I was watched live on the Tour’s X account.

Anyway please enjoy reading the following:  http://www.golfbytourmiss.com/2024/03/players-championship-friday-march-13th-2020-the-darkest-day-in-pga-tour-history-as-mcilroy-emerges-a-shining-light/

 

 



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