Golf’s back! Your correspondent could barely contain the excitement comensurate for someone in their mid-50s when the pictures from Texas flooded my screens (yes, multiple) at the weekend.
Come on, you know me better than that by now.
The Charles Schwab Challenge itself, as a tournament without the contemporary baggage, was half-decent, actually.
It was a nicely simmered build-up with a quality leaderboard all four days, culminating in a reasonably dramatic finish that saw Daniel Berger and Collin Morikawa contest a play-off, with Berger – a “certainty” for the US Ryder Cup team in Paris until he fell off a cliff – prevailing.
With people there reacting to it, it might have been even better. Instead, watching often seemed a little like the PGA EuroPro Tour highlights on Sky, save for the fact that the players were a little more recognisable.
These are unprecedented times, goes the standard cliche of the moment, so the oddness to it all is perfectly tolerable to the viewer. But let’s not have any illusions about why this is happening and the precautions, such as they are, that are in place.
This was no bio-bubble, that much is clear. There’s a nod towards distancing here and there, with no crowds, swing instuctors stuck behind ropes on the range with the media (I had a snigger at that one, I have to admit) and of course the testing.
But players off-site are doing what they like, drinking and dining with who they wish – including the instructors they’re distanced from at the venue.
The onsite testing regime is the complete and entire defence against COVID-19, and the rest – including the charter flight taking the field to Hilton Head in South Carolina where the infection rate was up 60% last week – is mere window dressing.
As Michael Bamberger said in golf.com, it’s not so much `the show must go on’ as the tour have decided to let it go on. With that in mind, and given this is no bubble at all, why not let some fans in suitably distanced and wearing facemasks? They’d probably be better protected than the officials, none of whom seemed to be wearing any PPE last week.
But of course, we know that restarting the PGA Tour, and the Premier League, and horse racing and all the other sports is not about providing necessary entertainment to a locked down populace or raising morale or anything to do with the fans or public at all.
It’s about pleasing CBS and Sky Sports and their legion of advertisers – it wasn’t even 50-50 in terms of live action to commercials when I turned to the US coverage. It’s about trying to reap back the money lost in lockdown. It‘s about regenerating custom for parasitic betting companies.
It’s certainly not about safety. The pandemic has a clear socio-economic pattern so one would expect the gilded set of PGA Tour golfers may not suffer the same fate as the handful of players and caddies on the secondary Korn Ferry Tour who tested positive last week.
But I note Tiger Woods has not entered either of the first two weeks and probably won’t play until the Memorial in July. Woods, as usual, moves to the beat of his own drum.
In the meantime, the tour will go on, leapfrogging the virus hotspots or simple going on hopefully. And the full $7.5 million prizefund was paid out at Colonial, which beggars belief in the current economic situation.
The Tour’s tribute to what’s going on? They put the names of local health workers on caddie bibs. What a gesture, eh?
Will Bryson actually explode?
Much wonder – and mirth – at the new size of the self-proclaimed genius Bryson DeChambeau, who arrived at Colonial and set all kinds of records for long-hitting with his new, radically muscled physique.
It seems that Bryson is now almost as big as his gargantuan ego, if that were possible. Once more, DeChambeau’s challenging golf’s orthodoxy which states there’s no benefit to being super-muscular – you know, the thing everyone said when it was suggested that steroids might be being used in elite golf.
It will be interesting to see if DeChambeau maintains last week’s form or if something goes twang as he winds into the ball with every one of his 250lbs.
One thing for sure, it isn’t going to make him play faster, more’s the pity.
Jordan and Rory’s final day travails
Spieth and McIlroy, the last two boy geniuses of golf, both played well for three rounds at Colonial but slumped in the final round.
Spieth’s slump was nothing like as cataclysmic as some he’s endured during this three-year toil for another win. Given his first hit on Thursday after a three-month reset from hitting it sideways was to hit it sideways, there’s much encouragment to be had for him.
As for Rory, in his first time at Colonial it wasn’t at all surprising he came unstuck when the time came to put the foot to the floor on Sunday.
That, rather than some manufactured “pattern” or “trend” is the reality. Last time I looked, he’s still World No 1.