What a startling sight.
You go to the schedule page of pgatour.com and feel as if you’re slapped in the face by the list of tournaments that won’t happen in the next two months:
–Valero Texas Open, canceled
–The Masters, postponed
–RBC Heritage, canceled
–Zurich Classic of New Orleans, canceled
–Wells Fargo, canceled
–AT&T Byron Nelson, canceled
–PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park, postponed
–U.S. Open, postponed
–The Open Championship, canceled even though it wasn’t to be played until JULY
–Olympic Men’s Golf Competition, postponed until 2021
We’d already lost four tournaments in March, including The Players Championship and the WGC Match Play.
That means no pro golf through at least May 17. The way things are going with the COVID-19 fight, it’s a fair question to ask whether there will be pro golf the rest of the year, even as Tour officials moved a number of events to the last five months of 2020.
The new schedule has the FedEx Cup playoffs moving back a week to allow the PGA Championship at Harding Park to slide into the Aug. 6-9 slot.
That means the Tour Championship would end on Labor Day (Sept. 7). Then the U.S. Open at Winged Foot would be Sept. 17-20, leaving the Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin in its original dates, Sept. 25-27.
The other big part of the most recent announcement was the Masters has been moved to Nov. 12-15, which seems a little late. The average high temperature in November in Augusta, Ga., is 67, but the average low is 47. Get ready for a Masters with Pebble Beach weather.
The lists of cancellations and postponements on the other tours are even longer.
The LPGA started cancelling events in February because the tour was in Southeast Asia just as the virus was beginning to spread beyond China. All of its events through early June are off, including the U.S. Women’s Open, rescheduled for December in Houston.
Similarly, the Champions Tour has canceled or rescheduled everything through May 31 plus two events in June, including the U.S. Senior Open in Rhode Island.
It’s still too early to know how all this plays out, of course. We could be in the beginning stages of a long battle. Unfortunately, this could get a lot more startling.
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