However, no one is going to be playing golf for the next two and a half weeks in the Empire State.
On Thursday, New York updated its list of businesses and industries deemed to be essential during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Medical facilities, banks, grocery stores and public works departments are going to remain open, as are public parks and open spaces. However, golf courses, boat launches and marinas used for recreational vessels are now not considered essential.
Curious for a number of reasons, including the growing realization that the models are grossly over-stating the need for hospital/ICU beds and, most importantly, the death toll.
Most folks are focused on the timing and method of reopening America for business, this seems to go the opposite direction. Government being government, this page as of now is still encouraging folks to head to Westchester County's six public courses.
Admit it, though... the concept of golf as an essential business made you smile.
Bonfire of the Elites - Anyone whose faith has been restored in government and other institutions, must have been self-quarantined for the last month...What? Oh, really... and how is that going?
You'll not be surprised that I have a reaction to this header:
Golf’s leaders could relieve the schedule uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic and follow the lead of the Tokyo Games by retooling for 2021
Amusingly, here's someone else that seems to disagree with the header.... the guy that wrote the piece under that header.
That stress was especially intense during the first three weeks of March, as the International Olympic Committee, also based in Lausanne, was fending off withering
Antony Scanlon, the head of the International Golf Federation criticism and mounting pressure to postpone the Tokyo Games because of the coronavirus pandemic. The IGF runs Olympic golf, and Scanlon was tracking developments anxiously.
The postponement was disappointing, yet a great relief.
“We’re pleased that they [IOC leaders] acted decisively at this time to alleviate any uncertainty about preparations for this summer,” Scanlon said.
He was being diplomatic. During the previous six weeks, as coronavirus was finding its stride with the ease of Usain Bolt in a 200-meter race, IOC president Thomas Bach was decisive only in his mind-boggling insistence that the show could go on. Like Bolt, Bach appears to live in a parallel universe.
Only when Canada and Australia threatened to boycott; coronavirus made its way to Africa; the U.S. Olympic Committee pleaded with Bach to postpone; and Abe declared Japan unwilling to host the games in the wake – or worse, a second wave – of the pandemic, did Bach come to his senses.
Yes, they acted decisively after dithering for weeks to protect their feedlot. Bravo!
Oh, and the hardships he endured (he being Scanlon):
Internet service that he described as “functional” has been a mere annoyance to Scanlon while trying to conduct IGF business remotely. More stressful is the uncertainty of tasks at hand.
The privations he's endured....But these guys just can't keep their Stalinist freak flag from flying:
As it turns out, the IOC was ahead of the curve. In the ensuing weeks, only the R&A has taken similar forward-thinking action by postponing the 149th British Open until July 2021. The PGA of America, U.S. Golf Association and PGA Tour continue to operate under the wishful thinking that the PGA Championship, U.S. Open and various Tour events can be played in 2021. Ditto for Augusta National Golf Club, which holds out hope that a November date for the Masters will be doable. (It’s noteworthy that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, unlike his counterparts in California and New York, resisted early shelter-in-place directives and recently displayed a commerce-over-citizens’-health predilection by opening his state’s beaches against the wishes of local governments.)
What another phrase for commerce? People's livlihoods...i.e., the means by which they support their families. When you take that away, you'll cause deaths from a variety of other causes. There's no easy answer on these issues, but the simplistic trade-off of public health against economic considerations will merely raise the straw man body count.
And this is just profoundly silly as well:
As it turns out, the IOC was ahead of the curve. In the ensuing weeks, only the R&A has taken similar forward-thinking action by postponing the 149th British Open until July 2021. The PGA of America, U.S. Golf Association and PGA Tour continue to operate under the wishful thinking that the PGA Championship, U.S. Open and various Tour events can be played in 2021. Ditto for Augusta National Golf Club, which holds out hope that a November date for the Masters will be doable. (It’s noteworthy that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, unlike his counterparts in California and New York, resisted early shelter-in-place directives and recently displayed a commerce-over-citizens’-health predilection by opening his state’s beaches against the wishes of local governments.)
The writers seems unable to understand the difference between postponing an annual event vs. one played every four years. What the writer doesn't explain is why, for instance, it's wrong for Augusta National to hold out hope for that November date.... I'm thinking that hope is a scarce resource these days, and we can all use something to look forward to.
And he keeps doubling down on his stupidity, not least with this truly horrible analogy:
Speculating on the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic is as futile as trying to predict Tiger Woods’ tournament schedule. If the best-case scenario unfolds and the pandemic subsides by late summer, the full-year Tokyo Games postponement might preserve the positive energy that was generated in Rio. But if apprehension about the Zika virus – conspicuous by its absence in Rio – is any indication, coronavirus will have to be a speck in the rearview mirror for the independent contractors who populate pro golf to participate in the Tokyo Games. Otherwise, the likely absence of golf’s big names will doom the sport’s Olympic status after the 2024 Paris Games, perhaps even sooner.
Ummm....we may not know when Tiger's back will allow him to play, but we know with mathematical precision where he wants to play, because it's the same events he's always played.
But nowhere in his self-absorbed pity party does he address the fact that Olympic golf is simply not a serious competition.
At the same publication, Gary Van Sickle (the old Van Cynical moniker seems appropriate here), gives vent to his despondency:
I have a bad feeling the 2020 golf season is done and we just don’t know it yet.I’m not saying it’s over, I’m saying it could be over. And I’m starting to think that maybe it should be over. Even if the worst is over in New York City, and I’m not sure it is, there’s a whole country out there in various stages of infection. The coronavirus is starting to do The Wave across America. This is serious stuff.
The recent relocation of three major championships didn’t raise my optimism. It feels like wishful thinking but maybe that’s because we’re looking up from the bottom of this coronavirus pit and it’s a long, hard climb to get out.Wimbledon, The Olympic Games and golf’s British Open have already canceled. They were set for mid-summer in July and early August.Using those major events as a guideline, not to mention the coronavirus projections, it’s difficult to envision how golf (or other sporting events) will start up before then. At least, not with thousands of fans in attendance. Some pro sports may go fan-less to keep the TV money coming, but crowds are not going to gather for sporting events – and shouldn’t – until we have a semi-instant coronavirus test; a major drop in the number of infected people and a silver-bullet treatment solution or a surefire inoculation.
First and foremost, we just don't know. I think there are some good and obvious reasons why Gary's citations are off the mark for golf. As we know, the two UK events were unnaturally swayed by the specifics of their business interruption policies, to their everlasting shame. The Olympics is of a scale that dwarfs anything else on the list, rendering it the first event that has to go.
But of greater import, the more skeptical we are in any given moment, the more important it is that we see the path forward. The USGA and the folks at ANGC are dealing in hope right now, and I am extremely grateful to them for that. The R&A, on the other hand, can go straight to Hades with those insurance proceeds....
Awaiting An English Translation - I love Padraig Harrington and his sing-song voice as much as the next guy, and he's currently in an awkward position for sure. But what message is he sending here and to whom:
The Ryder Cup is scheduled to take place from September 25-27 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, a week after the re-scheduled U.S. Open, and Harrington believes the absence of fans will ruin the spectacle of the biennial match play event.
“Nobody wants to see the Ryder Cup played without the fans being there,” Harrington told BBC Radio.“There’s no doubt that it makes the tournament so much better. I think the common consensus now is the Ryder Cup will not be played unless the fans are there.
“Non-golfers and golfers around the world watch the Ryder Cup because of the tension that’s created by the spectators.”
Harrington said he held discussions with Ryder Cup organisers regarding the possibility of postponing the event but continues to plan for it to go ahead as scheduled.
“There are bigger things too than the Ryder Cup. It’s a big deal in golf but we have to see the bigger picture,” the three-times major winner added.
Maybe the better question is the on of for whom he is speaking? Perhaps more to the point, does he know for whom the fans will be rooting?
This is the one I don't get. The best case scenario is a horribly compacted schedule.... I just see a 24-player exhibition as a luxury the golf world doesn't have. Push it to '21 and let's get in all the tournament play we can, including those three majors that still matter.
Life After Wartime - Selwyn Nathan runs South Africa's Sunshine Tour, and had these thoughts about the post-Corona golf world:
“It is inevitable, I believe, that there will be a rejig of the calendar by the European Tour to fit in with the U.S. Open, PGA and Masters, and I think there will be a lot of haircuts.“I don’t think guys will be playing for between 800,000 and 1.5-million euros (as a first prize) any more.
“In my opinion, and after speaking to people around the world, we could be winding the clock back to 2000.
“And for now that might be the smartest thing in sport, to go back to something that is more palatable for partners.”
Ya think? Since I've long thought that golf sponsorships were at unsustainable economic levels, this seems inevitable.
But, as badly as Jay Monahan fumbled the shutdown of the Players Championships, getting those rights fees contracts done will prove to be a master stroke.
Care for some more bad commentary? This one amuses me and I do think the author is on to something, but he so mangles his over-riding analogy that comedy ensure. It's Euro-focused, from the Irish Times, and deal mostly with the prospects subscription streaming services.
But get a load of his money 'graph:
Unlike the music business, sport has never had a Napster moment.
You’ll remember Napster as the file-sharing site from the first dotcom boom which changed the music forever, allowing people to listen to individual songs without paying for the whole album. Four months after its June 1999 launch, 150,000 people had signed up. By February 2001, it peaked at a verified 26.4 million users, with some estimates topping 80 million.
It’s not a perfect analogy by any means, but the experience of the music business has a couple of pointers for sport’s digital transformation.
Napster and file-sharing technology was about the fundamental mismatch between what the punters wanted to buy and what the industry wanted to sell. In music’s case, the CD album was the major casualty as streaming revealed it to be a few hit songs bundled together with a bunch of B-sides.
Did you do a spit take? Of course, Napster was about stealing the music for free.... The proper analogy is iTunes, which basically saved the music business. It turned out that folks were willing to pay 99 cents for a song they liked, they just weren't willing to pay that for the fluff that fills out most albums.
Let me just excerpt this bit as well:
“There are only two ways to make money in business,” said Jim Barksdale, creator of Netscape. “One is to bundle; the other is to unbundle.”
Forget sports, this is exactly the position in which the cable companies find themselves right now, as evidenced by the chord cutting generation. The more fundamental problem is that the value of sports rights packages are on that same express elevator down, and we should expect a major revaluation going forward.
Masters Stuff - I would argue that "irreverent" and "Masters" have likely never appeared in the same sentence, yet Golf Digest has this slideshow:
Some fun stuff for sure, such as this:
Ken Green drinks a beer mid-round
Before a devastating car accident in 2009, Ken Green was known as one of the tour's resident iconoclasts. That was best embodied in a moment in the 1997 Masters, when Green drew a pairing with Arnold Palmer, and sought to commemorate the moment in the best way he knew how. "I really didn't know Arnie, and I knew for a fact that I was probably never going to be around him again," Green told Golf Digest in 2003. "I like beer, and I know Arnie likes to dabble. It was like, I've got to have a beer with Arnie. I mean, how could I not? This is my only chance. So I had my buddy go buy me a beer." Green was reprimanded by the tour.
And what did Arnie have?
I have many words to describe this incident, but irreverent isn't one of them:
Vijay Singh tells the press what he REALLY thinks
Singh had won his first major at the 1998 PGA, but it was his win at the 2000 Mastersthat truly elevated him into golf's elite. The veteran had long had a contentious relationship with the media, owing to a prickly demeanor, and coverage of a specific incident on the Asian Tour earlier in his career. The win at the Masters was an opportunity to portray himself in a new light, but after the traditional press conferences and ceremonies, Singh couldn't resist. As he left on Sunday evening, he called out to the media, "Kiss my ass, everybody," a gesture that did little to ingratiate himself with the fourth estate.
Before you pucker up, Sports Illustrated's John Garrity went to Indonesia in 1996 to investigate these allegations. While that article is behind SI's paywall, this bit from Garrity in 2000 summarizes what he found:
"I interviewed the Indonesian Golf Association official who ruled that Singh had improved his score in Jakarta by a stroke—just enough to make the cut—before signing his card. I reviewed the incident with Asian tour players of the time, including the Canadian pro who played with Singh that day. "It was not a misunderstanding," said an American player who was there. 'All of us who were around are very upset that Vijay denies this.' "
The shame of it all is that Vijay could have readily found acceptance if he had just admitted to an error of youth. The evidence is damning, and his lockdown makes him one the least liked people in our game...
This one should come with an irony alert. Guess which meaningless PGA Tour event will come the week before the Masters?
After losing its prime-time April slotting last season, the Houston Open once again findsitself, accidentally, as the Augusta National warm-up for the 2020 Masters.
On Monday Augusta National Golf Club announced that the Masters would be moving to Nov. 9-15, the week occupied by the Houston Open on the PGA Tour's fall slate. But following the joint statement from golf's governing bodies, Houston Open officials announced that they had accommodated requests from Augusta National Golf Club and the Tour to move its event a week early.
"This is a win-win for both tournaments," said Astros Golf Foundation president Giles Kibbe. "The Masters has their rescheduled dates, and the change places our tournament as the premier tournament to once again be played the week prior."
They will not be able to replicate Masters conditions at their new venue, though that always seemed unlikely. More importantly, with the involvement of the Astros, your humble correspondent will be in full boycott mode. But I do hope they continue banging on the garbage cans....
The Bamberger/Shipnuck fever dream Masters continues to amuse. I'll merely provide an excerpt or two from Day Two (which is not Round 2, but rather seems to be Monday):
On Monday morning of Masters weeks, Rory McIlroy could be found on a Peloton bike in the West Lake gym, Franz Ferdinand pumping audibly out of his ear buds. He wascooling down when Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson swaggered in, trailed by Joseph Diovisalvi — Joey D! — their trainer, built like a fire hydrant, more intense than any Marine sergeant. The complicated relationship between Brooks and Dustin has been the source of conjecture ever since their fracas at the 2018 Ryder Cup, which began, according to sources, during a taut game of Words With Friends; Johnson insisted that traj was a valid word even though the game rejected it. When Brooks quoted Bobby Jones — “The main idea in golf as in life is to learn to accept what cannot be altered and to keep on doing one’s own reasoned and resolute best whether the prospect be bleak or rosy” — Johnson put him in a headlock, touching a brawl that didn’t end until Webb Simpson began pouring CBD oil in their eyes. Knowing all of this, McIlroy couldn’t resist a jab by way of hello: “You wankers here to lift or to box?”
Koepka ambled over, draping a meaty forearm on McIlroy’s bike. “You get your thank-you note from Jay yet?” he asked.
“Just a bottle of Chateau Margaux,” McIlroy said. “I would have preferred the commish send me a box of FedEx Cup points.”
Johnson was looking on blankly until Joey D whispered, ”PGL.”
“Man,” Dustin said, “why’d you guys have to blow up my spot? That was long money. All we were gonna have to do is show up and get paid — no one would have cared how we actually played.”
“That’s what the WGCs are for,” Koepka said. “Let’s get to work, meat.”
That's pretty good, no? DJ's cluelessness ringing especially true...
As is this:
Spieth and Fowler were taking on DeChambeau and Rahm in a $2,500 best-ball match. “Just enough to make it interesting,” Fowler said.
The fans following the foursome picked up on the action and were openly rooting for Jordan and Rickie. “On a likability basis,” Michael Greller whispered, “this is poachers versus baby seals.” Greller caddies for one of the seals, Jordan Spieth.
Spieth and his team, to use his favorite word, were all flying high after his victory at the Match Play ended a painfully long and public winless streak. Spieth is an underrated trash-talker and he was chirpy from the start. On the 4th tee, Rahm shoved a 2-iron well right of his intended line. As the ball soared increasingly offline, Spieth said softly, “Be as good as you look.” Rahm’s Spanish response did not require any translation services.
Perhaps that Match-Play win is the first false note, but the I do like the poachers v. seals bit...
As you likely know by now, CBS is filling it's schedule this weekend with rebroadcasts, focusing on the 2004 and 2019 editions. I might have chosen differently, but those are two good ones and they're trying something novel:
In lieu of the 2020 Masters taking place this weekend at Augusta National Golf Club, CBS Sports will broadcast the final rounds of the 2004 and 2019 Masters on Saturday and Sunday, respectively, as well as highlights from the 1975 Masters. As such, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods will be featured prominently on CBS over the weekend.
But it's even better than that. Mickelson and Woods will join CBS lead broadcaster Jim Nantz this weekend to relive their final rounds. Both Lefty and Tiger will be interviewed by Nantz as they watch key shots and impactful moments from the aforementioned final rounds. The final rounds of the 2004 Masters on Saturday and 2019 Masters on Sunday will air on CBS and stream live on both CBSSports.com and the CBS Sports app.
"[They're able to translate what they're thinking on a relatable level] even more than I even appreciated," Nantz said of his conversations with Mickelson and Woods. "I'm around them all the time. I'm at dinner with Nick Faldo or members of our CBS broadcast crew through all the years, and you hear things and think, 'Man!' The insight, the minute little details they factor in, it's amazing. You're going to hear that with both of them. The high level of detail that goes into every situation, including how they practice for certain shots for the Masters alone."
That's a great idea, though I'll need more than Jim Nancy Boy's assertion that they pull it off. I'll probably go ahead and tape them, but I'm not sure I'll devote all that many hours to it.... They'll need to be very interesting, and Phil at least has the benefit of the passage of time dulling our recall. I really feel no need to watch last year's because it's all still pretty fresh.
Have a great weekend.
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