By Tod Leonard
In a restaurant at an upscale San Diego outdoor mall bustling with post-Christmas shoppers at lunchtime, Marty Gorsich considers his good fortune between bites of his salmon and salad. Gorsich is the executive director of the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open, and just a few miles up the road in La Jolla, he’s got a full city of hospitality tents and grandstands rising up from the turf at Torrey Pines for the tournament that will be staged late next month.

A year ago, Torrey barely looked as if it were hosting anything other than a men’s club championship as no fans were allowed to attend the Farmers and other events on the West Coast Swing because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, starting next week in Maui, all of those same tournaments in Hawaii, California and Arizona that begin the tour’s 2022 calendar year are set to look like the pandemic is fully behind us—even as the world experiences record spikes in COVID-19 because of the Omicron variant. All seven of the West Coast Swing events expect crowds at pre-pandemic levels, and corporate and high-end hospitality sales have been brisk. Currently, only two tournaments will require proof of vaccination from spectators—the Sony Open in Honolulu and The American Express in La Quinta, Calif.—and the PGA Tour has no plans to change its current player protocols.

“It’s an absolute blessing to be in golf,” Gorsich says.

He offers that with the knowledge that the game, both at the recreational and competitive levels, has managed to stride forward—even experience a participation boom—because it is played outdoors among individuals who can socially distance if they choose. Yes, professional golf has seen some athletes test positive for the virus and go into quarantine, but the PGA Tour has staged nearly 19 months of weekly tournaments since the initial shutdown in the spring of 2020. Team sports, meantime, continue to suffer frequent schedule interruptions amid waves of positive COVID tests among players.

“Our guys aren’t sitting in a film room together. They’re not all in a locker room at the same time,” Gorisch says.

Only 24 hours before Gorisch’s lunch, he got a sobering reminder of the differences. The Holiday Bowl in San Diego was cancelled just a few hours prior to kickoff because UCLA had too many positive COVID tests to field a team against North Carolina State. Fans from around the country who travelled for the game were shut out, and millions of dollars spent to configure the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park for football were wasted.

Gorisch felt horrible for his peers who organized the bowl, but that is the nerve-rattling nature of the sports and entertainment business right now. Twenty-two months into the pandemic, any semblance of normalcy is gauged from day to day.

But this winter does feel different, Gorsich says. Omicron, while highly contagious, doesn’t appear to carry the same dire health consequences as the previous coronavirus strains—at least among those who are vaccinated. Numerous scientific studies also have shown that the chance of contracting the virus outdoors is rare, and that seemingly has not changed with Omicron.

“There’s nothing about this variant that would suggest it would spread more easily outdoors or with more difficulty indoors,” John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at the University of California-Berkeley told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Harry How
Sightings of celebrities such as Bill Murray are expected to be back in 2022 for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

The PGA Tour began allowing larger crowds last spring and the size of galleries grew with each passing event. While the four major championships limited their crowds to the low 10,000s, all are expecting to offer full allotments of tickets this year.

Steve John, the CEO of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation and tournament director for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, said in a telephone interview that ticket and corporate pre-sales for the tournament, to be played Feb. 3-6, are “higher than they’ve ever been.” The event will have its full contingency of celebrity amateurs playing alongside the pros—something that didn’t happened in 2021, making the event terribly un-Pebble-like.

“There’s a great demand for people to return to normalcy,” John said. “That’s a statement in our whole world right now. Everybody wants to get back to normal.

“We’re keenly aware of what’s going on in our area,” John added. “We don’t want to be tone-deaf to anything that would be an issue for us. We’re in communication with a lot of the key constituents. But there is no reason to believe at this point in time that it would be harmful for anybody coming to our tournament.”

In San Diego, Gorsich said corporate and high-end sales have been “very strong,” and a new, mid-priced hospitality venue, called the Canyon Club, has sold out for Friday and Saturday at $360 per person. (The Farmers, set for Jan. 26-29, faced a new challenge this year in going to a Wednesday through Saturday schedule so as not to conflict with the NFL’s conference championship games that Sunday.)

Other tournaments are going full out with large-crowd attractions. The American Express (Jan. 26-29) has Brad Paisley and Maroon 5 playing post-round concerts, while the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Feb. 10-13 at TPC Scottsdale, is back to having its full stadium effect of about 20,000 people at the par-3 16th hole. And as the Thunderbirds organizers push the golf entertainment envelope, for the first time a stage will be erected in the middle of the hole after play on Saturday for a live concert with Old Dominion and Thomas Rhett.

The PGA Tour, as an organisation, is watching and encouraging the plans with cautious optimism. “The health and safety of everyone involved with PGA Tour tournaments, as well as the communities in which we play, is paramount,” a tour spokesman said.

Currently, there are no plans to change virus protocols for the players or other tour personnel, said the spokesman, who reported that approximately 75 percent of tour-related personnel are vaccinated. Players won’t be tested before or during tournaments, through on-site testing is available for personnel who request one.

In a tour memo, obtained by Golf Digest, that was sent to the membership on Dec. 22, the tour emphasised that “vaccination, boosters, masking, and social distancing are all critically important.”

The tour has made at least one change in its plans because of the Omicron surge. It hoped to expand its player hospitality services to more people, but it has informed players that only they and a spouse or “one significant other” will be allowed in dining, where masks will still be required when not eating or drinking.

“While we had hoped to expand access to restricted areas in the new year, it would not be prudent to do so at this time,” the tour said in the memo. “We will continue to closely monitor the conditions in the communities where we play and adjust protocols as soon as it is responsible.”

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By Brian Wacker
This week’s Bermuda Championship will be the first PGA Tour event to allow fans on site since the opening round of the Players Championship in mid-March because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Although the island paradise has had just 188 total cases of coronavirus and has only three current known cases, strict guidelines will be in place at the tournament—most notably a maximum of 500 spectators will be permitted on the grounds at Port Royal Golf Course each tournament day.

There are other stringent protocols as well, including the requirement of anyone at the event getting tested seven days before arriving, then tested again upon arrival on the island while staying in their hotel room until receiving a negative test result. Masks will also be required for anyone in attendance.

“We were lucky the Bermudian government and the health team here have kept the island safe,” said tournament director Sean Sovacool. “We were able to get the tour comfortable [with the idea of having fans] and their protocols matched with Bermuda’s.”

There are plenty of other safeguards, too: Temperature checks, socially distant viewing areas and pre-packaged food and beverages among them, along with all the regular guidelines that the tour has in place for its players.

Given that, the relatively isolated location and (lack of) scale of the second-year tournament, Sovacool said he was always confident the tournament would be able to take place with fans, particularly as the number of coronavirus cases remained consistently low on the island.

There’s also certain level of comfort for those competing, and spectators will be a welcome sight.

“I think it’s a step forward,” Anirbhan Lahiri said on Tuesday. “Bermuda as a country has done really well in managing and handling the virus.

“It will also be great for us to have the galleries again and have that atmosphere that obviously they bring. So it’s really great to see that opening up. I think we will be opening up a little bit going forward in the U.S. as well.”

That’s where the real test will come.

The tour has not allowed fans since its return from a three-month break due to the pandemic in June. The PGA Championship and U.S. Open were played without spectators, and the Masters won’t have them when it’s played next month. But next week’s Houston Open will also allow fans on site, capping its capacity at 2,000 spectators per day.

Sam Greenwood
Fans leave last year’s Houston Open during a weather delay. As many as 2,000 will be on the grounds for this year’s event.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases across the country are at an all-time high. After a drop in new cases in September, the U.S. is now averaging nearly 70,000 new cases per day. Hospitalizations are also up in many states, including Texas. And while Houston hasn’t yet seen a big spike that other parts of the state have, the numbers are trending upward. On Monday, more than 6,500 new cases were reported, up from just over 4,600 the Monday prior and more than double the number from two weeks earlier.

Experts also say another surge may be coming to Houston.

“We’re going through a phase that I call slow and steady,” Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious disease specialist with University of Texas Physicians and University of Texas Health, told television station KHOU. “[It] makes us feel comfortable because we’re not exceeding our hospital capacity, we’re not seeing people around us getting sick necessarily. But we should not get too comfortable with this phase.”

For its part, the Houston Open will require spectators, volunteers and tournament workers to wear masks at all times while on site at Memorial Park Golf Course, which sits just outside downtown. What other measures the tournament will have in place, however, still aren’t entirely clear, and tournament director Colby Callaway did not respond to emails from Golf Digest seeking more information.

Despite the rise in coronavirus cases, however, the tournament isn’t short on big names. Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler, Jason Day, Tony Finau and Brandt Snedeker are all scheduled to play.

That’s not to say everyone is entirely comfortable with the idea of having fans at the event, particularly with the Masters looming a week later and the possibility of testing positive and having to miss the year’s final major.

“For me personally, I don’t like the risk that having that happen the week before the Masters,” Phil Mickelson said last week. “I just feel like the week before the Masters, like that’s a big tournament we have and I just don’t want to have any risk heading in there. “It has made me question whether or not I’ll play there.”

Though Mickelson clarified his comments a few days later, saying he thinks the tour will do a great job and that having fans wouldn’t be a deciding factor on whether he plays the event or not, he has yet to commit to the tournament and is also considering the PGA Tour Champions event in Phoenix, which has said it will limit daily spectators to 350 members.

Whatever Mickelson does, he’s not alone in his feelings.

Scott Stallings, who is in the field this week in Bermuda and will play in Houston next week, believes it’s too soon to have fans in attendance. Privately, others also expressed similar concerns.

“It’s not worth the risk with only three events left in the U.S.,” Stallings said. “We’ve made it this far without issue, why rush back?”

Cliff Hawkins
Brendon Todd greets fans after winning during the final round of the 2019 Bermuda Championship at Port Royal Golf Course.

Initially, the Memorial tournament in July was slated to have as many as 8,000 fans per day. But players voted against the idea and the plan was scrapped. More than three months later, the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. is even higher, though the number of players on tour to have tested positive has remained low—13 in all after Johnson tested positive before the CJ Cup two weeks ago and Adam Scott was positive before last week’s Zozo Championship.

Golf does, however, have the advantage of being able to spread out its fans, or at least a couple thousand of them, over a couple of hundred acres of open space. And there’s something to be said for the Houston Open as being something of a test case.

Over the last few months, the tour has found a way forward. Allowing fans—a financially integral part of the ability for a sponsor to put on a tournament at all—would be the next step. However, such decisions also only go as far as state and local regulations allow. It seems possible, for example, that fans would be permitted at the four events in California during the tour’s West Coast Swing in the first two months of 2021, according to sources. The state has yet to allow fans to attend sporting events of any kind.

Other players, meanwhile, fall somewhere in between on how they feel about the return of spectators. They welcome the energy and buzz they bring, but do so cautiously.

“I’m OK with it and want to see how plans are implemented,” said James Hahn, who is one of four player directors on tour and will also play in Houston. “I’m hesitant to disagree with [the decision]. But it’s not that I agree with it, either. I need to play. I need the points and I like the event.

“Is it worth my health to try to go play?”

The same could be asked of having a couple of thousand fans in Houston and what it will ultimately mean for the tour as it plays on, this time in front of an audience.

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By Tod Leonard
The PGA Tour has identified another event that will allow a limited number of fans to be in attendance. The tour and event organisers announced on Friday that the Houston Open, to be played Nov. 5-8, will offer 2,000 daily tickets, with the requirement that all fans, volunteers and essential workers wear masks at all times.

It was announced in late September that the Bermuda Championship, scheduled for the week before Houston, will also allow a limited number of general spectators, though it figures to be a much smaller gallery that in Texas. (September’s Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship in the Dominican Republic allowed small groups of invited guests.) The PGA Tour hasn’t offered general admission into an event since the circuit originally shut downplay in March after the first round of the Players Championship. Houston falls the week before the Masters, which won’t have spectators.

Fans have been allowed to attend several events now on the PGA Tour Champions.

“We are very happy that we will have fans at Memorial Park for this year’s Houston Open. We greatly appreciate the efforts of the City of Houston, Dr. David Persse [Chief Medical Officer for the City of Houston], and the PGA Tour for working with us in developing a thorough Health and Safety Plan that has enabled this to occur,” said. Giles Kibbe, president of the host organization, Astros Golf Foundation. “The health and safety for all on property at Memorial Park and the City of Houston is our highest priority as we welcome members of the community to the newly-renovated venue and to watch the best players in the world compete.”

Among those previously committed to play in Houston is Dustin Johnson, who had to withdraw from this week’s CJ Cup after testing positive for the coronavirus. Others expected to play include Jason Day, Tony Finau, Rickie Fowler and Phil Mickelson. The defending champion is Lanto Griffin, who captured his first PGA Tour title at last year’s tournament.

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