By Shane Ryan
HILTON HEAD, S.C.—When the idea came down from my editors the week of the RBC Heritage—why don’t you go watch the 18th hole from one of the yachts in Calibogue Sound?—I experienced a brief surge of excitement, followed by waves of dread. The upside is obvious. We’re at Harbour Town Golf Links, which is unique for many reasons, chief of which is the iconic lighthouse rising past the 18th green and the fleet of white yachts bobbing on the water along the 18th fairway. What’s it like to watch golf from that vantage? A great question worth exploring, and, worst-case scenario, you spend some time on a yacht.

Great. But at that point, the potential problems mounted in my mind: What if watching golf from a boat in the water turned out to be incredibly boring? (“I stood on the bridge and squinted. In the distance, I could almost make out some golfers.”) What if yachting culture turns out not to be about golf at all? What if, god forbid, I was forced to sit scribbling notes among the drunken golden-skinned 20-something hordes as they became increasingly suspicious or hostile to the sweaty 38-year-old in their midst? And the biggest problem of all, the stumper of stumpers: How the hell do I get on a yacht?

“It’s OK if it doesn’t work out,” I was told, which is a little like somebody saying, “It’s OK if there’s no Christmas morning this year.” Sure, it’s fine, it’s dandy, but once you put a yacht in somebody’s brain, my own included, there’s no satisfying ending that doesn’t end with me on a boat. (In literature, this principle is called Chekhov’s Yacht.)

I had to find a way, or I was a disappointment and a fraud.

On Friday, picking up my parking pass and with no real idea how to go forward, I asked the nice woman in the hut if she knew anybody with a yacht. I received a tight smile in response, but behind me, an excited voice rang out.

“Hell, I know a lot of people with yachts!”

That’s when I met a man I’ll call “Frank” (not his real name). Frank sold fighting chairs, which I learned are the seats on a boat from which you wrangle with mighty sea beasts. He’d sold to various yachtsmen in Hilton Head, he said, he knew everyone in the Harbour Town Yacht Basin, and I could have my pick of boats. I shook his hand, elated on the inside, knowing in my heart of hearts that this was a sign: The universe wanted to see me on a yacht.

As the day wore on, though, things got a bit strange. Frank’s frequent calls became a bit more disjointed, and I listened in mystification as he told me that his girlfriend was getting angry at him for talking to me, and then insisted that I call his brother in Georgia to set the whole thing up. Only one catch: Under no condition could I tell Frank’s brother that I had spoken with Frank. I asked why, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I did not make that call, but late on Friday afternoon he called again with an alleged yacht owner who was allegedly willing to take me out. On the phone, the man sounded deeply unenthused, and I suspected right away that I wouldn’t hear from him in the morning…which turned out to be right. He handed the phone back to Frank, who told me he needed two “executive tickets” to the course for Saturday. I got off the phone, waited an hour, and texted him that there were no tickets left over.

So much for Frank. But I had thrown out a couple other lines. A few others fizzled out, and it turned out that Leslie Whitener was my last hope. Lucky for me, she was a hell of a good hope. She’s the harbour master at Sea Pines Resort—she’s been there for 38 years—and she works out of an office just below the lighthouse beyond the 18th green, and from our first phone call, I could tell I had struck human gold. When I visited her, just past the marina where the white yachts gleamed in the afternoon sun, she handed me a written list of seven possibilities—names, boat names, slip numbers to help me locate them, and a fact or two about each. We talked for a moment, and it occurred to me that this was somebody I’d like to hang out with for a lot longer.

“Are they nice people?” I asked, scanning her list and dreading the idea of approaching the yacht people cold.

“I didn’t put any of the a–holes on there,” she said.

I took her list, surveyed the yachts, and decided to take the coward’s way out. I picked out my favourite name from the list—Rocky Sease, which is almost too perfect for a captain—found him on Facebook and sent a message that he quickly returned. Just like that, I had booked some free time on a yacht.

Stephen Dey

***

I want to level with you now, because you may be starting to wonder where the actual golf in this story comes in. Here’s the truth: The people who come to the RBC Heritage on yachts are sort of here for the golf, but they’re very much here for the party. A good number of them never leave the marina. They’re seeing old friends, walking at the docks from boat to boat, eating good food, and drinking good drink. What else do you need? Others drop anchor off the 18th fairway, but without a powerful set of binoculars, there’s really no “watching” the golf, so they drink instead. And if they really want to see golf, they buy tickets and watch on dry land.

This is why this story is more about yachts. And if you want the answer to that central question of what it’s like to watch golf from a boat, here’s the short version:

Who knows?

***

I met Rocky and his wife Melissa at noon on Saturday at slip 18. He wore a Nautica T-shirt, she a floral print shirt and Ray-Bans, and they welcomed me onto the deck of The Boys’ Inheritance IV, a lovely 52-foot 2007 Carver Voyager with leather seats in the salon, three bedrooms below, a bridge on the fourth story from which Rocky navigates, and a head—that’s the bathroom—where, slightly panicked at the very end of our journey, I vainly searched for the flushing mechanism.

Luckily, Melissa and Rocky are the kinds of hosts who don’t make you feel the least bit bad when you confess that kind of thing to them; it was pure southern hospitality from the start. My wife, who grew up on a boat, had coached me to ask for the captain’s permission before boarding, which helped me avoid an early faux pas, and I quickly learned that the only other real blunder I could make was being caught without a drink. If the job requires it, I told them, I’d make any sacrifice. Impressed by professionalism, they gave me a Bud Light, and then another, and if it were up to them, I would be writing this article completely sloshed.

I kept my head and began to pry. They started a company together called SOS International in 2002, the aim of which was to train and certify men and women who work on high-voltage lines. They secured contracts from local municipalities and utilities, and watched the company expand across the country and eventually the world. It was a good idea—the fact that they own a yacht attests to that—and last year they sold the company and are now in semi-retirement. Rocky is 65, Melissa’s 59, they both look and act much younger, and now they are full-time yachters. Is this the American dream? If not, it probably should be.

They come to the Heritage every year and have for more than a decade. The name of their boat—The Boys’ Inheritance—was funnier than I expected. I assumed it meant their sons would inherit the boat, but in reality, it was about spending that inheritance on yachts, sons be damned. They’ve bought four so far, each one larger than the last. We were soon joined by her son Andrew and a group of his friends, and when I asked how Andrew felt about all of this, he smiled.

“The next one they buy should be called The Boys’ Inheritance is Gone.”

(Andrew and I very briefly discussed his high school golf career—he’s near scratch—which constituted pretty much the entirety of the golf talk in my two hours on the yacht.)

Rocky was kind enough to take us all for a spin around Calibogue Sound, and our group had grown significantly. Along with the various young people—the men drank outside, the women sat on the bridge and discussed weddings—Kevin Ambrose and his partner Terrence Burns, who owned the nearby Sans Souci, came aboard before we pulled out of the marina.

I have been on exactly two kinds of boats in my life, a motorboat and a ferry, and riding with Rocky in the bridge, the water a long distance below, this felt more like a ferry. He exuded a reassuring sangfroid at the helm, and it didn’t surprise me to learn that in their worst nautical moment, storm-tossed in the Bahamas and with Melissa considering her own mortality while comforting a policeman they had on as a passenger, Rocky’s greatest concern, as he navigated them to safety, was a wave that broke his windshield wiper. (At the end of our journey, he had to pull off the feat of parking the boat in the narrow berth of slip 18 with a crowd of at least a dozen watching, in reverse, with any error sure to go on GolfDigest.com.)

As he navigated, Melissa, Kevin, Terrence, and the others entertained my questions about the boating life. What’s the appeal here, I wondered?

It came down to a few factors: the camaraderie, the peace, nature, food, and drink.

“It is the most fun,” Melissa said. “It’s the best form of stress-relief.”

“Second-best,” Kevin corrected.

(For what it’s worth, Kevin was a pip. When I asked for his last name later, and wondered if he and Terrence shared a name, he said, “We’re Republicans, we don’t believe in gay marriage.”)

We drove past Hilton Head’s gold coast and Daufuskie Island, the kind of throwback reachable only by boat, and they told me about all the places they’d visited, from the Barrier Islands to the Florida Keys to the Bahamas, and as far north as Maryland…but no farther. These were southerners through and through, peppering their speech with phrases like “toddy” (which apparently refers to any kind of alcohol), and that classic of passive-aggressive sympathy, “bless your heart.” The biggest disagreement between them was the Clemson-Georgia football rivalry (Rocky’s Clemson, Melissa’s Georgia), and in the rare moments when something vaguely political came up, I made sure to smile and nod. Bad enough to be a Yankee … I’m not a strong swimmer.

In truth, though, they were too nice to toss me overboard even if I had been an ungrateful boor. It’s a cultural niceness that can seem odd in the abstract if you’re not used to it, but is all-encompassing in the moment, to the point that you’re grateful for hosts like these and think, in the moments before real life resumes, “Yes, sure, I could disappear into this.”

“We can be whatever we want out here,” said Melissa, and Rocky, who has been handling boats since he was young, valued the solitude of places like the undeveloped Barrier Islands above all else. The group dynamic, too, kept coming up—these were their friends, and one way or another, in ways that are difficult to explain, the experience of boating made them closer. Out on the water, it’s easy to see what they meant, and I enjoyed hearing their stories; how Rocky once drove by accident into a U.S. naval base outside Jacksonville, how he knew Melissa was a keeper when he watched her crack her own crab legs.

On the way in, Rocky let me take the helm. I could have stayed there for hours, steering the ship around the sound, watching the prow cut through the water. There’s a feeling of power at first—the “I’m on a boat!” mindset that makes you feel a little superior to everything below—but that quickly fades into a kind of serenity. I had to give up the seat eventually, and when I joked about a rogue journalist crashing a yacht in the marina, Rocky said he’d at least get a new boat out of it, and Golf Digest would be renamed “Rocky’s f***ing Magazine.”

At the end of our journey, he drove parallel to the shore, slowing down along the 18th fairway so I could take a photo or two. I stood on the bridge and squinted. In the distance, I could almost make out some golfers.

The post The secret to watching golf from a yacht on Hilton Head? Forget the golf appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Shane Ryan
A fascinating detail emerged from Hilton Head earlier this week when an operations worker at the RBC Heritage tweeted out a photo of the back side of the driving range at Harbour Town, where a secondary net supported by two boom lifts rose above the regular net at the back of the range, jutting out like the lid on a baseball cap. It’s worth seeing that photo again:

Working the Heritage this week and they paid thousands for these cranes to hold up this net so Bryson doesn’t hit it over the range on to #8 green… Bryson withdrew today ?? pic.twitter.com/PIbQimyu3U

— Tommy (@imsowaivy) April 12, 2021

The reason for the new net seemed obvious: The normal one, standing about 130 feet at the corners, clearly wasn’t high enough to contain the big hitters like Bryson DeChambeau, and something more was required. As you see from the photo, the eighth green is directly behind the range, as well as the volunteer tent and a well-travelled road, meaning that when the longest hitters stood at the range, walking behind that net was a little like getting lost in the Arizona desert and finding yourself in the forbidden zone where the U.S. Army holds artillery practice.

As it turns out, that explanation is exactly right. According to Jonathan Wright, golf course superintendent at Harbour Town, things did indeed get a little dicey in 2020, and it wasn’t all DeChambeau’s fault. With the tournament moved to June in the midst of the pandemic, the wind came from the south—opposite its typical April direction—and the heat and humidity played a role in the ball travelling farther.

“None of that helped at all,” Wright said. “But then you got Bryson DeChambeau, who hits the ball 430 yards, and Rory McIlroy, who hits it 430 yards, and it became a kind of competition between the players to see who could hit it over the net. There were no spectators, so they were goofing around, just pelting balls. You had balls hitting eight green, balls hitting the pond near eight green, balls hitting the houses over the road by eight green.”

There was a tent where all the volunteers congregated last year, and it became a legitimately dangerous spot to be. Eventually, when enough balls landed by them or were heard echoing off the canopy of trees behind the net—not to mention the shots that made it all the way to the houses—people began to figure out what was going on. Wright and his staff put signs up, but beyond asking players like DeChambeau to use caution or even move back when they hit driver, there wasn’t much anyone could do.

This year, with spectators returning, they needed a solution, and it was unclear whether simply extending the net to greater heights would violate a Hilton Head ordinance. What was clear was that it would be expensive—perhaps as much as $100,000. Instead, they decided to try a temporary fix, which is the point at which Wright and his team became like golf’s version of MacGyver.

It was time to bring in the net. Well, two nets, actually, attached in the centre by carabiners.

With Wright watching and guiding from the range, via phone and radio, two workers guided the rental boom lifts—”I’d say they’re qualified,” Wright told me with a laugh. “They’re qualified, but they’re not qualified”—and attempted to manoeuvre the nets over the trees and into a position where it would catch the drives that the permanent net could not. (You’ll be happy to know the “qualified” workers operated the machines from the ground.)

Even to get to that point involved a slew of complications, from buying the wrong equipment at the hardware store, to dealing with the tricky guide wires, to trimming tree branches that got in the net’s way, to watching the net get snagged on bolts or sagging in the centre or blowing chaotically in the wind. Eventually, they had to bring in a crane because they lacked support rope or cables on the bottom. The process began last Tuesday when the boom lifts arrived, but—massive understatement—it did not finish last Tuesday.

“It was the most stressful part of our week,” said Wright. “It was a bit of a process, man.”

He and Morgan Hyde, the vice president of operations at the tournament, estimate that the total cost of the net and the lifts and the various smaller equipment needs ran to about $20,000, and that’s not counting the roughly 30 hours of man hours it took to get it fully operational.

If you’re a fan of futility or the universe laughing at your plans, you’ll love this next detail: According to reports from the ground, players are still hitting balls over the net.

Which is why, when Wright heard that DeChambeau had withdrawn from the tournament, he didn’t know quite how to take the news. Should he be disappointed or relieved?

“I would have liked the guy to be here because he’s one of the top players in the world, so it hurt my feelings a little bit,” Wright said. “But at least we knew we were a little bit more secure with spectators, you know?”

All of which is to say, if you plan on strolling around the eighth green this weekend at Harbour Town, maybe your first stop should by the A-2-Z Military Surplus store in nearby Savannah, Ga. At a place like that, you can get a hell of a good helmet.

The post Here’s the real story behind the ‘Bryson Net’ at the Harbour Town driving range appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

As of Sunday’s conclusion of the RBC Heritage, Watney remains the only PGA Tour player to test positive, with 11 people who came in contact with Watney testing negative on Saturday after follow-up COVID-19 evaluations (more on this in a moment). Alarming times as these may be, anyone claiming Watney’s positive test is a catastrophe is, inadvertently or not, a prisoner of fear-mongering. Still while the overriding question remains the same—Can the tour pull this off?—another now precedes it:

After a positive test, where does the tour go from here?

It is not a query that begets a singular, clear-cut answer. However, after speaking with tour and tournament officials, players, caddies and an epidemiologist, the response also is not as ambiguous as it may seem.

Is golf still considered a safe sport?

A positive test at a tournament requires every facet of the tour’s effort to be re-evaluated, starting with the fundamental safety of playing golf. According to Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security, that answer remains yes.

“It is very, very unlikely [Watney catching COVID-19] happened at the golf course,” said Dr. Adalja. “We continue to find out more about this virus every day, but we know outdoor transmission is much less likely than other activities.”

The low probability factors in the occasional breach of social distancing, like players and caddies touching clubs and groups congregating at the practice green. This is not to imply the virus can’t be passed while at the golf course, Dr. Adalja said. Just that the meaningful detective work should begin with where else Watney’s been, and who he was with.

“This is about contact tracing, that is the key,” Dr. Adalja said.

Photo by Ben Jared

Watney, who is now in self-isolation as required by the tour’s safety protocol for at least 10 days pending follow-up tests, has not commented publicly about his positive test or his whereabouts in the days prior, but Sergio Garcia confirmed he gave Watney a ride on his private plane from Texas (they both live in Austin) to South Carolina. Garcia has not tested positive thus far, but that transportation does raise its own point …

Does the tour need to rethink its bubble?

Well, the tour never had a “bubble,” per se. Travelling across the country, rather than picking a de facto home base for operations (like the NBA is doing with Disney World) shattered that notion. Chartered planes are convenient and safe options—players and caddies can only ride following a negative test—yet players and caddies are also making separate air, be it commercial or private, and ground arrangements. While there are designated host hotels, players are allowed to stay elsewhere. Despite the low odds of outside transmission and stringent policing on tournament grounds, the tour’s ecosystem begins and ends at the golf course. Outside those confines, it’s essentially the honour system meets the real world.

In that vein, there’s also the significance of where the tournaments are held. South Carolina and Texas are two current coronavirus hotspots in the United States, and as Justin Thomas noted on Saturday, Hilton Head seemed to be proceeding as if the pandemic was over. As of Sunday, 22 states were experiencing 14-day increases in cases, and the country’s new daily cases on Friday and Saturday breached 30,000, the most in six weeks. (Daily deaths are continuing to slowly decline.)

Now, any direct correlation to the island’s laissez-faire attitude and Watney’s test is a false equivalency. But Thomas’ remarks underscore how little of this is under tour jurisdiction, and control. And that truth is perhaps the toughest swallow, and biggest obstacle, going forward.

“There’s active community spread. Athletes are not immune,” Dr. Adalja said. “These bubbles are not hermetically sealed, and as we said, in the PGA Tour’s case, there is no bubble.”

Still, Watney’s positive has not triggered a massive revamping of the health and safety plan from the tour.

Sources with close knowledge of the subject tell Golf Digest that, while the tour will continue to improve and refine its protocols, it remains confident in the guidelines set forth. Likewise, sources with the Travelers Championship, next on the tour’s schedule, said the tournament is not deviating from its blueprint due to Watney’s test.

There will likely be an update sent to tour constituents on Monday or Tuesday, according to sources, but it will mostly be a reminder of the protocols and the need to maintain social-distancing practices. For now, the plan remains the same.

RELATED: 5 takeaways from the final round at Harbour Town

Do players and caddies trust the safety protocols?

Photo by Kevin C. Cox

Players are not shy when it comes to airing their grievances with the tour and its brass. But publicly and privately, Watney’s positive test has not appeared to have shaken the players’ faith in the tour’s system.

“I feel very safe. I wouldn’t be playing if I didn’t,” Thomas said Saturday. “The tour has done all the protocols they can.”

Thomas was joined by two other megastars in Rory McIlroy and Brooks Koepka, both maintaining their endorsements.

“Yeah, when I do the things I’m supposed to do and I’m at the tournament site, I feel very safe, yeah,” McIlroy said. Added Koepka: “We’re doing what we can as far as players, the tour—everybody’s doing what they can to make it safe for us, for everybody.”

Not to say the players are oblivious to what’s at hand. Webb Simpson, the eventual winner on Sunday at Harbour Town, went so far as calling the first positive test as a wake-up call of sorts.

“Yeah, it definitely got me thinking about kind of everything that I’ve done this week,” Simpson said. “I’ve tried to be really careful, but I could probably be more careful. I hadn’t really gone out to dinner. I’ve gotten takeout every night. But in terms of even wearing the mask, any time I’m out of my comfort zone away from the golf course, I think it’s smart.

“And really, the six-foot rule I’ve been good about, but I probably could be better.”

Overall though, the players are sticking with the company line. Golf Digest polled more than 20 players and caddies following news of Watney’s test and subsequent WD. Only a handful wavered in their confidence with the measures in place.

“If we didn’t have a positive test, I’m sure [the media] would have said we were hiding something,” a veteran player told Golf Digest. “If you look at how many people we tested, and the number of times we’ve been tested, I think [the positive test] indicates we are doing it right.”

This belief, one championed by multiple players, is not necessarily wrong. The PGA Tour conducted nearly 1,600 tests for golf’s return at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth and the Korn Ferry Challenge at tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, with nearly 900 tests coming at tournament sites. In Week 1, only one Korn Ferry Tour player and three KFT caddies tested positive, all through home results. More than 770 tests were administered this week combined on both tours prior to tournament play, with two KFT caddies testing positive.

“This [positive test] isn’t a knock,” another tour player said. “We have done our part in staying vigilant.”

A quarter of respondents were perplexed why Watney was at the course, or why the tour let Watney come to the course with a pending test. Conversely, Watney’s well-being was their chief concern, none blaming him for his result. How the positive result came to be is a different matter.

Is there a flaw in the tour’s monitoring?

Photo by Angela Weiss

Again, Watney has not publicly spoken on his positive test, but according to McIlroy, it was a fitness tracker that notified Watney his respiratory rates were up, a possible sign of a COVID-19 infection. A source close to Watney confirmed to Golf Digest that the tracker’s data is what prompted a new test.

This is problematic, as Watney had tested negative earlier in the week and under the tour’s guidelines wouldn’t have been tested again until he provided a sample for the chartered flight (which he didn’t use when traveling from Colonial to Harbour Town). One can drive themselves mad with theoreticals, but without the fitness tracker, Watney could have gone along unfettered until taking his arrival test upon getting to the Travelers earlier this coming week.

Also of possible issue are the measures enacted by the positive test.

Upon the announcement of Watney’s result, the tour announced, “For the health and well-being of all associated with the tournament and those within the community, the tour has begun implementing its response plan in consultation with medical experts including working with those who may have had close contact with Nick.” The tour later confirmed that 11 tests were conducted on Friday to those who were around Watney, “with all 11 tests being negative,” a tour spokesperson told Golf Digest on Saturday.

However, preliminary research shows that if someone is tested too early, one day after potential exposure, their viral load may be below the threshold of detection, rendering a negative result.

“You wouldn’t detect someone being positive from exposure that quickly,” Dr. Adalja said. “We often wait several days. We monitor them, even those who are asymptomatic. Testing the day of, even a day after, contact would not show a positive test.”

It begs to ask, even with nearly 2,400 coronavirus tests administered, are more needed for proper surveillance? (Of course, the upshot: Wait too long, and the viral load may also be too low to register.)

There there’s the monitoring of those who have come in contact with Watney. Dr. Adalja says, ideally, anyone who came in contact with Watney would want to isolate for 14 days. Clearly that didn’t happen: Vaughn Taylor, one of Watney’s Thursday playing partners, made the cut and played on the weekend.

“Ideally” is the operative word above. Safety is of paramount importance; in that same breath, is it fair to make someone withdraw from at least two events because they “might” have caught the virus, especially if they ultimately don’t have COVID-19?

“I understand they believe they are keeping with protocols, but one break from the safety protocols can undo them all,” Dr. Adalja says.

Though tour officials maintain this does not change their thinking regarding testing for the upcoming week, they did not rule out additional safeguards being implemented. Expect one area to be addressed: How to prevent a scenario like Watney’s—where a player who is awaiting results is at the course—from happening again.

“We will do what we have to in order for us to safely conduct a tournament and to make sure our players feel safe doing so,” an official told Golf Digest.

What constitutes a critical mass?

As the PGA Tour moves on to Cromwell, Conn., for the Travelers Championship, the hope is that players and caddies protect themselves from the spread of the virus. (Photo by Michael Cohen)

This has been one of the primary questions left unanswered since the tour’s original announcement of its health and safety protocols. As this weekend proved, a single positive test does not suspend a tournament. During a May conference call on the protocols, Andy Levinson, senior vice president of tournament administration, said there’s not a specific number of positive tests the tour has in mind that would enact a cancellation.

“You know, when there is a positive test, there does have to be some contact tracing that takes place, which is why social distancing is … one of the many reasons why social distancing is so important,” Levinson said. “And so we haven’t identified a specific number, but obviously if it was a large number then we would have to evaluate the situation.”

Tour sources tell Golf Digest Levinson’s words remain true.

“There is not a touchstone for when we are going to say ‘That’s that,’” a tour official said. “There is a scenario where the number is low but we feel the environment has changed to the point we can’t safely host players, volunteers, broadcast partners. But we don’t see that [at Hilton Head] and are hearing positive reports from our Travelers Championship team.”

If there’s a main takeaway from Watney’s positive test, it’s that the tour is preaching calm, the players remain committed, the courses are safe. Yet the critical-mass question will likely become the question in the upcoming weeks. There is a chance Watney is an isolated case, but there is mounting evidence to suggest otherwise.

“This is just going to be the deal with someone all the time with professional sports. You saw it the past few days with MLB, NCAA outbreaks,” Dr. Adalja said. “This is something that is going to be the norm.”

The tour proclaimed a successful first step on its tightrope walk at Colonial. The show goes on to TPC River Highlands, and hopefully to Detroit and Columbus. But it’s fair to say the rope wobbled at Harbour Town.

The post After a positive test, where does the PGA Tour go from here? appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Daniel Rapaport
Perfect weather and soft greens almost always result in one thing on the PGA Tour: low scores. Saturday at Harbour Town was no different—a noticeable absence of wind and some extremely gettable pin positions yielded a historic day of scoring at the RBC Heritage, with 63s being handed out like candy and no less than 27 players three shots or closer to the lead heading into Sunday.

Tyrrell Hatton, Abraham Ancer, Webb Simspon and Ryan Palmer all share the lead at 15 under, setting up what should be a wild final round. Here are five takeaways from a birdiefest at Hilton Head.

Something in the high 60s simply wasn’t good enough on a remarkable scoring day

The Heritage’s move from its normal mid-April date to mid-June has resulted in tremendously low scoring.

Coming into this week, the most 63s that had ever been shot at the RBC Heritage for the entire week was four. There were six on Saturday alone, courtesy of Hatton, Carlos Ortiz, Joel Dahmen, Joaquin Niemann, Chris Stroud and Daniel Berger. The latter is 13 under and will absolutely have a chance to follow up his win last week at Colonial with another at Harbour Town.

Thirty-five players are double digits under par heading into the final round. The previous record heading into a Sunday was seven, and Dustin Johnson was the lone guy at 10 under after Saturday last year. This is nothing short of a shootout.

Tyrrell Hatton has a chance for back-to-back
Super under-the-radar here, but Hatton actually has a chance to go back-to-back on Sunday. It’s not a conventional back-to-back, but it certainly satisfies the definition of a back-to-back. Hatton’s last start on the PGA Tour was at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which he won. After a prolonged celebration and a gnarly hangover, he did indeed tee it up in the Players Championship. But that was cancelled after one round, and he opted against playing last week at Colonial, so technically this is his first start since the API. Despite saying he “doesn’t feel comfortable” over the golf ball, Hatton followed up a 64 on Friday with a 63 on Saturday to snag a share of the lead heading into Sunday. You fear what he might accomplish when he does indeed feel comfortable.

Nick Watney’s positive COVID-19 test loomed over the course all day
News of Nick Watney’s positive test for COVID-19 dominated headlines on Friday, and the fallout continued to loom over Harbour Town all day. A number of players had some pretty eye-opening things to say about what Watney’s test means going forward.

Vaughn Taylor, who played the opening round alongside Watney: “I was talking to Joel (Dahmen) this morning, and we were both kind of like this is a little eye-opening. We need to be more careful. I felt like coming in the last week everyone was super careful, and then we got here, and the vibe on the Island is a little more relaxed. I feel like we might have gotten a little more relaxed too, complacent with being careful.”

Kevin C. Cox
Vaughn Taylor hits his tee shot on 18th hole in third round of RBC Heritage.

Justin Thomas: “I mean, no offence to Hilton Head, but they’re seeming to not take it very seriously. It’s an absolute zoo around here. There’s people everywhere. The beaches are absolutely packed. Every restaurant, from what I’ve seen when I’ve been driving by, is absolutely crowded. So I would say it’s still coincidence that there’s got to be a lot of stuff going on around here.”

Rory McIlroy: Nick said the thing that got him yesterday morning was he wears a WHOOP strap. A lot of us, we wear these WHOOP straps on the wrist or on the biceps. One of the big telltale signs that they’ve found over the last few weeks, they’ve done studies where, if your respiratory rate goes up during the night by more than two breaths per minute, that’s sort of a telltale sign that you might have something. So it was actually his WHOOP that told him his respiratory rate went up, and that’s why he thought maybe I could have it.”

So far as we can tell, there is no evidence Watney infected another player. But you have to think this will not be the last time a PGA Tour player tests positive. How the Tour contains this will go a long way in determining not just the immediate future of golf tournaments, but all other sports eyeing a return as well.

Kevin C. Cox
Erik van Rooyen lines up a putt on the 18th green during the third round of the RBC Heritage.

A big day coming up for Erik van Rooyen
American golf fans may best know Erik van Rooyen for his joggers, but that could change with a solid round tomorrow. Van Rooyen, a 30-year-old South African who graduated from the University of Minnesota, has spent the first eight years of his professional career on his homeland’s Sunshine Tour and, more recently, the European Tour, where he won his first tournament last fall. Some more solid play in Europe and a T-3 at the WGC-Mexico moved him inside the top 50 in the world rankings, but he’s still trying to lock down his PGA Tour card. That could be accomplished with a solid finish tomorrow—a top-10 finish (he’s T-8 right now) should lock up playing privileges for next year via the Tour’s non-member FedEx Cup points list. A big opportunity indeed.

The post A ridiculous day of scoring produces a jam-packed leaderboard and three other takeaways from Day 3 at Harbour Town appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Tod Leonard
For a second straight week in its return to competition, the PGA Tour reported no positive tests for COVID-19 in the lead up to Thursday’s start of the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C.

The Korn Ferry Tour, however, had two positive tests for caddies, according to the Tour, ahead of The King & Bear Classic in St. Augustine, Fla., Last week, three caddies and one player on the Korn Ferry tested positive for COVID-19.

The Tour said it administered 369 tests on-site at Harbour Town, with zero positives for COVID-19. It reported there were 98 tests done, with no positives, prior to the charter flight to the venue from last week’s Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth.

On the Korn Ferry, there were 408 on-site tests for the tournament at the World Golf Village, with the two positive results. Those who test positive are being told to self-isolate for at least 10 days, and they need to have two negative test results at least 24 hours apart before returning to tour action.

The PGA Tour is not identifying those who test positive due to medical confidentiality restrictions.

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By Daniel Rapaport
Sometimes a yacht cruising up the coast is just a yacht cruising up the coast.

Despite widespread speculation that Tiger Woods would play in next week’s RBC Heritage—stemming from his yacht Privacy being tracked to St. Simons Island, Ga., relatively close to Hilton Head, S.C., the site of the Heritage—the 15-time major champion did not register before the 5 p.m. Friday deadline and thus will not be making his return to the PGA Tour at Harbour Town.

Woods has not played an official tour event since February, where he finished last among players who made the cut at the Genesis Invitational. He then skipped the next four tournaments, including the Players Championship, to rest a sore back. Then, of course, the coronavirus pandemic forced a nearly three-month stoppage.

Woods has made just three official starts on tour during the 2019-’20 season—a victory at the Zozo Championship, a T-9 at the Farmers Insurance Open and his 68th-place finish at the Genesis. He is currently ranked No. 11 in the World Rankings.

Fans did get a chance to watch Woods play when he and Peyton Manning teamed up last month to beat Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady in The Match: Champions for Charity, which raised more than $20 million for COVID-19 relief. Woods looked healthy and played rather well in that exhibition, leading many to wonder if that would lead him to return to action in one of the early events on the revised tour schedule, despite the fact he has not played at Colonial since 1997 and at Harbour Town since 1999.

Where Woods will indeed make his return remains a mystery. He is a five-time winner of the Memorial Tournament, which he has never missed when healthy enough to play. That event, which is hosted by Jack Nicklaus, is scheduled for July 16-19 at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio. Muirfield Village also will host another PGA Tour event the week before, perhaps affording Tiger another spot to resume his season.

Whenever Woods does tee it up next, it will give him another chance to win his 83rd PGA Tour event and break a tie with Sam Snead for the most all-time victories.

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