By John Feinstein
About a month before the just-completed U.S. Open, Mike Davis, the outgoing CEO of the USGA, called Rocco Mediate to invite him to be a guest of the governing body at Torrey Pines. After all, the 2008 Open, played at the same golf course, had been the site of Mediate’s most famous moment—if not his most joyful.

“He told me that he really appreciated the invitation, but it would be a little too tough for him to be there just to watch,” Davis said. “He said he’d be watching at home and appreciated being invited. I understood completely.”

There’s no doubt that if Mediate had been invited to play, he would have jumped at the chance. After all, he last played in a U.S. Open in 2010 and no doubt would have enjoyed hearing the cheers that would have followed him around the golf course. But watch other guys play? Be subjected to a barrage of questions about his 19-hole playoff loss to Tiger Woods some 13 years ago—again? No thanks.

I wrote a book about Mediate’s experience at that Open, so, needless to say, we spent a LOT of time together in the six months following that championship. It was Rocco who gave the book it’s title—sort of. He suggested, “Are you Blanking Kidding Me?” That was the title minus the Blanking. I liked his version better because it fit.

Even though we hadn’t talked for several years, I tried to call Rocco over the weekend, figuring (forgive my ego) he might be willing to talk to me. I was wrong. He never called back.

Honestly, I don’t blame him. When you look back on a career—in any sport—and realize you had one real chance to become part of the pantheon and it didn’t happen for you, regardless of the reason, it has to hurt. It’s one of those things where the pain may become more distant, but it never goes away.

I thought about that briefly on Sunday when seeing the look on Louis Oosthuizen’s face after he had finished second in a major for the sixth time. A moment before he holed his final, but meaningless, birdie putt on Torrey Pines’ 18th hole, NBC’s Dan Hicks commented that only two active players had more second-place finishes in majors than Oosthuizen: Phil Mickelson with 11 (including six at the U.S. Open) and Tiger Woods with seven. Of course, Mickelson won six majors and Woods won 15, so that has to dull the pain of those runner-up finishes considerably (Mickelson’s Winged Foot meltdown in 2006 aside, perhaps). There’s also Jack Nicklaus who had 19 second-place finishes. The 18 major wins no doubt dulled that pain considerably.

At least though, Oosthuizen does have one—his memorable performance in 2010 at the Open Championship at St. Andrews when he won by seven shots. One is a LOT more than none. It holds off many critics in the ongoing debate about Oosthuizen’s legacy in majors. As Sunday’s disappointment of another loss morphed into Monday’s reality, the sting just isn’t the same. We can empathise for the 38-year-old South African, but know there isn’t the same void that lingers with others.

“If I win, the rest of my life, I’m introduced as, ‘U.S. Open champion Mike Donald,’ not just as ‘a former PGA Tour pro,’ Mike Donald once said to me, referencing his near-miss at Medinah in the 1990 U.S. Open.

Donald led for almost the entire weekend but was caught by Hale Irwin when Irwin holed a 45-foot birdie putt on 18 and Donald bogeyed 17 not long after, putting the two of them into a Monday playoff. Donald led almost the entirety of the extra 18 holes until making bogey on the last 18—his par putt coming up about two inches short. He then lost on the first hole of sudden death to an Irwin birdie.

It was Irwin’s third U.S. Open victory. Chances are he would still be in the Hall of Fame if Donald had denied him that third title.

(Getty Images) After losing to Hale Irwin in a playoff at the 1990 U.S. Open, Mike Donald looks on at the trophy presentation.

It’s worth noting that neither Mediate nor Donald was really the same player after their near moments of glory. Mediate never again finished in the top 125 in the FedEx Cup standings after 2008, though he did somehow pull it together late in 2010 to win the Fry.com Open, going wire-to-wire. That came at the end of a year in which he started 25 times but missed 13 cuts and had two WDs. The out-of-nowhere victory kept him exempt until he reached the 50-and-older tour in 2013, where he promptly won his first start. He went on to win the 2016 Senior PGA and has been a solid player on the PGA Tour Champions.

It was worse for Donald. His play nose-dived after Medinah. He lost his exempt status after 1993 and never got it back. He made it through qualifying for the ’93 Open, which would turn out to be the last of the 16 majors he played in. I remember standing with him in the locker room at Baltustrol prior to the start of that Open. The USGA was playing past Opens on an endless loop on the locker room TVs and, as luck would have it, the ’90 Open was on at that moment.

Tom Watson walked over and glanced at Donald, who was staring at himself standing over the 15-foot putt in the playoff that would have made him an Open champion. “How does it make you feel to watch this again?” he finally asked—as the putt came up just short—again.

“Good,” Donald answer. “Because it reminds me that once upon a time I was a pretty good player.”

You have to be better than pretty good to come that close to winning a major. The saddest case may be Doug Sanders, who missed a 3½-foot putt on the 18th green at St. Andrews in 1970, to cost himself the major title that would have made him a lock Hall-of-Famer. Sanders won 20 times in all. Make that number 21 with a major and he would have to have been in the Hall.

Doug Sanders short miss on the final hole during the 1970 Open Championship cost him a win in regulation.

Instead, I still remember him standing outside the ropes by the clubhouse at Augusta National several years back, trying to get someone’s attention so he could get inside the ropes and stand under the famous tree with the luminaries and non-luminaries who gather there every April. Had Sanders been a Hall-of-Fame member is there any way he would have been denied that access?

It reminded me a little bit of Jay Haas, another superb player who never won a major. Haas never came as agonizingly close as Sanders or Donald or Mediate, but he did have eight top-five finishes in majors, including a T-3 in 1995 at the Masters.

I remember Haas and his best friend Curtis Strange sitting in the locker room a few years later before the tournament began. “You know something Curtis, we need to get a move on here,” Haas said. “If we don’t win this thing soon, there’s going to come a time when we aren’t going to be able to come back here anymore.”

Neither man ever won the Masters. Strange, who does TV during the tournament every year, is an invitee each spring as two-time U.S. Open champion. Haas also got to come from 2010 to 2017, when his son Bill qualified to play.

Bill’s best finish a Augusta was in 2015, when he finished T-12. On Saturday afternoon, after Bill had finished his front nine, Jay hustled into the clubhouse to grab a quick bathroom stop. Instinctively, he headed for the locker room.

“I’m sorry sir,” the guard at the door said, pointing at his “player family” badge. “Players only in the locker room.”

Haas had played in 22 Masters. Because he is one of the world’s nicest human beings, he laughed and said, “Sorry, I forgot,” and went to the bathroom in the grill room. My only regret was that it hadn’t been his pal Strange who had been stopped that way. I suspect his response might not have been as polite.

Icon Sportswire
Thirteen years removed from the playoff loss to Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines, Rocco Mediate turned down the USGA’s offer to watch the 2021 U.S. Open in person.

Golf is, of course, littered with near-misses at major championships. It also has those one-time moments: Jack Fleck beating Ben Hogan in the 1955 U.S. Open; Orville Moody winning the U.S. Open in 1969; Ben Curtis winning as a PGA Tour rookie at Royal St. George’s in 2003 and Shaun Micheel, who never won on tour before or after, winning the PGA a month later at Oak Hill.

As I said, I spent hours and hours with Mediate after Torrey Pines in 2008. He repeatedly insisted that being so close and losing that way to the world’s best player was a joyous memory he would carry forever.

I know he’s still carrying the memory. But, as with Donald and Sanders and others who came so close without getting a major victory, I suspect there’s more pain than joy in that memory. The pain does get farther away, but it never goes away.

The post Louis Oosthuizen’s seconds are adding up, but his heart hasn’t been broken like other near-miss major winners appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Dave Shedloski
Mike Whan didn’t waste much time moving into a new slot in the golf leadership hierarchy.

The man who orchestrated a record turnaround in the fortunes of the LPGA while serving as the longest-tenured commissioner in the organisation’s history, was named CEO of the USGA on Wednesday, set to succeed Mike Davis in the post.

“This one’s pretty simple for me. I love this game. I love this sport. I love this country, and I really love the process of getting better and learning and building strategic alliances. And I get all of that in the USGA,” Whan told Golf Digest after agreeing to become the eighth top executive in USGA history. “When I announced my departure from the LPGA, I said that I’m at the age where I sort of have one more big thing to do. I need to get some first-tee jitters again. I need to get nervous, and suffice it to say, I’m nervous. But I revel in that.”

Whan, 56, is expected officially to take over at Golf House sometime this summer, giving him a period of time to work with Davis in a transition while enabling the LPGA to find his successor.

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Mike Whan for many years, and I view him as a trusted, strategic leader who has a proven track record of building collaborative partnerships,” Davis said in a statement. “I know the USGA will be in great hands, and I look forward to partnering with Mike to ensure a smooth and successful transition for the USGA.”

“We had a ton of inbound interest, and we went through a pretty good process, but the shining light in all of that was Mike Whan,” USGA president Stu Francis said. “Mike was head and shoulders above everybody else in terms of what he brings to the table. It’s just sort of the perfect fit in our view.”

Whan announced Jan.6 that he was stepping down as LPGA chief after 11 years, telling staff and the LPGA Board of Directors, “One of the hardest jobs of a leader is to know when their work is done.” At that time he did not indicate where his next career steps might lead, but his decision to exit the LPGA came slightly more than three months after Davis revealed his plans to enter the golf course design field and leave the USGA after 32 years, including the last 10 in the role of Executive Director/CEO.

Scott Halleran
When Mike Whan took over as LPGA commissioner in 2010, the tour’s schedule featured only 24 official events worth $41.4 million in prize money. This year, it has 34 events and a record $76.45 million in total purses.

Though sensing his work was done at the LPGA, Whan apparently didn’t think he was done leading. He now will head up an organization that conducts 14 national championships, including the U.S. Open, as well as international and team competitions. Additionally, in conjunction with the R&A in Scotland, the USGA writes, interprets and administers the Rules of Golf. Headquartered at Golf House in Liberty Corner, N.J., the USGA employs approximately 450 people.

In taking over for Davis, Whan will inherit a handful of notable tasks on the USGA’s short- and long-term agendas. Chief among them is the ongoing investigation into the impact of distance on the game. Earlier this month, the USGA spelt out a handful of proposed technical modifications to the equipment rules while outlining six areas of interest that could set the stage for future rules changes amounting to a potential rollback in distance.

Additionally, Whan will now help oversee the development of Golf House Pinehurst in North Carolina. The USGA announced in September that, with assistance from state and local authorities, it would build include a satellite office, museum and a new $18 million equipment test centre.

Eager, he said, to continue to “make a difference in this sport,” Whan said he has yet to map out a list of priorities for the USGA, making sure he educates himself thoroughly while working with Davis. That’s not to say he doesn’t have goals.

“I’ve got seven things that I think are going to be seven things for Mike Whan [to do], but I know from my experience with the LPGA that four are going to be wrong. I’m just not sure which four,” Whan said. “I walked in with this vision of what I think are the right strategic priorities. But as I told Stu, I’m going to need 100 days, 100 days to make sure that all this stuff I think is right is right. Like any person I walk in with my points of view, and then I’ll figure out pretty quickly, what are the areas of focus? And then my job, quite frankly, is to make sure between me and the [USGA Executive Committee] we’ve got real clarity so that we can let this team run. Cause I think we’ve got a good team there. We just want to make sure we’re all aligned in the priorities and then get out of their way to achieve them.

“I wouldn’t do a job I couldn’t have fun doing, and I can promise you, I’m going to have fun doing this job, even if people don’t have fun having me do this job,” he added. “I don’t know a commissioner of sport who’s not comfortable with the fact that every decision you make, probably 30 percent of people don’t like, and it doesn’t mean you’re right. It just means you got to make decisions to move forward. I’ve got to walk into a new place where they don’t know me [except] by name. They don’t know how I’m going to be better or worse for them. There’ll be all kinds of anxiety about Mike’s different from us, which is true. And getting through all that to real success is the fun part.”

Whan took over as the eighth commissioner of the LPGA in July 2009 after Carolyn Bivens was forced out by a player revolt following a disastrous four-year term. (Marty Evans served as acting commissioner in the interim.) In 2010, when Whan assumed control, the LPGA schedule featured only 24 official events—its lightest slate in nearly 40 years—worth $41.4 million in prize money. This year, the LPGA schedule features 34 events and a record $76.45 million in total purses.

Michael Reaves
Whan played golf growing up in Ohio, growing his interest in the game while working as a caddie and on a grounds crew before going to college.

Whan’s initiatives at the LPGA included the creation of the International Crown, the Founders Cup and the Race to the CME Globe, a season-long competition similar to the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup. He also forged a partnership with the Ladies European Tour and bolstered the LPGA’s signature major by partnering with the PGA of America to transform the LPGA Championship into the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

The debut of the UL International Crown, an eight-team biennial match-play event, the start of the Race to the CME Globe, and the deal that resulted in the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship all occurred in 2014. In 2015, Sports Business Journal tabbed the LPGA as one of its five finalists for Sports League of the Year along with the Big East Conference, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, and the NBA.

“I think if you look at Mike’s track record, certainly at the LPGA, he had a brilliant ability to think about where the future is going and move the organization to be most responsive to that,” Francis said. “And we’re no different, as the USGA is a great organization, but the world around us is changing rapidly. … There are a host of societal changes that we think Mike is just uniquely suited to work together with the senior team to figure out how can the USGA most effectively serve the game, and how can the USGA take advantage of that and be ahead of it?”

A native of Naperville, Ill., Whan cultivated an interest in golf as a youngster by working first as a caddie and then on the grounds crew at Cress Creek Country Club, which mostly interested him because he could play the course for free. When the family moved to Cincinnati in the early 1980s, Whan immediately found another golf job, at nearby Coldstream Country Club.

His first golf-related post after graduating with business degrees in economics and finance from Miami University, in Ohio, in 1987 came seven years later at Wilson Sporting Goods in Chicago, where he served as vice president and general manager of the golf ball and glove division. He also managed the marketing department, two manufacturing facilities and the Research & Development division. Two years later, he moved to Carlsbad, Calif., and TaylorMade Golf, where he eventually rose to executive vice president and general manager for the North American region.

Donald Miralle
At the USGA, Whan will take over as the governing body, along with the R&A, continues its investigation into the impact of distance on the game.

Whan began his business career at Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati. His last position before joining the LPGA was as president and CEO for hockey-gear maker Mission-Itech Hockey. He joined Mission Hockey in 2002, and during his seven-year tenure Whan restructured the company and oversaw its acquisition of Itech Sports in 2004 to create Mission-Itech Hockey, one of the largest hockey companies in the world.

The LPGA announced Feb. 1 that it formally opened its search for a new commissioner and that it was retaining the services of executive search and leadership advisory firm Spencer Stuart—the same organization that helped identify Whan as a candidate for the commissioner post in 2009.

“I remember when I walked into the LPGA,” Whan said, “I told my father, ‘I can’t mess this up because the game means too much to me.’ And my dad said, ‘Because the game means that much to you, you won’t mess this up.’ And I feel the same way here. Golf matters to me. It’s always mattered to me. I’m excited to feel like I can still make a difference in a sport that’s made a huge difference in my life.”

The post USGA picks Mike Whan as its new CEO appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Mike Stachura
If you weren’t paying attention a year ago, the USGA and R&A made it clear on Tuesday that they are serious about rolling back distance. What they actually might do is a little less clear, but more focused than it was.

In other words, the rollback clock officially has started.

“This problem obviously didn’t happen overnight, and we’re not looking to solve it overnight,” said Mike Davis, USGA CEO. “But we are looking to solve it.”

Will that solution make your driver obsolete? Or Bryson DeChambeau’s? Will it mean a shorter golf ball for all tournaments from the Open to your member-guest, or even a Masters Tournament-only local rule stipulating a certain dimple pattern? No one’s revealed much of anything, short of the kind of sabre-rattling and throat-clearing that’s been coming out of golf’s governing bodies since the 1990s. So that means average golfers and tour players alike have nothing to worry about. But all are on notice—especially golf equipment manufacturers—that the governing bodies are targeting specific elements to curb distance. So get your supporting documents—or your lawyers—ready.

In Tuesday’s release, which was sent to manufacturers on Monday, golf’s governing bodies announced a few technical modifications on the distance front, including three specific proposed changes to equipment rules and testing standards. Those proposed changes involve a limit on the maximum shaft length (a previously proposed and tabled 46 inches, down from 48) and possible tweaks to how drivers are tested for spring-like effect and how balls are tested for the overall distance standard. But even if agreed to and implemented following a six-month review period (30 days for the shaft length proposal), these changes are expected to have minimal effect on the driving distance at the elite level.

Instead, the larger effect came with the official release of six specific “areas of interest” for equipment regulations. To be clear, these are not yet proposed rules, just targeted research topics for further study. In rulemaking parlance, though, they are the precursor for a proposed rule of some kind. It’s a step-by-step process that the USGA and R&A codified with manufacturers in 2011 under the pretext that rule changes wouldn’t blindside equipment companies.

MORE: Here’s how much driving distance has increased over the last two decades

The areas specified in Tuesday’s documents involve everything from shorter golf balls to smaller, less forgiving and less-springy drivers. Even under study are possible limits on centre of gravity that theoretically would make drivers spin more so they flew shorter for tour-level swing speeds. In short, the governing bodies are looking to throw every possible speed bump at not only further distance but potentially taking distance back two decades to when they first raised warning flags about elite players’ driving in 2002. Or the research might pave the way for previously overlooked technological methods of reducing distance for the best while having minimal consequences for the less than best. In any case, in the rulemaking process, this notification of an area of interest is followed by another 30 potential steps and considerations to be navigated before any rule change is fully implemented.

What could proposed changes look like? For example, an extreme change to the rule on spring-like effect very well could reduce distance to pre-1995 levels, or more than 30-yards shorter than the current PGA Tour average. A reduction in clubhead size or forgiveness might take us back to the turn of the century when the R&A’s own research showed the average bogey golfer was averaging less than 200 yards off the tee. Or, as the USGA’s managing director of equipment standards John Spitzer noted, it could be something novel like a density requirement for golf balls that might make them lighter, thereby having a greater negative effect on the fastest swingers.

Rollbacks in these areas could affect all golfers in different ways, they could affect all golfers in the same way, or they might only be implemented as local rules, free for tournament committees or championships of any kind to implement at their own pace and will. Rather than specifics at this point, though, the governing bodies are looking for input. But the velocity for change is accelerating.

“We’re entering into the solution phase from an equipment-standards standpoint,” said Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s senior managing director of governance. “This is the first step in re-engaging the manufacturing community in looking at possible solutions for the long-term distance challenges that the game is facing.”

Pagel said that process will be the focus for the balance of the year, although there is no specific timeline.

The announcement came at the same time as the release of the USGA’s annual distance report. That report details the trends in driving distance on the world’s professional tours. It showed that driving distance on most tours increased in 2020’s shortened season compared to 2019. Those included a 6.9-yard gain on the European Tour, a 3.1-yard gain on the PGA Tour, a 0.2-yard gain on the Korn Ferry Tour and a 3.1-yard gain on the PGA Tour Champions. Only the LPGA Tour saw a drop, a loss of 5.5 yards.

In addition, while no new data was gathered on recreational golfers during 2020, the report indicates that average golfer distance has decreased one yard since 2005 to 216 yards. So any rule that would mean less yardage for recreational golfers will be an especially hard pill to swallow for some—and perhaps an easy (albeit ironic) argument for equipment manufacturers to use against the governing bodies.

Driving distances on the PGA Tour increased 3.1 yards in 2020, according to the USGA/R&A annual distance report. Jamie Squire

While the six officially designated areas of interest signify a starting pistol for some eventual rule change, it seems safe to suggest that any distance rollback will not happen quickly. Pagel indicated that research will occupy at least the balance of the year, but given the vast amount of data and interested parties, it likely will take longer. For instance, the rollback on grooves that was announced in 2008 took three years of research before a rule change was formally unveiled. In recent memory, equipment rule changes have taken a couple of years to implement in some cases, while in others it required more than a decade for the effect to take hold on average golfers. The rule change on the anchored putting stroke took barely three years to go from idea to hard, cold fact, while the rule change on grooves that were designed to spin less technically still doesn’t apply to the clubs in recreational golfers’ bags even though that process began in 2005.

Of the specific equipment testing procedures that also were revealed in today’s announcement, one tightens the tolerance for the Characteristic Time pendulum test, which measures spring-like effect. The technicalities can be mind-numbing, but in its simplest form, the current setup for testing drivers is like having a speed limit of 65 miles per hour but not ticketing anyone unless they’re going 72. Now, the tickets would come (drivers would be ruled non-conforming) if you’re caught going 67.

The procedure change for golf ball testing basically would provide that a ball be tested under its optimal launch conditions to make sure it falls under the current overall distance standard of 320 yards at 120 miles per hour. Spitzer said this change would likely involve very few balls currently played by pros.

“You asked how far these are to solutions [to the distance problem], and the answer is they’re not,” said John Spitzer, the USGA’s managing director of equipment standards. “These are just the Equipment Standards committee and staff tightening up the way we do our normal business. They’re going to help us make our tests better, but they aren’t going to help us eliminate the increases in distance we’ve seen.”

But those kinds of changes are, at least potentially, coming in other areas. For example, Spitzer referenced looking at how a less forgiving but still current-sized driver would help average golfers feel more comfortable at address, but for elite players it would reduce the stability of the head that propels them to swing with seemingly little fear of the extremely wayward miss.

While the professional tours have yet to endorse the governing bodies’ stated position on a distance rollback, Pagel said they are aware of the details in today’s documents. “They’re part of our regular process and they have their representatives,” he said. “Certainly as the governing body, it’s our role to make decisions. But as we make decisions, we want to be fully informed, so their viewpoints are always considered as part of the process, and we inform them as part of the process, as well.”

He stressed that continuing with one set of playing rules for all golfers remains paramount: “It’s one of the great attributes that really bind us to the game and allows us to play the same golf courses under the same playing rules with the same equipment. We think that’s an important aspect of what we’re doing.”

As he has in the past both privately and publicly, and as he did a year ago, Davis stressed that there must be action now. He affirmed as well that even though he has announced he is stepping down as CEO at the end of the year, the commitment to distance change “is going to extend well beyond my tenure.”

“This is about the long term and making the game more sustainable, more enjoyable,” Davis said. “This isn’t about hurting golfers, this isn’t about necessarily lessening their distance. But the data is irrefutable. We have a problem and we’ve got to solve for it. I would almost go so far as to say that for those who don’t think that we have a problem, I would either say they haven’t read the data or they have some personal conflict of interest. When you look at this data, it’s so crystal clear that something needs to get done.”

What that something is, the USGA and R&A aren’t saying. Depending on which side of the distance debate you stand, that vague and faraway timeline either leaves you underwhelmed, incensed, uncertain or excited that the process has begun. Still, when it comes to equipment rules, if the past is any indication, change might be on its way, but the ride will be anything but smooth.

The post USGA/R&A get specific about a distance rollback, but no timeline yet appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Golf Digest Editors
Not since 2001 has there been a year in which the golf world was so profoundly impacted by something “outside the ropes” as 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. From the moment late in the evening of Thursday, March 12, when a stunned Jay Monahan, commissioner of the PGA Tour, announced the cancellation of the Players Championship after just one round—the first of several similarly profound (and surreal) declarations from executives throughout the golf community in the days that followed—our sport has been shaken at every level. The saving grace of the coronavirus is that golf has been able to serve as a salve in so many ways for a general public longing for order and comfort and the familiar. Participation in the recreational game skyrocketed, golf becoming an outlet for those in need of distraction as it proved to be among the safer sports to play. And consumption of the competitive game increased as well, Monahan bringing back the PGA Tour in June, the LPGA and European Tours returning shortly after, the majority of the men’s and women’s majors played successfully at later dates, without fans but not without fanfare.

While the days run together during a pandemic, the calendar professes 2020 is coming to a close (finally!). Which means it’s time to embark on our annual review of the last 12 months. As always, our “Newsmakers” package aims to revisit the year in golf and retell the stories that helped define the sport. In counting down the top 25 during the next several days, many entries have been directly touched by the spectre of COVID-19. But you also might be surprised at how many of our favourite people, events and moments rose above the pandemic and stood out for what they said about the individual or the group. As always there were a few clear choices—spoiler alert, Bryson DeChambeau is pretty high on our list—but also some characters who are less obvious yet, we think, no less worthy, once again, of our collective appreciation. —Ryan Herrington

• • •

No. 1: THE ‘NEW’ GOLFERS

J.D. Cuban

Two decades ago, a golf boom was spurred by a magnetic young star named Tiger Woods and an expanding real estate market. The 2020 version, borne from a pandemic in which no one could do much else, was never part of anyone’s grow-the-game strategy. But a year in which COVID-19 disrupted so much of life provided an unlikely opening for golf. According to the National Golf Foundation and Golf Datatech, there will be some 50 million more rounds played in 2020 than 2019, an increase partially attributed to good weather, but mostly the serendipitous ways golf fit a social distancing world. Those who couldn’t go to work or the gym could still meet up with friends and play 9 or 18. Handshakes were replaced by elbow bumps and a whole new cottage industry arose in developing creative ways to safely extract a golf ball from the hole. Other than that, the game remained blessedly intact. While the year-end statistics point to an encouraging influx of new players—about 20 percent more beginners and junior players, respectively—the surge appears to have been driven more by core golfers who were simply afforded the chance to play more. Yet one could argue those of us who had played all along were still “new” golfers this year. Because we were suddenly around to play at Wednesday at 2. Because we stored our masks and our hand sanitiser in the same golf bag pocket as our keys. And because every trip to the golf course was a welcome refuge from a distressing new world. We might have always loved golf, but in 2020, we savoured it like never before. —Sam Weinman

• • •

No. 2: BRYSON DECHAMBEAU

Chris Keane

Where do we begin? There’s so much to talk about with Bryson DeChambeau that we created a separate list of 101 things that happened to him in 2020. But first and foremost, Bryson became one of the game’s biggest stars. Literally. A process of putting on pounds that began in 2019 revved up even more during quarantine, and when DeChambeau returned, he was some 40 pounds heavier than the previous year. And the gains were apparent in places other than the scale. DeChambeau overpowered golf courses—and even driving ranges—in ways we hadn’t quite seen before. The 27-year-old wound up leading the PGA Tour in driving distance in the 2019-’20 season and, more importantly, strokes gained/off the tee. But Bryson didn’t just drive for show, he also putted for some serious dough by improving to a career-best 10th in strokes gained/putting. Not surprisingly, that dangerous combination eventually led to a pair of wins, first at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in July and then his maiden major title at the U.S. Open in September. Winged Foot’s treacherous rough was supposed to be this golf zealot’s kryptonite, but it proved to be no problem for mighty Bryson as he swatted driver after driver on his way to a dominant six-shot victory. And in doing so, he may have ushered in a new era in which extreme length isn’t just an advantage, but a necessity. “What he’s done in the gym has been incredible,” Tiger Woods said at the Masters in November. “What he’s done on the range and what he’s done with his entire team to be able to optimize that one club [driver] and transform his game and the ability to hit the ball as far as he has and in as short a span as he has, it’s never been done before.” Beyond all the results, though, was Bryson’s knack for creating buzz. From those booming drives to his crazy diet to an aggressive shirtless photo to run-ins with rules officials to continued run-ins with Brooks Koepka, DeChambeau was constantly in the news. And whether you’re a fan or not, this overpowering and analytical golfer isn’t going anywhere. In fact, there will undoubtedly be a lot more like him to follow. —Alex Myers

• • •

No. 3: GOLF’S STAKEHOLDERS

If golf were Gotham and every leader in the game had a red Bat Phone on the desk, the ringing would have been incessant on Thursday, March 12, 2020. In the hours after sunset that day, the PGA Tour decided it could no longer safely stage one of its prized events, the Players Championship, and shut it down after only one round. It was golf’s COVID-19 reality check. The coronavirus wasn’t going to be a mild inconvenience. It was going to rock our world at every turn, and the stakeholders in competitive golf would have to face it head-on. It was a daunting proposition, considering there are so many voices in the choir—the PGA Tour (led by Jay Monahan), PGA of America (Seth Waugh), USGA (Mike Davis), Augusta National (Fred Ridley), R&A (Martin Slumbers), LPGA (Mike Whan) and European Tour (Keith Pelley). They all have personal interests and agendas, with cumulative billions of dollars at stake. But in a fairly remarkable accomplishment, golf’s presidents and CEOs and COOs and tournament directors—along with the medical community and the athletes themselves—glued the year’s broken pieces back together into a one-of-a-kind mosaic. Recalling those manic moments of March and April, Slumbers, chief executive officer of the R&A, told Golf Digest, “In those 13 to 14 days, we covered ground that in normal time would have taken a year’s worth of thinking.” To be sure, there were sad casualties, the most wrenching being the Open Championship’s cancellation for only the fourth time in its 149-year history. But golf also served as a model of cooperation and ingenuity. Prime example: The Ryder Cup was postponed to 2021 (as was Olympic golf), and the PGA Tour agreed to push back the Presidents Cup to 2022, thus permanently altering the rotation of the men’s biennial events as well as the women’s Solheim Cup. Also, the PGA Tour and European Tour came together late in the year to announce an unprecedented strategic alliance. The three other majors were shuffled around—the most jarring being the Masters’ move from April to a display of fall colours, not flowers, in November. And while the PGA Tour lost 11 events due to the pandemic, it didn’t cut the prize money and put together a COVID-19 protocol plan that proved to be one of the most successful in all of sports. The effects of the virus will be felt well into 2021, particularly with few or no fans in attendance in the early part of the schedule—a development that will further drain the coffers of tournaments around the country. Still, as the calendar turns, there is optimism, considering what already has been accomplished in the most trying of times. “I’m hopeful we’re going to get through next year,” Monahan said at the Tour Championship in September. “We’re going to get back to normal fast, and that puts us in a position where we continue on the normal growth pattern that we’re projected to be on this year, that unfortunately, we were not able to be on because of the events associated with COVID.” —Tod Leonard

BONUS READ: Where do preparations stand for the men’s majors and the Ryder Cup for 2021?

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No. 4: DUSTIN JOHNSON

Ben Walton

Peculiar as it seems in hindsight, Dustin Johnson was trending towards being somewhat of an afterthought halfway through 2020. Heading into the third tournament of the PGA Tour’s restart, the Travelers Championship, Johnson owned a lone top 10 in a full-field tour stop over the past year, falling out of the top five in the World Rankings for the first time since 2016. To be fair, Johnson underwent arthroscopic knee surgery at the end of 2019 and showed hints of his former self in the early spring. And yet, as the sport has callously shown, there’s always the possibility of not returning from the wilderness. As we now know, Johnson not only returned, he asserted himself, unequivocally, as the game’s sheriff. The revival started in Connecticut, riding a hot Saturday into contention at TPC River Highlands and staying cool down the stretch for his first win in 16 months. He finished runner-up in August’s PGA Championship, won The Northern Trust by a dominant 11 strokes, could have won the BMW Championship if not for a miraculous Jon Rahm putt in sudden death and captured his first FedEx Cup with a steady performance at East Lake. Even a bout with COVID couldn’t slow down DJ, who returned from quarantine with a runner-up at the Houston Open in his first outing back. Alas, in spite of these accomplishments, Johnson’s career continued to be defined for what it lacked. Specifically, more major titles to accompany his 2016 U.S. Open victory. He couldn’t close out his 54-hole lead at the PGA, the fourth time he had failed to do so at a major, and after entering September’s U.S. Open as an overwhelming favourite, he was never in contention at Winged Foot, his T-6 finish of the backdoor variety. The knock on Johnson, some asserted, was he could not rise to the moment, that the poise that worked so well at rank-and-file events needed giddy-up at the four championships that matter most. Those knocks were forever addressed in November. Johnson’s 65-70-65 Masters start translated into a four-shot lead heading into the final day at Augusta National, and though his 54-hole advantage was nearly wiped away after five holes, Johnson answered when it mattered most. He kept the mistakes at bay, didn’t flinch in tight spots and attacked when given the go-ahead in route to a tournament-record 20-under score to lap the field by five. In resounding fashion, with new wardrobe in tow, Johnson rewrote his legacy in 2020. And rather than wonder what might have been, the only question on Johnson is what he’ll do next. —Joel Beall

RELATED: The highs and lows of Dustin Johnson’s spectacular 2020

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No. 5: A NOVEMBER MASTERS

JD Cuban

If the first wave of tournament cancellations in pro golf due to the surging coronavirus stunned golf fans in March, the news from Georgia shortly thereafter landed like a punch to the stomach. A month before the 84th Masters was to be played, officials announced it was being postponed. Even Augusta National couldn’t escape the wrath of COVID-19. On what would have been Monday of Masters week, there was more news: Golf’s governing bodies released a joint statement outlining an unprecedented plan: a reshuffling of virtually every golf tournament of note, including a Masters in … gasp … November.  November?!? What will the course be like? (Softer). The weather? (Virtually the same). Will there be fans? (Nope). How would Augusta handle exemptions? (Sorry, Daniel Berger). What played out was a tradition unlike any other, unlike any other. Instead of marking the unofficial beginning of the golf season, the Masters marked the end. Instead of back-nine roars echoing through the pines and accompanying fist pumps, there were smatterings of applause and polite waves. Instead of fiery greens that force you to hit the ball high, there were soft putting surfaces that punished you for having too much spin. What resulted was a week of low scoring that broke plenty of records—most notably, the lowest cut in tournament history (even-par 144) and the lowest winning 72-hole score, courtesy of Dustin Johnson’s 20-under 268. Of course, there were other stories, too. There was Bryson saying Augusta was a par 67 for him, only to lose a ball in fantastic fashion and never factor on the weekend. There was Tiger’s title defense, which got off to a hot start then crashed and burned with a career-worst 10. And there was Johnson’s runaway win, a performance that culminated a three-month stretch of dominant golf with a five-shot win that served as a much overdue victory lap for one of the best players of his generation. Still, maybe the most important legacy of the event was that it was played at all, much in the same way the PGA of America and USGA pulled off the PGA Championship and U.S. Open in their altered time slots. Long story short, Augusta National made the most of a bad situation, which is all anyone could have asked for in 2020. —Daniel Rapaport

RELATED: The major that never happened—The story behind the cancellation of the Open Championship

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No. 6: DISTANCE DEBATE

Gregory Shamus

The past year put a lot of things on hold, but the debate over distance in golf continued almost non-stop. In February, the USGA and R&A released their much-anticipated Distance Insights Report. The lengthy document, crafted after two years of research, offered this ominous language in the Conclusions section: “Golf will best thrive over the next decades and beyond if this continuing cycle of ever-increasing hitting distances and golf course lengths is brought to an end.” Then COVID-19 hit and further “research topics” the governing bodies intended to explore were delayed until March 2021. Still, a lot happened to fuel the debate, Exhibit A: Bryson DeChambeau. It wasn’t just his 400-yard drives but the discussion surrounding them. Colin Montgomerie got so freaked out by what DeChambeau was doing at the tour’s re-start at Colonial he stated he was in favour of a tournament ball for professionals that went 80 to 85 percent of the current ball. That’s a position long held by Jack Nicklaus, who spoke up again when the tour visited his Muirfield Village in July, telling Golf Channel, “The USGA and the R&A have got to wake up sooner or later. Guys, stop studying it and do something!” Doing something, however, comes with potential risks. DeChambeau off the tee became must-see TV, particularly after his once-questioned methods resulted in a six-stroke U.S. Open victory. Others, such as Rory McIlroy, started pondering swinging for the fences, posting ball-speed and carry-distance numbers on social media. Then there was Collin Morikawa’s memorable driving of the green to within seven feet on the par-4 16th hole at TPC Harding Park in the final round of the PGA Championship. Distance sells, and there appears to be no reason for the PGA Tour to want less of it. The governing bodies, however, seem to remain steadfast that something must be done. On Dec. 4, the USGA sent a release regarding the association’s commitment to charting a sustainable future for golf courses in collaboration with other stakeholders in the game. Included was language that could be construed as not only pro-rollback for everyone, not just the professionals. “As owners feel the pressure to lengthen courses, they face significant capital expenditures and larger areas to maintain, which have contributed to an average increase of 6.7 percent in maintenance costs.” The takeaway? The rhetoric will continue and don’t expect this nearly 20-year debate to end anytime soon. Stay tuned. —E. Michael Johnson

BONUS READ: Professional golf witnessed first-hand the power of evolution in 2020

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No. 7: GOLF VOICES FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Golf is often measured in its reaction to social matters, and from afar it may seem that the game was muted in its response to the protests of racial injustice across America in 2020. Yet golf was far from silent. Long Drive champ Maurice Allen penned a moving letter about being Black in a mostly white sport. “Golf is supposed to be an accountable sport. You hit a bad shot, that’s on you. You break a rule, you call it on yourself. Stop making excuses or guessing someone’s intention,” Allen wrote. “Start using that same accountability you apply to golf to racism, sexism and injustice.” Kirk Triplett, who is a white man with a Black son, became the first player to brandish the Black Lives Matter logo on a PGA Tour circuit. “Look, golfers are great with charity, and on the whole are socially conscious,” Triplett told Golf Digest. “But the game never crosses the line into some of the more uncomfortable stuff. Well, this is an uncomfortable time, and we can’t ignore it.” Cameron Champ, one of just four players with Black heritage on tour, followed with his support of BLM and backed up his actions by establishing scholarships at Prairie View, a HBCU in Texas. Augusta National named Lee Elder an Honorary Starter at the 2021 Masters, and announced it will fund golf programs at nearby Paine College. The latest rendition of The Match played the day after Thanksgiving had the proceeds—more than $5 million—also go to historically black colleges and universities. And then there is Harold Varner III. Days before the PGA Tour’s restart at Colonial, Varner spoke of his experiences with inequality. The message was eloquent and passionate, offered perspective and understanding. Then the most remarkable thing happened. Varner, at a juncture where the lines of sport and society are blurred, contended at Colonial. He ultimately did not win the event; didn’t even finish top 10. But with his words and resolve, with a performance that can only be measured against the pain and uncertainty and fear we all face, Varner showed us the best that golf can be. —Joel Beall

RELATED: Maurice Allen—Being Black in a white sport

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No. 8: PHIL MICKELSON

It’s been one of pro golf’s favourite parlour games for years: What will Phil do next? Trying to anticipate the mercurial Phil Mickelson’s next move is a bit like playing charades blindfolded, and there was at least the usual number of questions surrounding Lefty in 2020—most notably because he celebrated his 50th birthday in June. That opened up the possibility of Mickelson venturing onto the PGA Tour Champions for the first time. Phil was coy about it the season’s outset, saying he wanted to focus on the regular tour. But after a pretty lacklustre effort before and after the COVID-19 shutdown (the only highlight was a solo third at his personal playground, Pebble Beach), Mickelson decided the time was right in late August for his senior bow. And boy was it a show. In the Charles Schwab Series at Ozarks National, Phil drained 11 birdies and shot 61 in the first round and then cruised to a wire-to-wire victory at 22 under for 54 holes. Tiger Woods’ reaction? “There’s no reason he can’t win every time he plays out there.” To prove that plausible, Mickelson played on the Champions again in mid-October in the Dominion Energy Charity Classic—and won again. Feasting on wide fairways and benign pin placements, Lefty is 2-for-2. Now about still competing with the youngsters … that’s becoming a bit more daunting. Mickelson has posted only two top 10s in his last 21 starts on the PGA Tour. Probably more disappointing was never being a factor in trying to pad his resume of five major victories. In 2020, Phil tied for 71st in the PGA Championship, started the U.S. Open with a 79 to miss the cut, and had no chance on Sunday in the Masters after a third-round 79. Boasting that his swing speed is better than ever, any power gain has been erased by erratic play in virtually every asset. For the 2019-’20 season, Mickelson was better than 75th in only one of the tour’s important strokes-gained categories (around the green). He was poor with his irons (129th, strokes gained/approach) and putter (124th, strokes gained/putting). He’s going to have to get a lot better to contend very often on the big tour. So, what will Phil do now? Here’s betting he beats up more on the graybeards and picks his spots with the kids. —Tod Leonard

RELATED: Our 50 favourite ‘Phil being Phil’ moments

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No. 9: TIGER WOODS

Patrick Smith

That Tiger Woods occupies real estate on this list is a testament to his star power, because he did really very little of note on the golf course in 2020. He played in just nine tournaments and managed one finish better than T-37. He was not a factor in any of the three majors, and he putted miserably. And yet he still commands the attention of the entire golf world in a way no one else can. He began the year ranked No. 6 in the World Rankings and now sits at No. 38, but his status as the game’s biggest star has not diminished. And it’s still not close. As for his golf, as we mentioned, it was a year to forget. He started 2020 well enough, with a T-9 at Torrey Pines. That would prove to be his only top 10. And yet he still did stuff, and people still cared. In no particular order: He sent the golf world into a panic when he pulled out of the Players Championship with a sore back; He, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady produced a highly entertaining trash-talk fest (The Match 2) during the height of the sport-less wasteland; all eyes turned to him to make a statement on the killing of George Floyd, which he did; he opened his first public course design, Payne’s Valley, with another well-received exhibition in Missouri; he gave fans an early Christmas present by announcing he’d play in the PNC Championship this week with his son; and he made a 10 on Sunday at the Masters, the worst score of his professional career. It was, however, the response to that 10 that warrants optimism for 2021. Directly after failing as he never has before, Woods did something he’s also never done before: birdie five of his final six holes at Augusta National. It was a reminder of Woods’ fighting spirit, of his total and complete unwillingness to pack it in. Sure, this was a down year on the golf course. But he’s trudged through way worse and still managed to climb back to the mountaintop. What lies ahead in 2021 is anyone’s guess, but one thing is for certain: We’ll be watching his every move. —Daniel Rapaport

BONUS READ: What’s 2021 look like for Tiger?

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No. 10: SOPHIA POPOV

Richard Heathcote/R&A

There isn’t a story from 2020 that more exemplifies why we love sports than Sophia Popov’s win at the AIG Women’s British Open. A player no one had ever heard of, who wasn’t a member of the LPGA Tour, who was on the cusp of quitting the game a year ago, who struggled with weight loss and other complications as she battled Lyme disease for years, plays her way to a two-shot win over the best players in the world. It’s hard not to root for that story every time. Popov wasn’t even supposed to be in the field at Royal Troon. The 27-year-old had been bouncing around tours since graduating from USC in 2014. She lost her LPGA Tour card in 2019 and was going to be spending 2020 on the Symetra Tour—likely 2021, too, once the pandemic hit, limiting the number of spots Symetra Tour graduates would get on the LPGA Tour for 2021. But LPGA Tour players not wanting to travel during the pandemic opened up some extra spots in the early tournaments when play resumed. Popov caddied in the first event back and then got a start the next week at the Marathon LPGA Classic. She took full advantage, finishing T-9. It was enough to get her into the field at Royal Troon. With her boyfriend on the bag, she started out with a 70, good enough for T-2. At that point, she was just a name near the lead no one had really heard of, the kind of player who has one good round in a major and then falls away. But Popov didn’t go away. She shot 72 on Friday, staying in the T-2 position. A 67 on Saturday gave her a three-shot lead. She remained unflappable on Sunday, winning by two to become the first German woman to win a major championship. She also earned full LPGA Tour status. No more Symetra Tour events, no more considering giving up all together. Popov had finally, officially arrived. —Keely Levins

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No. 11: PREMIER GOLF LEAGUE

Ross Kinnaird

The idea of a world golf circuit to combat the PGA Tour is far from new. Yet few proposed competitors have generated as much interest and curiosity as the Premier Golf League. Tracking its roots to 2014, the PGL’s blueprint., revealed publicly in January, is a league with 48 players divided into 12 teams—which players owning a share of said teams—competing in 18 no-cut, 54-hole events. It boasts shotgun starts (so an entire round could be compacted into a five-hour broadcast) and a team-only finale, with 10 of the tournaments set for the United States. And money. Lots of money—$240 million in prizes, to be exact. A sum the PGL hopes will pry the sport’s superstars to its pastures. However, most of the game’s marquee, in-their-prime attractions (including Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka) have thus far distanced themselves from the PGL, with the strongest rebuke coming from McIlroy, who said he “didn’t really like where the money was coming from,” a nod to the PGL’s alleged Saudi backers. Some big names, though, sounded curious. Phil Mickelson played with PGL financers in January and said the concept was “intriguing.” The recent alliance between the PGA and European Tours added another obstacle for the fledgeling league, as the PGL had sought a partnership with the Old World circuit. Despite an inauspicious rollout, the PGL remains, as Mickelson said, an intriguing—and in the eyes of the PGA and European Tours, formidable—concept, one fan could be hearing more about in the coming months. —Joel Beall

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No. 12: COLLIN MORIKAWA

San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

In football, pundits often debate whether a quarterback is ready to make “the leap”—loosely defined as the progression from promising up-and-comer to bona fide franchise player. Ideally it happens in the QB’s second year in the league, after he’s had one full season and offseason under his belt. Extrapolated to golf, Collin Morikawa followed the timeline perfectly. The former world No. 1 amateur who graduated from Cal-Berkeley in May 2019 hit the ground running, going T-2/T-4/WIN in his fourth, fifth and sixth starts as a professional. That firmly established him as one of golf’s most promising young players, as did making 22 straight cuts to start his career (three shy of Tiger Woods’ record). That put Morikawa at 44th in the World Ranking when the COVID-19 pandemic halted play in March. Come June, however, when the season resumed—13 months after he turned pro—Morikawa kicked it into an entirely different gear. A shoved three-footer saw him lose in a playoff in the first event back, the Charles Schwab Challenge, and the nightmare nearly repeated itself three starts later at the Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village. But that par putt on the 72nd hole lipped in, rather than out, and he beat Justin Thomas in one of the more entertaining mano-y-manos you’ll ever see: Thomas holed a 50-footer for birdie on the first extra hole before Morikawa punched back with a 24-footer of his own, then won it with a par on the next. The true breakthrough came a month later at TPC Harding Park, a short cruise across the Bay from his college stomping grounds. On a typically gray San Francisco Sunday afternoon, Morikawa emerged from a seven-deep pack of contenders at the PGA Championship with a chip-in for birdie on 14 and an eagle for the ages on the par-4 16th, where his tee shot finished seven feet from the cup and he finally sunk an important putt right in the heart. Two closing pars gave him the Wanamaker—and gave golf its newest superstar. —Daniel Rapaport

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No. 13: THE PGA TOUR CHAMPIONS

Kevin C. Cox

What began as a year focused largely on PGA Tour Champions perennial headliner Bernhard Langer and his assault on Hale Irwin’s record 45 career senior victories quickly made way to a new and “younger” storyline: the tour’s impressive 2020 rookie class. Five golfers playing in their first year on the senior circuit won eight titles in the 14 events contested during the COVID-interrupted year. The headliners were names familiar to golf fans. Ernie Els, in just his third senior start took the title at the Hoag Classic in March, the first of two wins that the four-time major winner would collect. As Jim Furyk turned 50 in May, the tour was still in its COVID-19 hiatus, but when play resumed at the Ally Challenge in July, the 2003 U.S. Open champ won in his senior debut. He also won his next start, the PURE Insurance Championship at Pebble Beach. Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson, who sounded hesitant to join the seniors at first, chose to play the Charles Schwab Series in his debut in July, opened with a 61 and cruised to a four-stroke win. Two months later, he entered the Dominion Energy Charity Classic and won it, too. Impressively, the two other rookie winners, Brett Quigley and Shane Bertsch, also were quick senior studies, each winning in just their second career starts. Suffice it to say, the fivesome helped bring a new energy to the 50-and-older circuit, as did the emergence of former major winner Darren Clarke (who claimed his first senior title in the fall) and the continued success of the coolest senior around, Miguel Angel Jimenez. And, of course, there was Langer, who at 63 grabbed his 41st PGA Tour Champions win, and finished in the top 10 in 12 of 15 starts. —John Strege

RELATED: How the PGA Tour Champions became competitive again

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No. 14: RORY MCILROY

Tom Pennington

“A game of two halves” may be one of soccer’s hoariest cliches, but it is an apt description of Rory McIlroy’s play during the 2019-’20 season and beyond. Between October 2019 and March 2020, the now 31-year-old Northern Irishman won once (WGC-HSBC Champions) and was never out of the top five in seven consecutive PGA Tour appearances. But when the tour returned after the COVID-19 lockdown in June, that high level of consistency was gone. In his next nine starts, McIlroy’s T-8 finish at the season-ending Tour Championship was his only top 10 and his distinction as World No. 1 was no more. Meanwhile, the 2020-’21 season, so far, ranks somewhere between those two extremes. Four appearances contained a T-8 at the U.S. Open and a T-5 at the Masters. Good obviously, but not even McIlroy’s biggest fan would claim he was ever in serious contention to win either. So what to make of it all? In a recent interview, McIlroy—who also became a new father to daughter Poppy, born Aug. 31—gave himself a “C” grade for his play. “I think any year you don’t win a tournament is a disappointment, and that’s why this year is disappointing,” McIlroy said, acknowledging once more his struggle getting comfortable with fanless tournaments. “It maybe took me longer to adjust to it than some other people. Every time I went out there for the first few weeks it felt like a practice round, like it didn’t matter.” Still, the world of golf is trending upward. A virus vaccine is reportedly on the way, and the return of crowds could follow. If the ever-inspirational McIlroy follows that same direction, it would hardly be a surprise to see a fifth major victory—and the first since 2014—added to his resume in 2021. Then again, maybe he won’t do anything of the sort. As 2020 has illustrated, with Rory you never quite know anything for certain. —John Huggan

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No. 15: CHARITY GOLF EVENTS

Mike Ehrmann

Hit-n-giggle events have historically been specks of dust in the golf galaxy. They featured big names and bigger money but the stakes never matter, if they were even remembered to begin with. Their existence was derided as the sport’s “silly season.” But in 2020, these matches moved from the game’s fringes to centre stage. Rather than line the pockets of the rich, a series of high-profile exhibitions generated millions for charities and food banks and HBCUs in a time when every dollar counts. And if these events were just charity generators, that would be well and good. Yet they were entertaining, all in their own rights. Through the TaylorMade Driving Relief charity event fans got their first glimpse of the uber-private Seminole Golf Club. Charles Barkley showed his infamous swing had drastically improved during a Thanksgiving showdown with Peyton Manning, Steph Curry and Phil Mickelson. Speaking of Mickelson … well, he did a bunch of Phil Mickelson things in both two iterations of “The Match.” Fans got to watch him stomp around with Tiger Woods, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning (above) at Woods’ home course, and the PGA Tour’s weekly nine-hole Wednesday games showed us the personalities of players not normally given the spotlight. And while the stakes remained low, they sure felt high. A sentiment best encapsulated by Brady at “The Match II” at Medalist. The Buccaneers quarterback was exposed as a sandbagger, received an ungodly amount of schadenfreude from his competitors and broadcast and social media, and he ripped his pants in the one nanosecond where things weren’t going wrong. Yet his hole-out for eagle the first “Oh-My-Did-You-See-That?!?!!” sports moment since the world shut down in March. Yes, it was a golf exhibition. In the best possible connotation. —Joel Beall

• • •

No. 16: BROOKS KOEPKA

Ezra Shaw

There’s a bluntness to the way Brooks Koepka plays golf, or at least to the force that he delivers to a golf ball. His words aren’t much different either, so when asked recently to sum up his year, he cut right to it: “I don’t know if I could say that without getting fined. Pretty bad.” Such is the standard for a player who won four majors in just less than two years and began 2020 as the No. 1 player in the world only to go winless and dip to 12th, his lowest ranking since 2017. On one hand, it was a disjointed season—pun intended—as the 30-year-old missed two months, including the U.S. Open in September, because of lingering knee and hip issues that also sidelined him for three months in 2019. On the other, his ego wrote some checks his game couldn’t cash, most notably in August at the PGA Championship, where he entered the final round at Harding Park tied for second just two strokes off the lead of Dustin Johnson. Koepka proceeded to offer a dismissive assessment of Johnson and the other contenders, then promptly imploded with a Sunday 74 to tumble to a T-29. He also missed more cuts in 2020 (five) than he had in the previous two years combined (three), had just four top 10s (the fewest in a calendar year of his career) and seemed at times to have trouble adjusting to the lack of buzz without fans in attendance because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then there was his continued trolling of Bryson DeChambeau over everything from ants, to slow play, to more serious insinuations over DeChambeau’s newfound bulk. On the bright side, there was a T-7 at the Masters. On the brighter side, 2020 is in the rear-view mirror. —Brian Wacker

• • •

No. 17: DANIELLE KANG

Mike Comer

When the LPGA Tour returned on July 31 after having not competed since February due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was no way of knowing how players’ games would come out of the long hiatus. Danielle Kang, however, made the state of her game immediately clear when she won the first two events, and emphatically put her stamp on the 2020 season. After taking the title at the LPGA Drive On Championship at Inverness Club by one shot over Celine Boutier, Kang gave credit to her coach, Butch Harmon, saying they spent the time off back in Las Vegas working on her 3-wood and wedge game. “Butch was the mastermind behind it,” Kang said. “He knew exactly what I needed to accomplish and work on, and I had the time.” Another one-shot win the next week, this time over Lydia Ko at the Marathon LPGA Classic, made it five career victories and bragging rights over her boyfriend, PGA Tour pro Maverick McNealy. Kang remained one of the tour’s top guns through the rest of the year, finishing top 12 in four other starts and moving up to fourth in the Rolex Women’s Rankings. Always a fiery competitor—she picked up the game at age 12 and 18 months later had qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open—Kang is clearing living up to her potential. With the season’s two biggest events still to come—this week’s U.S. Women’s Open and next week’s CME Group Tour Championship—the 28-year-old California native has the chance to become the first American since Stacy Lewis in 2014 to win LPGA player-of-the-year honours.—Keely Levins

• • •

No. 18: GOLF & GAMBLING

Hispanolistic

Once a back-room taboo topic, the legalization of sports betting continues to transform how we watch our favourite games, golf included. In 2020, golf broadcasts—notably the PGA Tour’s live digital streams and Golf Channel’s coverage—began showing and discussing odds. Made-for-TV exhibitions such as The Match 2 and The Match 3, the TaylorMade Driving Relief Skins Game and the Payne’s Valley Cup at Big Cedar Lodge all included heavy integrations with major sports-betting companies. It might’ve been a bit bizarre for some to hear announcers talking about who to bet on during a telecast, but given how momentum is shifting, it’s a sign of things to come. Consider that when the PGA Tour returned to action in June at the Charles Schwab Challenge, that first tournament was the most-bet tour event in DraftKings history. So what’s next? Prepare to see the PGA Tour continue to embrace the industry, including its partnership with IMG Arena, which will release a live-betting product in the 19 states where legal sports betting is available (with more states to come). The tour’s partnerships with most of the major betting operators will allow it to try almost anything it wants—notably develop new products and TV integrations to continue to engage their audience. There is a massive shift in behaviour—and a way to encourage non-golfers but fantasy golf players or bettors to be watching golf. It might not be the method many envisioned when they talked about growing the game decades ago, but it’s already happening. —Stephen Hennessey

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No. 19: WILL ZALATORIS

Hector Vivas

What if we told you the most consistent men’s golfer in the world didn’t earn status on the PGA Tour in 2020 until November? Such was the case with Will Zalatoris, a former All-American at Wake Forest, who picked the wrong year to light up the Korn Ferry Tour. A record stretch of 11 consecutive top-20 finishes on the developmental circuit, including a first pro win at the TPC Colorado Championship in July, was enough to easily finish first on the money list. But thanks to COVID-19, Korn Ferry Tour players will have to wait until the end of the 2021 season to earn PGA Tour cards. The good news for Zalatoris? The Plano, Texas, native kept his hot play going in the limited opportunities he got in the bigs, most notably a T-6 at the U.S. Open. The 24-year-old’s form was so strong by the time fall came around he was even made the betting favourite at the PGA Tour’s Bermuda Championship. Zalatoris didn’t win that week, but a T-16 was enough to earn Special Temporary Member status on the PGA Tour. In other words, we’re betting you hear a lot more about him in 2021. —Alex Myers

BONUS READ: The best things for golfers to come out of the pandemic

• • •

No. 20: PUSH CARTS

Richard Heathcote/R&A

Golf not only became the “it” participation sport during COVID-19, but walking the course came back in a big way. With golf carts a non-starter in most parts of the country during the early months of the pandemic, golfers who loathed the thought of lugging their bag looked to push carts as a viable alternative. Even pro golfers got into the act; LPGA up-and-comer Lindsey Weaver used one when the tour resumed play in lieu of a local caddie, including at the AIG Women’s British Open at Troon. It all resulted in a sales explosion in the category, a scarcity of supply and, eventually, price gouging on the secondary market with some non-motorized pushcarts going for close to $1,000 on some auction sites. Sun Mountain, a leading producer of push carts, ramped up production 250 percent—and still couldn’t keep up with demand, its pre-sales pushing availability out some three months during the summer. Results were predictably strong at retail as well. Ken Morton Jr., VP of retail & marketing at the Haggin Oaks golf facility in Sacramento, Calif., said the push-cart boom remains strong, with sales in August-September more than double the norm. “And that’s virtual without any inventory,” Morton said. “Everything we get in from the manufacturers is gone within a day or two of it arriving. At one point, we had a waitlist nearly 100 customers long.” Although 2021 will see demand for push carts slow somewhat, it likely will still far exceed pre-COVID levels. Golfers have not only grown used to hoofing it, but many have found they prefer the walk—as long as the bag stays off the shoulder. —E. Michael Johnson

• • •

No. 21: NICK WATNEY

Gregory Shamus

When the PGA Tour resumed its season in June with the COVID-19 pandemic ongoing, there were those who figured it wasn’t a matter of if a player would test positive for coronavirus but when. Unlike the NBA, which locked down its league in Orlando, the tour would be playing tournaments at courses around the country, with players, caddies and officials going in and out of “the bubble” each week. And while 40-plus pages worth of safety protocols were in place, they would only go so far. So when Nick Watney tested positive during the second tournament back, the RBC Heritage on Hilton Head Island, the surprise wasn’t so much that it happened but who it happened to first. The 39-year-old tour veteran with a wife and two kids had the reputation of being a rule follower. “At the time it was extremely surreal because I felt like I had followed all the suggested protocols,” Watney told Golf Digest last week. Thankfully, the five-time tour winner experienced only mild symptoms and returned to play three weeks later. Unfortunately, the rest of 2020 was a struggle, with eight missed cuts in his 10 remaining starts. The tour, meanwhile, played on, confident its plan could limit exposure and keep other players safe. And, indeed, it did. While there were more positive tests among players, compared to other sports (notably the NFL and college football), the numbers were relatively low: 15 in total over a span of 17 tournaments and thousands of tests administered. Watney’s place in history remains, but thankfully it isn’t all that infamous. —Brian Wacker

BONUS READ: The first PGA Tour pro to test positive for COVID-19 reflects on his surreal experience

• • •

No. 22: SHEEP RANCH

Dom Furore

Like the age-old gifting question, What do you get the person who already has everything?, it’s difficult to envision what could possibly make Bandon Dunes better. The golf world received the answer this year: Sheep Ranch, which opened in June and earned Golf Digest’s Best New Course honours for 2020. The trick to enhancing a golf destination that seems to offer everything—including four courses currently ranked among Golf Digest’s America’s 100 Greatest Courses—is to make any new addition distinct. Sheep Ranch accomplishes that by playing across a property that’s unlike anything else on site—a broad, open plain of seaside bluffs to the north of Old Macdonald. Where Bandon’s other courses dip in and out of sandy dunes and forests, Sheep Ranch fans across a mostly naked and ferociously windswept expanse that used to be home to a rustic and secretive 13-green course of the same name. The task for architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw was to find a way to assemble, in limited space, 18 holes that were broad enough to handle balls that would be blowing in all directions. In doing this they were also able to locate a remarkable nine greens along a majestic run of Pacific Ocean bluffs. Sheep Ranch is a gorgeous, bouncy course with its own look and playing characteristics, giving guests a different kind of golf experience and travellers yet another compelling reason to make the trek to southwest Oregon. —Derek Duncan

• • •

No. 23: PAUL AZINGER

Tasos Katopodis

It’s hard to believe now, but in a pre-COVID world the most-heated debate—at least, in the golf world—stemmed from Zinger’s zinger at Tommy Fleetwood during the final round of the Honda Classic in March. For a moment, the NBC commentator sounded more like an American Ryder Cup captain trying to fire up his squad when he said, “These guys know, you can win all you want on that European Tour or in the international game and all that,” Azinger said, “but you have to win on the PGA Tour.” More than what Azinger said, though, was how he said it. Many European players from Ian Poulter to Lee Westwood rightfully found the words condescending, particularly the line, “that European Tour.” To be fair to Azinger, though, even Fleetwood acknowledged the importance of winning in America. And whether it was the pressure of doing so or not, his chances of doing so disappeared when his second shot found the water on the par-5 18th at PGA National. In any event, Fleetwood enters 2021 still in search of a win on U.S. soil, and Azinger remains in the 18th tower for NBC. At the very least, like his predecessor Johnny Miller, Azinger seems to get golf fans—and golfers—talking. —Alex Myers

• • •

No. 24: HOODIES

Ross Kinnaird

Like seemingly every controversy in golf, the heated debate that centred around the acceptability of wearing hooded sweatshirts—aka Hoodies—during a golf tournament was manufactured on social media. While well-known players like Tony Finau, Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy had worn them in competition before, HoodieGate didn’t really “explode” until Tyrrell Hatton won the European Tour’s BMW PGA Championship in September wearing one. And by “explode,” we mean a handful of folks with 26 Twitter followers were upset with Hatton’s Bill Belichick-ian look at Wentworth. Nevertheless, the debate persisted, becoming less of a Hoodie-specific controversy and more of a diatribe on proper golf attire in general. One English golf club doubled down on its no-hoodie rule after Hatton’s victory. Ewan Porter, a former tour pro, told the story of being kicked out of an Australia golf club for wearing black socks. These two situations had many up in arms over golf’s outdated “dress code,” the argument being that if we want to grow the game, forcing people to abide by archaic rules ain’t the way to go. One thing is clear: There is still a divide regarding golf’s dress-code debates, be it on social media or behind the closed gates of an exclusive club. —Christopher Powers

• • •

No. 25: MIKE DAVIS

Scott Halleran

Mike Davis soon will break new ground as he segues into a career in golf course architecture with partner Tom Fazio II. Of course, many would argue—some saying for the better and, yes, more than a few for the worse—that Davis, 55, has been doing that for years during his tenure at the USGA, which will come to a close at the end of 2021. Davis said in September that he’ll be stepping down as CEO of the organization where he’s worked since 1990 and been in charge since 2011, leaving to pursue his first love, because, he said, “I’m closer to 60 than I am 50, and there was almost a sense that if I don’t do this, I’m going to regret it.” During his tenure, Davis oversaw, among many initiatives, the modernization of the Rules of Golf, the launch of the World Handicap System, the creation of the USGA Foundation, the debut of four new championships and plans for a second USGA headquarters in Pinehurst, N.C. He also, with mixed results, took the U.S. Open in a different direction with the selection of new courses like Chambers Bay and Erin Hills, and with the setup of old standbys like Winged Foot, Oakmont and Shinnecock Hills that featured graduated rough and multiple teeing grounds. Critics harped on tests that were either too easy (Erin Hills) or too tricked up (Shinnecock Hills) or simply not of true U.S. Open character (Chambers Bay). In the end, however, he put his stamp on the association, and though he said, “I hate the idea of leaving,” he nevertheless leaves as he served—on his own terms. —Dave Shedloski

RELATED: Who will replace Mike Davis? This is what the USGA is looking for

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By Dave Shedloski
The process of finding a successor to USGA CEO Mike Davis, who announced Tuesday he will leave the association at the end of 2021, commenced about a year ago with the help of a search firm. So it is, according to USGA president Stu Francis, that the association already has taken meaningful steps toward an eventual leadership transition.

Francis would not divulge how many candidates might have been identified, be they inside the halls of Golf House in Liberty Corner, N.J., or outside them. Chances are, however, that considerably more men and women might throw their visor inside the ropes after reading the following job description.

“It’s demanding, but it’s a pretty cool job,” said Francis, who is heading up the search team. “You get to interact with world-class athletes, you get to go visit many of the great golf courses and sites in United States. There are a lot of things about it that are very cool.

“We’ll see who could be interested, and then we’ll stack them all up together and do a thoughtful decision.”

The reason the association had already begun the search process was that Davis quietly informed the USGA Executive Committee 3½ years ago that he planned to step down in 2021. Davis, 55, succeeded David Fay as the seventh executive director in 2011 and became its first chief executive officer in 2016, responsible for managing day-to-day operations, including its core functions, essential programs and human and financial resources.

It won’t be easy replacing Davis, and not simply because he has 30-plus years of experience at the USGA. Francis rattled off a list of criteria the next CEO must meet. “This is a very important job in an important sport,” Francis said. “It’s also a complex job, so we need someone with multifaceted skills.”

Rob Carr/Getty Images
USGA president Stu Francis (left) will oversee the search team than finds Mike Davis’ successor.

Francis said the next CEO has to be a strong leader with broad interpersonal skills to not only oversee the organisation but also to work with the numerous golf organisations around the world. (Davis serves on a number of boards, including the International Golf Federation, World Golf Foundation, World Golf Hall of Fame and Official World Golf Rankings.) He or she undoubtedly has to possess a keen business acumen with an understanding of the financial structure of a nonprofit sports organisation.

Oh, and, of course, they also have to love the game.

At the top of the list of prerequisites, it seems, is the ability to ensure the financial health of an organization that runs 14 national championships and, with the R&A, administers and manages the Rules of Golf.

“I would say one of the most important skill sets going forward will be the ability to strategically think through the continually changing revenue landscape going forward,” Francis said. “We’re going to need somebody who understands how the landscape is changing from a revenue and a business standpoint, because at the end of the day, it’s a nonprofit organisation.

“Look, we conduct the equivalent of the NBA Finals every year in the U.S. Open,” Francis added. “It’s become a major global event, and the logistics have become extraordinary. It generates about 75 percent of our revenues. We put all that back into the game, but we need to keep generating it so we can continue the types of grow-the-game initiatives. We have Girls Golf, The First Tee, etc. So we’ve got to get it right on a revenue standpoint, and Mike has, but the marketplace keeps changing, and we want to be in a position to do that effectively.”

Davis, also part of the search team, said the plan is for a successor to be in place by May or early June, “so they can get through the U.S. Open, and then I can spend a handful of months with them. And then from there, when you get to the latter part of next year, I’ll hand off the baton, and hopefully it’ll be a good, smooth transition.”

In addition to the financial well-being of the institution, the new CEO will have to take the baton from Davis on any actions the USGA and R&A might enact in accordance with its ongoing Distance Insights Initiative, which already is two years in the making at a cost “well into seven figures,” Davis said. “That might be the most important initiative we have going forward because it affects so many golfers, not just the players at the top, and so many aspects of the game.”

The search process begins in earnest now that the staff of the USGA has been informed of Davis’ exit plan. Francis said there is no mandate that the job has to be filled by a current USGA team member, though that is possible.

“The beauty of Mike’s leadership is that he has brought in and developed a very strong senior team so, we’re going to look at both internal and external candidates,” Francis said. “It would be a shame not to see what’s out there, so we’ll see what unfolds, We’ve been able to be very quiet with this for quite a while. It will be interesting to see who surfaces.”

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By Dave Shedloski
After 30-plus years with the USGA, including the last nine as its executive director/CEO, Mike Davis will leave at the end of 2021 to start a golf course design company.

Mike Davis has been setting up and preparing golf courses for USGA championships since he joined the association in 1990. It allowed him to scratch an itch, if you will, given that he has been fascinated by golf course design since he was a kid, when he would doodle his own golf holes on a notepad.

It probably was inevitable that one day he’d want to start etching his own ideas into the dirt.

The USGA on Tuesday announced that Davis is stepping down as its chief executive officer, effective at the end of 2021, to embark on a career in golf course design and construction. Davis plans to team up with Tom Fazio II to create a new golf course architecture company, Fazio & Davis Golf Design.

“I’ve absolutely loved the USGA, and I hate the idea of leaving,” said Davis, 55, who became the USGA’s seventh executive director in 2011, succeeding David Fay, a role that segued into that of CEO in 2016. “I’ve grown up around here. I mean, it will have been 32 years by the time I leave, and my work in championships and governance and so on is just … in some ways, I never thought I’d leave.

“But at the heart of this, I have always loved golf course design. I loved learning, seeing, playing, studying golf courses. I’m closer to 60 than I am 50, and there was almost a sense that if I don’t do this, I’m going to regret it.”

The USGA under Davis made significant strides in several areas, including the modernisation of the Rules of Golf, the launch of the World Handicap System, the creation of the USGA Foundation, expansion of the USGA footprint with a second Golf House location set for Pinehurst, N.C., and starting four new championships—the U.S. Senior Women’s Open, the men’s and women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championships (which replaced the Amateur Public Links championships), and, probably starting in 2022 or ’23, an event for golfers with disabilities.

Also during Davis’ tenure, the USGA, along with the R&A, adopted a rule change that prohibits anchoring a club while making a stroke. And, more recently, again in partnership with the R&A, the USGA initiated the Distance Insights Project, a comprehensive study on the impact of distance in golf that was released earlier this year. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the governing bodies have delayed the next phase of the project—specific topics of further research. That delay, Davis said, likely means that decisions based on the study might come after he has departed.

“Mike has done a great job for the USGA on so many fronts,” said Stu Francis, USGA president. “What first comes to mind is that he set it up to succeed without him, but that’s just because it shows how good a job he’s done in organising the priorities and the leadership team.

“He’s a terrific human being, he’s a thoughtful guy, he’s a thorough person,” Francis added. “By far he’s always had the USGA’s best interests at heart in everything he does. And so from the standpoint of just interacting with a CEO, leading a major nonprofit organization, he just couldn’t be a better guy to work with.”

Mike Ehrmann
In setting up U.S. Open venues, Mike Davis tried to engage with players such as Dustin Johnson here at Chambers Bay in 2015.

A search for a successor to Davis already has begun in hopes that he or she will be on board before next year’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego, giving Davis time to assist with the transition. His departure has been a long time coming, actually.

“When I got the opportunity to be executive director, which turned into CEO, at the time, I did tell Cece [his wife], ‘I’m going to give this 10 years, and then we’re going to move on,’ and it will have been 11 years. And that’s a long time.”

A native of Chambersburg, Pa., Davis was an outstanding junior golfer and won the 1982 Pennsylvania State Junior Championship before playing college golf for Georgia Southern, where he earned a degree in business. He was working in commercial real estate in Florida when he got a call from the USGA seeking a manager of championship relations. He was familiar to P.J. Boatwright, then the executive director, and other USGA officials from playing in numerous high-level amateur events.

“I literally got a call out of the blue, and I went up and interviewed with Mike Butz, with David Fay, and with P.J. Boatwright, and they were dumb enough to hire me,” Davis joked.

Before taking over as executive director, Davis served as the head of course setup for the U.S. Open starting in 2006. He was praised for his introduction of graduated rough, drivable par 4s and use of multiple teeing grounds to challenge players to take a more conceptual approach with how to play holes. In subsequent years, however, players called into question setups at Chambers Bay in 2015, Erin Hills in 2017 and Shinnecock Hills in 2018, and Davis handed over those duties to John Bodenhamer in 2019.  There was also the frustrating handling of a rules issue involving eventual winner Dustin Johnson at Oakmont in 2016 that caused Davis and the USGA to receive condemnation.

Davis said he eventually plans to move to Jupiter, Fla., where he and Cece are building a home. Fazio, whose father, Jim, and uncle, Tom, are course designers, is based in Jupiter. Already Davis and Fazio have begun working together at Chambersburg Country Club, which was Davis’ boyhood home course.

“For about a dozen years I have been helping them out a little bit, and I’ve really enjoyed it,” said Davis, who was introduced to golf by his father when he was 8. “Then they asked me to do a master plan, so I brought Tom in, and I’m doing it pro bono, but he and I just really work together well.”

Davis admits he still has a lot to learn, even though his tenure at the USGA has provided him a considerable education in course design. “This job the last three decades has afforded me a chance to see, really, most of the world’s great golf courses,” he said. “And I’ve played them, studied them, seen them, and I’ve gotten to meet a lot of great architects during this time, too. Having said that, I might be studied and well-read, but there’s a lot I don’t know, and I am looking forward to getting out there and getting my hands dirty.”

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USGA officials had hoped to hold the reschedule major at Winged Foot in September with a limited number of spectators, but decided not to for health and safety reasons amid the continued COVID-19 pandemic. (Dom Furore)

By Brian Wacker
The U.S. Open is still on schedule to be played at Winged Foot Golf Club in suburban New York, Sept 17-20, but as previously reported will take place without fans in attendance.

The USGA, which runs the championship, made the decision official on Wednesday, in accordance with state and local officials.

“After months of going through scenario planning from everything to a full U.S. Open, to having no fans, to asking if we can play in Westchester County given that it was the epicentre for a while for COVID-19, to thinking about what other courses we could play and when we might be able to play and how to work through a very crowded fall calendar in terms of sports broadcasting, we got the thumbs up from [New York] Governor [Andrew] Cuomo this week,” USGA CEO Mike Davis told Golf Digest. “Our whole goal is that we want to conduct a U.S. Open and want to do it in a safe way, and we consider it a bonus that we’re able to still do it at Winged Foot. If done safely, we see it as something that can be uplifting. We’re elated that we can conduct the U.S. Open.”

The championship, which was originally scheduled for June 18-21 but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, becomes the second major championship in 2020 to announce that it will take place without spectators in attendance. Last month, the PGA Championship, which will take place next week at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, said that it will be held without fans.

“We have come a long way in the fight against COVID-19, and I am so proud of New Yorkers, who rose to the occasion and bent the curve,” Gov. Cuomo said. “While the tournament will look different this year with no fans and enhanced safety protocols, this event is a welcome sight for sports fans across the country and will help restore a sense of normalcy as we build back better than before.”

Beyond no spectators there also will be other strict guidelines and limitations at the U.S. Open, according to Davis. The most significant being that everyone who will be on site at Winged Foot must undergo a COVID-19 test upon arrival.

RELATED: The 15 best U.S. Opens, ranked

Testing will involve a nasal or saliva swab and be conducted off-site nearby. No one will be permitted on the grounds of the event until receiving a negative result. That includes Davis, who said that he will undergo a saliva swab before attending next week’s U.S. Women’s Amateur in Maryland. Temperature checks and questionnaires also will be issued daily for everyone on the grounds.

Anyone who tests positive, save for players and caddies who have already gone through 10 days of isolation and 72 hours without any fever or respiratory symptoms, as per PGA Tour guidelines, also would be isolated.

Also, under state guidelines issued by the Department of Health earlier this month, players, caddies and all others who are on site will be deemed as essential personnel and therefore will be exempt from having to quarantine 14 days after arrival in New York. This is a key element given current restrictions on visitors from a number of states and countries to New York.

There will be other limitations at the event as well.

Fans watch on the 18th hole at Winged Foot as Geoff Ogilvy closes out his final round en route to victory at the 2006 U.S. Open. (Robert Beck)

Rules officials, which typically number around 75 for a U.S. Open, will be reduced to roughly 25 percent of that. The number of media credentialed, usually in the 800 to 900 range for a New York City area U.S. Open, will be cut down significantly as well.

In all, there are expected to be approximately 2,000 people in all on the grounds during the tournament, between players, caddies, staff, officials, media and family members of players. That’s compared to what would ordinarily be around 40,000.

“This will not be a typical U.S. Open in several respects,” said John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s senior managing director of championships. “Would it have been easier to simply cancel or even move the 2020 championship rather than play it in what has been the epicentre of the virus in our country? Possibly. But all of us at the USGA know how much the U.S. Open matters, and we weren’t willing to give up on playing it at Winged Foot Golf Club so easily. We are very proud to give our competitors and champions a platform to chase their dreams. Their perseverance motivates us, in a year when such tenacity means so much.”

“I think the big deal is that they didn’t cancel it,” said Gary Woodland, last year’s winner at Pebble Beach. “I would have loved my family and friends to be there. And the NYC crowds are great. But I’m excited to be able to defend, and to do it at Winged Foot. That’s a big-boy golf course. A ball-striker’s paradise.”

At one point, the USGA had discussed the possibility of moving its biggest tournament to another location as the New York City area was a hotspot for coronavirus early on in the pandemic. However cases of the virus in the region have declined significantly and the curve has flattened over the last two months.

Still, cases of coronavirus in many parts of the country and world have continued to rise and it became clear to Davis in late June when New York imposed a two-week quarantine for visitors from certain parts of the world that there was no way the tournament could move forward with fans.

“We realized the chances of conducting a U.S. Open even with limited fans was quickly going away,” Davis told Golf Digest. “Once we knew that we couldn’t play in June, at that point we looked at having a limited number of fans, maybe 5,000 or 10,000. But it was about then that state officials said things are changing and we had to think of it as essential personnel only.”

The news also comes after the PGA Tour last month said that it would not have fans for the rest of this season, which concludes in mid-September, though it will allow a small number of sponsor guests at some of its remaining events as well as spouses and significant others. The 2020-21 season opener, the Safeway Open, which is scheduled for the week before the U.S. Open, also will not have spectators.

Meanwhile, the USGA said it will offer refunds for those who purchased tickets in advance.

Still to be determined is whether fans will be allowed at the Masters, which was rescheduled from April 9-12 to Nov. 12-15. Augusta National has been silent since April 6 when it announced the new date for the tournament. It’s also unclear if fans will be allowed at any tournaments on the PGA Tour for the rest of 2020, though commissioner Jay Monahan has said he remains hopeful to have fans by the end of the year.

 

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By Joel Beall
The USGA announced Monday that it is moving the U.S. Open and the media rights for all its championships to NBC Universal starting this August. The announcement ends a six-year relationship with FOX.

According to a USGA statement, the 2020 U.S. Open’s shift in dates from June to September due to the COVID-19 pandemic proved problematic for FOX, which has commitments to the NFL, MLB and college football. In an Associated Press report that first broke news of the deal on Sunday night, FOX had approached moving the U.S. Open to its cable sports network FS1, an offer that USGA officials turned down.

This quagmire served as a catalyst for the USGA, FOX and NBC Universal to discuss working together to broadcast this year’s championship, which according to a USGA statement “led to a broader conversation and eventual agreement for NBCU to take over the USGA media rights.”

As a result, NBC Universal now has USGA championships rights until 2026. In its statement, the USGA says its “financial remuneration for the USGA will remain the same for the duration of the agreement.” FOX and the USGA originally signed a 12-year, $1.1 billion deal in 2013, the deal going into effect in 2015.

“Partnering with NBC Universal, including Golf Channel, gives us an unparalleled opportunity to connect and engage with the core golf audience more directly and routinely, and as a non-profit, to continue to have a significant and lasting impact on the game,” said Mike Davis, CEO of the USGA, in press release.

NBC had broadcast the U.S. Open from 1995 to 2014 before the USGA surprised many by signing a 12-year deal with FOX, which had not previously broadcast golf. That lack of experience, in part, led to FOX receiving criticism during its first U.S. Open telecast in 2015 from Chambers Bay. Shortly after, FOX let go its main analyst Greg Norman, replacing him with Paul Azinger.

In subsequent years, FOX’s lead broadcast team of Joe Buck and Azinger received increasing positive reviews as their comfort level increased. FOX also earned acclaim for technical innovations in its broadcasts, including use of drone technology and shot-tracing capabilities that provided unique perspectives and pushed other networks to consider similar production improvements.

“We have genuinely appreciated the partnership that we have had with FOX Sports over the last six years and are grateful for their steadfast efforts to produce world-class events,” Davis said. “FOX brought significant innovation to golf broadcasting by elevating technology and enhancing the fan experience.”

NBC Universal will now broadcast the four championships the USGA will conduct in 2020: The U.S. Women’s Amateur (Aug. 3-9 at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Md.); the U.S. Amateur (Aug. 10-16 at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Bandon, Ore.), the U.S. Open (Sept. 17-20 at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y.) and the U.S. Women’s Open (Dec. 10-13 at Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas).

“We have implemented a defined strategy to build our digital offerings over the last six years and have achieved significant success,” Davis said. “The reach and engagement of our championships will only increase through the NBCUniversal family.”

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By Tod Leonard
The USGA is king when it comes to overseeing national championships and governing rules. The foot soldiers of the entire American golf system, however, are the state and regional associations.

The work is enormously valuable, the USGA recognizes that, and it’s making a considerable investment to give the associations a boost in the troubled times of COVID-19. On Saturday, the USGA announced that it has established an emergency relief fund for its 59 Allied Golf Associations (AGA) and will give out up to $5 million in grants.

In a release, the USGA said the grants are intended to maintain business continuity and staffing levels. Individual AGAs can apply for up to $100,000 in relief, and additional financial assistance will be considered on a case-by-case basis. The application process begins on Monday, April, 13, and will continue through the summer as needed. Should additional funding be needed if the disruption is prolonged, the USGA said it will consider further contributions.

“These golf associations are the backbone of the recreational and competitive golf communities at the local, state and regional level,“ USGA CEO Mike Davis said in the statement. “They play a vital role not only in delivering the USGA’s core services but also in engaging millions of golfers across the country at the local level. This support will help enable the game to make a strong return once it’s safe to do so.”

There are AGAs in all 50 states, and as noted by the USGA, “they conduct events that welcome and connect juniors, women and players of all ages, backgrounds and abilities; educate countless golf professionals, officials and players; advocate for golf courses; and provide affordable opportunities to play.”

The AGAs play a big role for the USGA, staging more than 600 qualifiers for the 14 USGA Open and amateur championships.

During the coronavirus crisis, some associations have been hit harder than others because playing golf has been deemed a “non-essential” activity by local or state governments. Other states or regions are allowing play.

The USGA is suffering its own effects of COVID-19. It already has cancelled the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball for men and women and postponed the U.S. Open from June to September, and the U.S. Women’s Open from June to December.

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By Joel Beall
It’s intended to be a conversation starter, but it is a conversation that started some time ago, with sides that are passionately entrenched. Perhaps that’s why the USGA and R&A’s release of its long-awaited Distance Insights report has been viewed by some as a verdict rather than an opening statement.

But that statement was clear: Distance needs to be curtailed for the good of the game. And because much of the debate revolves around the PGA Tour, a number of pros spoke out this week after the report’s release, feeling as if they are being tried for a crime they did not commit. Many defended themselves by citing advancements in training and club optimisation. Others deferred the blame to architects and designers. A few took exception with the idea that a distance spike is actually a problem.

No matter the response, there was an underlying tone to some of the players’ denials and rebuttals that is problematic. Simply put, many sound as if they don’t trust the governing bodies, their motive or their competence.

It was mostly unsaid, but it was there. Like when Billy Horschel asked, “Do you think the USGA or R&A hold any responsibility in the distance issue?” or as Paul Casey insisted players and manufacturers aren’t to blame. Even the Tour’s official statement, which expressed its desire to collaborate with the USGA and R&A, added the caveat it wouldn’t back any solutions that could negatively impact the Tour, its players or the fans’ “enjoyment of our sport.”

Just in case the message was lost in the nuance, Phil Mickelson provided clarity.

“I didn’t really read anything tangible from the report; I only saw that they didn’t want each generation to continue getting longer and longer,” Mickelson said earlier this week. “I struggle with some of our governing bodies. I struggle with it because we are the only professional sport in the world that’s governed by a group of amateurs, and that leads to some questionable directions that we go down. I wish that we had people that are involved in the sport professionally to be in charge a little bit more.”

Now, the USGA’s approval rating will never be confused with, say, Tom Hanks’ popularity, its standing still recovering from miscues in three of the past five U.S. Opens. The report itself also is not without its flaws or weak points, or above criticism, although that last point shouldn’t pose a problem: The sport—fans, player, media—hasn’t shied from voicing its displeasure with officials in Far Hills.

And to be fair, many of these players were asked their thoughts, and they obliged. (Shoutout to Dustin Johnson, who admitted he did not read the report after seeing its length.)

Yet, whatever qualms exist with the governing body, know this. In aim and scope, the USGA’s purpose is not without merit.

Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
Mickelson called out golf for being governed by ‘a group of amateurs.’

When the Distance Insights project was announced in May 2018, many assumed the USGA and R&A were holding kangaroo court for a pre-determined agenda. It was a notion dismissed then and now by those involved, who say its mission was to gather research and opinions on how distance affects each individual and all aspects of the game.

“We are looking at distance in a very holistic way,” Rand Jerris, the USGA’s senior managing director of public services, said to Golf Digest. “The golf ball is not the focus of this project.”

A rollback has been the presumed outcome for many on both sides of the debate, a prevailing theory being that the USGA has been saving the resources to wage a legal war. Except multiple current and former USGA employees say that’s not the case, stating the last thing the USGA and R&A want are courtroom battles and broken relationships.

“It’s there in the beginning of the summary,” a former USGA employee said. “ ‘[The USGA and R&A] are trying to protect the challenge and character of golf.’ From what they have gathered, this is the route to reach that objective.”

The gathering is impressive, as the Insights reports features more than 100 years of data. The research, made available to the public, flows from 56 ancillary reports, many themselves dozens of pages in length. To those who view the USGA as a bunch of lawyers cosplaying as country club presidents, it could read like an information dump to obfuscate the point.

Those around the USGA again say that’s not so. As USGA CEO Mike Davis told Golf Digest, “We clearly have identified a problem that the industry should solve in a collective way,” and the papers are proof of that indication. Or as another USGA staffer relayed, “We are trying to be transparent.”

Moreover, in a sport accused, often rightfully, of being too exclusive, the USGA and R&A did their best to make sure everyone was heard. Golfers were offered a chance to participate in a survey and many took that opportunity, with nearly 70,000 people filling out the online questionnaire. Even the most cynical USGA observer has to agree, that’s a lot of homework to do if you already have the answer in hand. And that’s important since wherever this debate goes, its execution depends on listening to any and all stakeholders.

So when players insinuate the USGA doesn’t know what it’s doing, they are impeding the conversation and making themselves look bad in the process.

Photo by Scott Halleran
It’s hard to call out Davis and the USGA for a lack of effort with its Distance Insights report.

The report is far from infallible. Despite the mountain of research, some of the conclusions—particularly those on how distance has affected average golf courses—are lacking basic data points, filled with hearsay and empirical evidence in their stead. The survey’s questions could be interpreted as biased, and with just 7 percent of those surveyed replying distance is a problem, it’s fair to ask if Average Joes have a big enough seat at the table.

Those questions are well and good. But they warrant discussion, not dismissiveness.

The USGA knows these questions and more are coming, which is why it is calling for continued input from the game, hoping to specify areas of further research within the next 45 days. Once those topics are reached, gathering research could take another nine months to a year. Insert your pace-of-play jokes here.

And yet, while every other stakeholder in the game has self-preservation at heart, the USGA and R&A have a higher calling: Earnestly trying to do what they think is best for the game.

“We believe that now is the time to examine this topic through a very wide and long lens, knowing it is critical to the future of the game,” Davis said at the onset of the project. “We look forward to delving deeply into this topic and learning more, led by doing right by golf, first and foremost.”

Whatever you think of Davis or the USGA, there is nothing amateur about that pursuit.

The post Why players are right to jab the USGA on the distance debate … and are also off the mark appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.