For a while now, especially since the PGA Tour adopted a wraparound schedule that combines two calendar years into one golf year, it has felt as if professional golf never stops.
Pro golf, some of us have suggested, needs an annual offseason, a time when there isn’t another tournament on television. Like baseball and football, there’s an appreciation that develops in the absence of competition. It’s hard to miss something that’s never gone.
Golf – which could use such a break – hasn’t had that.
Until now.
The reason for it and the timing of it are terrible, but for the foreseeable future there is no golf to watch or to follow, no first-round leaders, no tracking the world ranking to see who’s moved into the top 50, no wondering if Jordan Spieth is any closer to turning things around.
Eventually the PGA Tour, the LPGA Tour, the European Tour and all the other places where golf is played competitively will come back.
Eventually.
It will be nice when it does, not just because it will be an indication the virus storm sweeping the globe is subsiding but because we will have missed the game, perhaps more than we thought we would.
We've already demonstrated that life can go on without professional sports, golf included. There's a void but there is also a forced restructuring of priorities underway, a reordering of life that may be a silver lining in this whole thing.
In times like these, it’s easy to figure out what’s important.
Health. Family. Toilet paper.
A good book. Social distancing. Faith.
Take-out from the Thai place down the street. Netflix. Cocktail hour.
Unless or until things change, golf courses remain social sanctuaries, places where people still can get together, at least outside since most clubhouses have now been closed.
The game always has belonged to those of us who play it and, for the foreseeable future, that’s all the golf there is. We all care more about how we play than how the pros play anyway and that’s all we have this spring, provided circumstances don’t take recreational golf away.
Barely one week into going cold turkey with no competitive golf, it feels strange. So much has happened that it’s too soon to really miss it. For the moment, it’s like when the power goes out and you flip the light switch anyway. We’re still in the getting-used-to-it stage.
On Friday morning at the Players Championship after the tournament had been cancelled, players were coming through the clubhouse to pick up their clubs and empty their lockers. When Rory McIlroy was asked what his plans are now, he said he intends to practice.
“But I don’t know what I’m practicing for,†McIlroy said.
It’s a bit like going shopping with no money.
For a time, the PGA Tour planned to restart at the RBC Heritage in April. Now it hopes to restart at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial in late May. The European Tour is looking at a similar resumption time frame. Those restarts are written in pencil, not ink.
Whenever tour golf resumes, it will feel like Opening Day in baseball season (which also remains in flux). The fields will probably be among the strongest of the season because players will have had so much time away.
By then, what we’ve taken for granted will come back to us. Checking the scores on Thursday afternoon. Catching a few minutes of television coverage on Friday. Settling into our favorite seat to see how Sunday unfolds.
In the meantime, the run-up to the Masters has gone away. No Valspar Championship. No WGC-Dell Match Play Championship (remember Rory played Tiger last year?). No Valero Texas Open. No Augusta. No PGA Championship.
No speculation about where Tiger might play next. No wondering if this is the year McIlroy finally wins the Masters. No Bubba being Bubba.
Barely two weeks ago, the PGA Tour announced a nine-year U.S. media rights deal starting in 2021 that will expand how and where the sport can be accessed. It is a content-driven agreement spread across multiple platforms, some of which are still being created. And it follows a massive, 12-year international rights deal the tour signed with Discovery in 2018.
There will be more of the PGA Tour available than ever before.
For now, though, it’s drifting on the dark side of the moon like every other major sports league.
Like going out to dinner, a trip to the mall or just a normal day at the office, it’s not coming back any time soon.
We miss it already.
E-MAIL RON