{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
It has become second nature to think these days about all that has gone missing as we live life behind masks and inside bubbles.
Whether it’s a beer with friends at a favorite tavern, football tailgate parties that won’t happen or just going to the office, the world feels less than it was when 2020 began.
It’s the same with golf. The professional tours lost an enormous chunk of their seasons and even as they have carefully returned, they’re playing on empty courses, the soundtrack of Saturdays and Sundays muted.
“At the end of the day, it’s all sort of the same,” Rory McIlroy said last week when asked about how the first two months of the PGA Tour’s return have felt to him.
Not this week.
The PGA Championship at Harding Park – 13 months after the last major championship was played – arrives at just the right time, bringing with it the weight of expectations and the sense of history that only the majors can bring.
Getting to the PGA Championship is a triumph of sorts, a collective achievement. It may not come with thousands swarming across Harding Park, which is hosting its first major championship, but it comes with a sense of reassurance.
There will be no spectators at Harding Park but that has become a way of life, one that’s not likely to change any time soon. The crowds at major championships, whether it’s the patrons at Augusta National or what would have been a proper New York crowd at Winged Foot next month, are part of the event.
Without them, the texture changes but not the championship itself. Years from now – hopefully just one year from now – this will be remembered as the PGA Championship that no one but workers attended. That will be the asterisk.
Somebody is going to win the Wanamaker Trophy on Sunday afternoon and there will be no asterisk beside his name.
This PGA Championship isn’t about who isn’t there. It’s about who is.
It’s about the success in getting from where the game was in mid-March to where it is now. It’s about a schedule that was cobbled together out of necessity and, while it’s not exactly what we’re accustomed to, it’s an achievement in itself just getting to this point.
Almost overlooked is the fact that Brooks Koepka will be trying to win a third consecutive PGA Championship. Given the way Koepka plays majors, that’s the competitive starting point this week at Harding Park.
Six months ago, I spent a Monday at Harding Park getting a look at the PGA Championship site. The fairways had been narrowed months earlier, the rough was ripening and the structural build-out was days from starting for what was to have been a PGA Championship in May. Tucked in literally across the road from the Olympic Club where so many majors have been played, it was easy to imagine what was coming.
And then …
Part of what separates major championships is all that goes into winning them. It’s not just about the 72 holes played, though that’s at the core of everything. It’s about being ready for one of the four weeks a year that stand above all others.
It’s a mindset as much as it is a test of execution. Jack Nicklaus famously said that he could eliminate the vast majority of competitors in a major before the first shot was ever struck and it’s the same today. There’s a reason why Koepka has won four majors, why Rory McIlroy has won four and Jordan Spieth has three, not to mention the 15 that Tiger Woods owns.
Every so often a wild card comes along and wins a major but they’re harder to win because no matter how much a player tells himself that it’s just another tournament, they all understand the reward.
It might have been easier to cancel this PGA Championship given the challenges, particularly in California. Certainly there are financial reasons for playing but there are emotional reasons as well. When the game’s leaders pieced together the new schedule in April, there were targets on the horizon.
Restarting in Texas in June was the first. Continuing to safely play week after week was another. Then came the PGA Championship, which meant bringing the majors back. The U.S. Open is scheduled for September and the Masters is set for November and the Open Championship was pushed back a full year.
It doesn’t change the reality of the pandemic or allow for a relaxation of the protocols that are essential to getting the world through this, but it does touch a place that matters.
Even if the world is on the outside looking in, it’s still the PGA Championship. The one Walter Hagen won five times in seven years. The one Nicklaus won five times. The one Woods has won four times.
It’s the one that escaped Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson. It’s the one that gave us Y.E. Yang stalling Tiger, Shaun Micheel’s 7-iron shot and Davis Love III under the rainbow.
This week, the PGA Championship gives us another piece of what we’ve been missing.
E-Mail Ron