Once the Florida swing began, the Tour had implemented a few precautionary measures. The Tour’s crisis screening and executive crisis management teams each held meetings in February to discuss the potential impacts – even though they weren’t expected to be felt for another few months. declaring a public health emergency on Jan. Monahan read about it while traveling to Hawaii for the opening event a month later, he was at Pebble Beach, meeting with titans of industry, and didn’t have a single conversation about the virus, despite the U.S. The first time Neal heard about COVID-19 was in December 2019, in a blurb on the front page of USA Today. THE STORY OF THE 2020 Players Championship shutdown is a blur, but also months in the making. From the balcony they could watch thousands of fans stroll the lush grounds, buzzing from the day’s action (if not the $9 beers), seemingly oblivious to the chaos unfolding around them.
On the television they could monitor both the first round of The Players Championship and the breaking-news chyrons on every major network. Huddled inside the Board Room, surrounded by oil paintings of the former commissioners, the Tour’s executive leadership team met for more than 12 hours on March 12, 2020, trying to come to grips with an existential threat to their business.
#RADIANT PLAYER VIRUS PROFESSIONAL#
It was a professional crisis no one could have adequately prepared for, and it all unfolded here – in a dim, cozy conference room on the second floor of the TPC Sawgrass clubhouse. How commissioner Jay Monahan crashed from the high of the PGA Tour’s flagship event to driving home 24 hours later, his head spinning, wondering what the hell had just happened. How in the span of a day, they retreated from 40,000 maskless fans to no spectators to zero tournaments – period – for the next few months. How the novel coronavirus mushroomed from an international issue into a global pandemic. – What they recall now, a year later, is the dizzying speed.
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