News
PGA Tour cancels Players Championship
From a statement released just after midnight to a tweet posted at 10 p.m., it’s been a wild day for the PGA Tour and its public messaging regarding the coronavirus.
After initially announcing plans to carry on with its flagship event, The Players Championship, in the aforementioned midnight message, to a mid-day declaration that the tournament would continue sans fans, the Tour has elected to cancel the event completely (and all events through the Valero Texas Open).
PGATour.com staff posted the following message at 10 p.m. ET, Thursday night.
“It is with regret that we are announcing the cancellation of THE PLAYERS Championship.”
“We have also decided to cancel all PGA TOUR events – across all of our Tours – in the coming weeks, through the Valero Texas Open.”
“We have pledged from the start to be responsible, thoughtful and transparent with our decision process. We did everything possible to create a safe environment for our players in order to continue the event throughout the weekend, and we were endeavoring to give our fans a much-needed respite from the current climate. But at this point – and as the situation continues to rapidly change – the right thing to do for our players and our fans is to pause.”
The Tour indicated Monahan will make additional comments Friday morning.
The Masters is scheduled to begin April 9.
**UPDATE**
At 8 a.m. ET on Friday, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan spoke to members of the media where he further explained the decision to cancel the tour through the Valero Texas Open.
Speaking on the decision to cancel the event, Monahan said that Disney’s move to shut down their theme parks and Universal Studios doing the same played a role, before adding
“To cancel it is a really hard decision. It’s gut-wrenching. When you’re affecting so many people’s lives – that weighs heavily on you. “
The tour chief stressed that there was no possibility of The 2020 Players being rescheduled for another date and that the PGA Tour will pay out 50 percent of The Players purse (7.5 million)—equally distributed among the field.
Monahan expressed that postponement, rather than the cancellation of the event, was considered but that they had no “purview as to what was going to develop” and that they thought “this was the right thing to do.”
The tour chief also added that they are operating as if they are playing the RBC Heritage, which takes place from April 16-19.
Watch Jay Monahan’s entire press conference from Friday morning here.
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Tour Photo Galleries
Photos from the 2024 RBC Heritage
GolfWRX is on site this week at Harbour Town Golf Links on Hilton Head Island for the RBC Heritage. Plenty of golfers who competed in the Masters last week will be making the quick turnaround in the Lowcountry of South Carolina as the Heritage is again one of the Tour’s Signature Events.
We have general albums for you to check out, as well as plenty of WITBs — including Justin Thomas and Justin Rose.
We’ll continue to update as more photos flow in from SC.
Check out links to all our photos, below.
General Albums
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Monday #1
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Monday #2
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Tuesday #1
- 2024 RBC Heritage – Tuesday #2
WITB Albums
- Justin Thomas – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Justin Rose – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Chandler Phillips – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Nick Dunlap – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Thomas Detry – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Austin Eckroat – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Xander Schauffele – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Jason Day – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Will Zalatoris – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Patrick Cantlay – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Ludvig Aberg – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Collin Morikawa – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Sam Burns – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Stephen Jaeger – WITB – 2024 RBC Heritage
Pullout Albums
- Wyndham Clark’s Odyssey putter – 2024 RBC Heritage
- JT’s new Cameron putter – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Justin Thomas testing new Titleist 2 wood – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Cameron putters – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Odyssey putter with triple track alignment aid – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Scotty Cameron The Blk Box putting alignment aid/training aid – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Cameron putter – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Odyssey Ai One Eleven T putters – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Christian Bezuidenhout – testing new Callaway Ti 340 mini driver – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Rory McIlroy testing the new TaylorMade BRNR Mini Driver Copper – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Xander Schauffele testing the Callaway Ti 340 mini driver & the DUW – 2024 RBC Heritage
- Byeong Hun An, two new L.A.B. Golf putter builds with “T” alignment – 2024 RBC Heritage
See what GolfWRXers are saying and join the discussion in the forums.
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Nack Jicklaus
Mar 14, 2020 at 12:04 pm
First we had to wipe our butt’s with whatever we can scrounge up, now We can’t watch golf on tv???? Society is collapsing.
Johnny Penso
Mar 13, 2020 at 10:40 pm
Dumb decision. Unless people are going home and bolting the door, decisions like this will do nothing to help the situation. Players will still go to the range with their caddies, volunteers will still be living their lives as will all the staff that attend the event. Keeping the spectators away just because of the sheer volume was the right play. Cancelling the event is just stupid.
ViralGolf2020
Mar 13, 2020 at 9:47 pm
Isn’t it amazing how all the medical professionals in the world can be wrong – and a bunch of semi-illiterate a-holes on a golf site know better?
A. Commoner
Mar 15, 2020 at 10:25 am
Great comment. Suspect a huge number of people would agree with your point.
d
Mar 13, 2020 at 11:16 am
I just heard pga commish say why they canceled pga champ. espn interview. espn had to ask twice cause he didnt give a solid reason. basically said everyone else was cancelling everything so they did….there you go….
dat
Mar 13, 2020 at 9:10 am
Hold it without the crowds. Same goes for the majors. If they cancel the Masters I’m done.
Bubbert
Mar 13, 2020 at 10:17 am
Masters just got postponed (not cancelled).
Logic
Mar 13, 2020 at 8:47 am
There are only 1300 confirmed cases out of 327 million people. This is dumb. We had more cases of measles last year and we didn’t shut the world down.
Richthed
Mar 13, 2020 at 9:19 am
There’s a vaccine for that one, silly. This is different. Developed places don’t care about what they are protected from.
Thanks
Mar 13, 2020 at 9:25 am
The Flu vaccine gets the strain wrong all the time. This is gonna spread but we shouldn’t turn the country upside down for what amounts to the flu
Moosejaw McWilligher
Mar 13, 2020 at 11:47 am
Typical conservative nearsightedness and stupidity.
Have you ever heard of “Italy” or “China”? If we want THAT to happen in the USA, then, yes, we should be defiant inbred morons and ignore ALL of the data and advice from the experts…
T-hole, by the way, is NOT an expert in ANYTHING.
What a bunch of snowflakes – waa waa my little millionaire pitch and putt playtime isn’t on TV this week.
T-bone
Mar 13, 2020 at 8:41 pm
So how many deaths total?
Moosejaw McWilligher
Mar 13, 2020 at 10:05 pm
“Logic” –
there have been 1629 cases in the US, 41 have died *so far*. More of those 1629 may still die. That death rate is 2.5%. Extrapolating, if 100,000 people contract it, 2500 would die.
There have been reported cases in 47 states as of today. People cannot quarantine themselves until they know (or admit) they might be infected. Our so-called leader’s obfuscation of the problem caused serious delays in our response which will have an impact.
In China, 80,000 cases, over 3,000 dead. Closer to 5%.
Golf pros are on airplanes at least once a week, they have contact with hundreds of fans every day, and they come from every state and every country. They are both highly at-risk themselves (which may be unlikely to kill them) but are also perfect carriers, to their family, friends, each other, fans, caddies, tourney workers, etc.
People who don’t understand “prevention” probably have more kids than they intended, and probably still think tr*ckle-down economics works.
Gurn
Mar 13, 2020 at 7:03 am
They were already there!
Ban the fans.
No caddies.
And have the greatest 1 club tourney in the world !
Sad!
Jim
Mar 13, 2020 at 6:45 am
Snowflakes and lawyers…we can live without both … what a farce!
Warren Gray
Mar 13, 2020 at 5:47 am
P.C. and fear of Litigation gone out of control
Jbone
Mar 13, 2020 at 5:44 am
Media are blowing this wildly out of proportion for political reasons
Joe
Mar 13, 2020 at 6:46 am
be careful the snowflake Golfwrx moderators will find you and ban you for LIFE…no pro-American comments will be tolerated by the left-wing mods!
Drew
Mar 12, 2020 at 10:23 pm
Everyones already there. Why not just finish the event and then start the cancelations afterward? Maybe I’m just a bumming golf fan that was really looking forward to this weekend…
Scott Blandford
Mar 12, 2020 at 10:50 pm
I am in the U.K. and wish we had the same mind set as America. I went to college in America on a soccer scholarship and spent 5 years in the country. So I see it from both angles. Your government are taking this seriously, it’s sport. They are making the decisions. There will always be a later date to play this amazing event. I watch golf religiously every week so it will be a miss But this is serious. When there are deaths and it is so rampant, life comes before all!