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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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a piece our Andrew Tursky originally wrote for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Head over there for the full article.
The timing of Lowry’s putter changeup was curious: Was he just using a Spider putter because he was paired with McIlroy, who’s been using a Spider Tour X head throughout 2024? Was Lowry just being festive because it’s the Zurich Classic, and he wanted to match his teammate? Did McIlroy let Lowry try his putter, and he liked it so much he actually switched into it?
Well, as it turns out, McIlroy’s only influence was inspiring Lowry to make more putts.
When asked if McIlroy had an influence on the putter switch, Lowry had this to say: “No, it’s actually a different putter than what he uses. Maybe there was more pressure there because I needed to hole some more putts if we wanted to win,” he said with a laugh.
To Lowry’s point, McIlroy plays the Tour X model, whereas Lowry switched into the Tour Z model, which has a sleeker shape in comparison, and the two sole weights of the club are more towards the face.
Lowry’s Spider Tour Z has a white True Path Alignment channel on the crown of his putter, which is reminiscent of Lowry’s former 2-ball designs, thus helping to provide a comfort factor despite the departure from his norm. Instead of a double-bend hosel, which Lowry used in his 2-ball putters, his new Spider Tour Z is designed with a short slant neck.
“I’ve been struggling on the greens, and I just needed something with a fresh look,” Lowry told GolfWRX.com on Wednesday at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship. “It has a different neck on it, as well, so it moves a bit differently, but it’s similar. It has a white line on the back of it [like my 2-ball], and it’s a mallet style. So it’s not too drastic of a change.
“I just picked it up on the putting green and I liked the look of it, so I was like, ‘Let’s give it a go.’”
Read the rest of the piece over at PGATour.com.
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Tommy Fleetwood has been attached to his Odyssey White Hot Pro #3 putter for years now. However, this week at the Wells Fargo Championship, we did spot him testing a new putter that is very different, yet somewhat similar, to his current gamer.
This new putter is a TaylorMade Spider Tour X head but with a brand new neck we haven’t seen on a Spider before. A flow neck is attached to the Spider head and gives the putter about a 1/2 shaft offset. This style neck will usually increase the toe hang of the putter and we can guess it gets the putter close to his White Hot Pro #3.
Another interesting design is that lack of TaylorMade’s True Path alignment on the top of the putter. Instead of the large white center stripe, Tommy’s Spider just has a very short white site line milled into it. As with his Odyssey, Tommy seems to be a fan of soft inserts and this Spider prototype looks to have the TPU Pure Roll insert with 45° grooves for immediate topspin and less hopping and skidding.
The sole is interesting as well in that the rear weights don’t look to be interchangeable and are recessed deep into the ports. This setup could be used to push the CG forward in the putter for a more blade-like feel during the stroke, like TaylorMade did with the Spider X Proto Scottie Scheffler tested out.
Tommy’s putter is finished off with an older Super Stroke Mid Slim 2.0 grip in blue and white. The Mid Slim was designed to fit in between the Ultra Slim 1.0 and the Slim 3.0 that was a popular grip on tour.
- Check out the rest of our photos from the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship
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Editor’s note: This is an excerpt from a piece our Andrew Tursky originally wrote for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. Head over there for the full article.
…The Jailbird craze hasn’t really slowed down in 2024, either. According to Odyssey rep Joe Toulon, there are about 18-20 Jailbird putter users on the PGA TOUR.
Most recently, Akshay Bhatia won the 2024 Valero Texas Open using a broomstick-style Odyssey Jailbird 380 putter and Webb Simpson is switching into a replica of that putter at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship.
Now, Fowler, who essentially started the whole Jailbird craze, is making a significant change to his putter setup.
Fowler, who has had a couple weeks off since the 2024 RBC Heritage, started experimenting with a new, custom-orange Jailbird 380 head that’s equipped with a standard 35-inch putter build, rather than his previous 38-inch counter-balanced setup.
According to Fowler, while he still likes the look and forgiveness of his Jailbird putter head, he’s looking to re-incorporate more feel into his hands during the putting stroke.
He told GolfWRX.com on Tuesday at the Wells Fargo Championship that the 38-inch counterbalanced setup “served its purpose” by helping him to neutralize his hands during the stroke, but now it’s time to try the standard-length putter with a standard-size SuperStroke Pistol Tour grip to help with his feel and speed control.
Although Fowler was also spotted testing standard-length mallets from L.A.B. Golf and Axis1 on Tuesday, he confirmed that the custom Odyssey Jailbird 380 is the putter he’ll use this week at the 2024 Wells Fargo Championship.
Head over to PGATour.com for the full article.
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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!