J.T. Poston of the United States plays a shot from a bunker on the fifth hole during the first round of the Charles Schwab Challenge on June 11, 2020, at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Tex.Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
In these uncertain times, it’s important that we focus on activities that underpin our shared culture and values, and our common humanity.
Like, um, golf.
Because history likes to have a laugh, golf became the first big-time North American pro sport to recommence play on Thursday.
A month ago, this was being sold as a triumphal return to something like normality. Finally, there would be something to watch that wasn’t either prerecorded or Zoomed in from someone’s laundry room.
Then America caught fire.
Golf is probably not the sport best equipped to grapple with the symbolic nuances of the situation. But there you have it.
The comeback tournament – the Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas – paused for a moment’s silence at 8:46 a.m. This was a nod to George Floyd’s killing.
A guy in a suit said a few gauzy words about ending “systemic issues of social and racial injustices.” He bowed his head.
A camera panned around to show a bunch of twenty- and thirtysomething millionaires, mostly white guys, trying to figure out whether they were supposed to take their hats off.
After a bit, an air horn wailed. Then they all got back to the business of winning US$1.35-million in a golf tournament named for a company that handles nearly US$4-trillion in assets.
As revolutionary tipping points go, it wasn’t exactly Ten Days That Shook The World.
It felt like any other of the “thoughts and prayers” moments that sports has developed its own language to deal with.
School shooting? “In the face of the unthinkable …”
Terror attack? “Once again we are reminded …”
Country dividing into warring camps? “As the PGA Tour commits to amplifying the voices and efforts …”
Then pro sports provides the answer it always settles on – more sports. Which is to say, a simplified world in which winners get what they deserve, losers still get rich and everyone gets along. This fantasyland has never seemed moreso, but it is reassuring in its meagre way.
That was Big Issue No. 1. Then there’s Big Issue No. 2.
Leagues and tours have spent weeks going back and forth on what sports looks like mid-pandemic.
Was anyone safe? What extraordinary measures would be taken? How much would things have to change?
At least as it applies to golf, not much at all. Nothing, really.
The most noticeable difference was the lack of fans. And that wasn’t all that noticeable.
Once a great mass of noisy background blobs are taken out of the equation, you got a chance to notice all sorts of lovely things. Such as the mournful sound of wind coming across the fairways; or a lawnmower kicking up in the distance; or the various randos who’d occasionally wander through the shot.
When organizers first began discussing a return, you pictured the players in hazmat suits tripping into a delousing shower between holes.
But athletes are like the rest of us. Physical distancing was never a big thing outside grocery stores, and it is less of a thing every day. Outdoors, it’s no longer a thing at all.
No one wore a mask. None of golfers hesitated in getting right up on top of their caddies to study the yardage book. Players stood together chatting at the tee. Balls were handed back and forth between people.
Yes, pro golfers are in a bubble – whatever that word means when a huge group of you are moving regularly between cities. But as bubbles go, this isn’t anything like the ring of iron people were talking about in April.
So after two minutes, maximum, you stopped noticing it. Five minutes later, you’d forgotten about the pandemic. The only serious change you continued to register is how bad even the very best golfers in the world are after they’ve taken three months off.
Guys were scattering shots like they were trying to kill someone in the parking lot. Dustin Johnson – very recently the top-ranked player in the world – was swinging his clubs like they were two-by-fours.
There was a great enjoyment in seeing guys pooch a putt, launch into an exaggerated bending of the back and staring at the sky, register a second too late that there was no audience there to sympathize with them, gather themselves and walk away.
How would you look if you were a pro? Not like this. Not anywhere close. But this was closer than it’s been in a while.
After an hour of this, you had settled comfortably back into the rhythm of sports. The inane blather of the hosts. The commercial breaks. The sense that time had gotten away from you.
It was marvellous. It felt – and I once used this word as a pejorative and now think of it as highest praise – normal.
One great thing sports can provide in the midst of everything that’s happening is a tether to the time before.
Yes, things may never be the same. Some things should not be the same. But I wish people would stop chanting “never be the same” at us.
When have they ever been? Time warp someone in from the 1970s, hand her a cellphone and say, “Call us an Uber.” Things are always becoming different.
But they needn’t be so different that two eras bear no resemblance to each other. That isn’t progress. It’s millenarianism.
A few widely popular things must stay the same. That’s where you get tradition. A couple of months ago, it felt vaguely possible that all our traditions were on the table. It wasn’t a comforting idea.
We will eventually settle into a new sort of normal, possibly even a better sort of normal (although I’m cynical about such things).
But some things don’t change. Like sports. You can fiddle with the format, but sports will always provide the same reassurance. That, for a moment, you get to treat a stranger’s professional problems or triumphs as your own, and share in that feeling with many others. That’s a kind of understanding. It was missed this past little while.