Amid the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, the PGA Tour's return seems weirdly different. And it should.
Often overlooked between the Masters and the U.S. Open, Colonial Country Club is getting more attention than it has since Annika Sorenstam played there in 2003
Watching the PGA Tour’s return for the Charles Schwab Challenge the past couple of days on television brought back some nice memories from my many years as a golf writer for the Baltimore Sun and the only trip I ever made to Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Tex.
In those days, it was the Bank of America Colonial, a nice midway tour stop between the Masters and the U.S. Open that typically drew decent - though not spectacular - fields and large - though not massive - crowds. The most memorable thing about Colonial were the tributes to its most famous member, Ben Hogan.
What I recall most about the 2003 Colonial were the crowds that came to see Annika Sorenstam, who had been given a sponsor’s exemption earlier that year and thus became the first LPGA player to tee it up in a regular PGA tour event since the legendary Babe Zaharias played in the 1945 Los Angeles Open.
The invitation itself had fueled a great deal of controversy.
Three-time major champion Vijay Singh, who was a surly guy on his best days, threatened to withdraw if grouped with Sorenstam, though based on the PGA Tour’s rules for making the first two rounds of threesomes and Singh as one of its leading money-winners, that couldn’t happen.
Even course superintendent Jeff Elliott showed some of the mindset of the good old-boys crowd that ruled the club, telling Sports Illustrated in the run-up to the tournament, “The members are excited she’s coming, but when it comes down to it, a lot of them don’t want to see her play on the weekend.”
Sorenstam was at the height of a career that shockingly ended only just five years later when she retired at age 32 to start a family. The year before Colonial, she had won 11 times on the LPGA tour. Two years before, she became the first LPGA player to shoot a 59 in competition.
“I feel like I’m ready,” Sorenstam said the day before the tournament began, after a practice round with Sergio Garcia and fellow Swede Jesper Parnevik was called on their first hole because another kind of storm - delivered from Mother Nature - hit the area.
I have vivid memories of the next morning and Sorenstam’s opening round. The weather cleared, giving way to bright sunshine and huge crowds lining the first tee. The normally robotic Sorenstam seemed visibly nervous as she waited to be announced.
Her nerves left quickly, and Sorenstam returned to her steely and steady ways, hitting 13 of 14 fairways and finishing with a more than respectable 1-over par 71. Though dead-last in driving distance, what cost Sorenstam several strokes was her putting.
"I would love to make the cut," Sorenstam said after her score, which was better than 27 other players in the field, left her tied for 73rd and one shot off the projected cut line. "But if I play like I did today, then it really doesn't matter."
As things turned out, she didn’t play nearly as well the second day and she didn’t make the cut. It didn’t seem fair that Singh wound up winning the tournament, though most recall Sorenstam’s appearance rather than Singh’s victory. It gave the tournament - and venerable Colonial Country Club- the kind of attention it often lacked since Hogan’s heyday.
Until this week.
It took the coronavirus pandemic and the PGA tour’s return from a 91-day break for the spotlight to fall again on the place golf fans and the game’s stars often refer to “Hogan’s Alley”. The biggest news the first day wasn’t the 7-under par 63s shot by Justin Rose and Harold Varner III.
It was the moment of silence held Thursday at 8:46 a.m. to honor the memory of George Floyd, who died in Minneapolis on Memorial Day, killed by a police officer whose knee to Floyd’s neck - as well as the force applied by two other officers to his back and spine - for eight minutes and 46 seconds sucked the life out of him.
Those two story lines - the pandemic that has killed over 116,000 Americans and led to the nation’s shutdown, sports included, as well as the Black Lives Matters protests because of Floyd’s killing - were and will be the overriding themes to the restart of other sports in the coming months and to our daily lives for decades to come.
Watching golf on television, when fans are typically so visible lining fairways and some so juvenile with yells of “You da man” and “In the hole” and, of course, “Babalooie!!!!” will have a much different look the next few weeks - or longer - before some fans are allowed back for The Memorial Tournament outside Columbus, Ohio.
In the years since I stopped covering golf regularly in the mid-2000s, I admittedly haven’t watch a lot of it aside from the majors or when Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson are in contention. Jordan Speith and world No. 1 Rory McIlroy, who are in the hunt this week at Colonial, have certainly earned my interest in recent years.
I will watch this weekend, given that it’s one of the first live professional sports events held since mid-March. No matter of how close it remains among the leaders, how exciting it winds up at the end, it won’t seem to be the same as it was before - nor should it be.
It might be fitting for Varner, currently one of only four African-Americans on the PGA Tour, to win and help inspire aspiring young black players as Woods has for the past quarter-century. Varner overcame a triple-bogey on his first hole Friday to shoot 4-under par 66 and take a one-shot lead over Speith and Bryson DeChambeau.
And every time there’s a shot of the famed Colonial clubhouse, with the statue of the legendary Hogan outside, I will think back my only trip there in 2003, when the most dominant player in the history of the LPGA tour made golf history there. It didn’t even matter, to Sorenstam or anyone else, that she didn’t make the cut.
Annika, great golfer and role model. Singh, jerk. That is how the tournament is remembered.