Marty Gorsich analyzes his good fortune between bites of his salmon and salad in a restaurant at an expensive San Diego outdoor mall busy with post-Christmas shoppers at lunchtime. Gorsich is the executive director of the Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour, and just a few miles up the road in La Jolla, he has a city of hospitality tents and grandstands emerging from the turf at Torrey Pines for the tournament, which will take place late next month.
Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, no fans were allowed to attend the Farmers and other West Coast Swing tournaments a year ago, Torrey scarcely looked like it was hosting anything other than a men’s club championship.
Even as the world suffers record COVID-19 rises due to the Omicron variant, starting next week in Maui, all of the same tournaments in Hawaii, California, and Arizona that kick off the tour’s 2022 calendar year are scheduled to appear like the pandemic is totally behind us. The attendance at all seven West Coast Swing events are expected to be similar to pre-pandemic levels, and corporate and high-end hospitality sales have been strong. Only two tournaments, the Sony Open in Honolulu and The American Express in La Quinta, Calif., will demand confirmation of vaccination from fans, and the PGA Tour has no plans to change its current player protocols.
“To be in golf is an unbelievable blessing,” Gorsich says.
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He says this knowing that the game has grown in popularity, both recreationally and competitively, because it is played outside among people who can socially remove themselves if they want to. Yes, several professional golfers have tested positive for the virus and have been placed in quarantine, but the PGA Tour has held weekly tournaments for nearly 19 months since the initial stoppage in the spring of 2020. Meanwhile, team sports continue to be disrupted on a regular basis due to waves of positive COVID testing among participants.
“Our guys aren’t in a movie theater together.” “They’re not all in the same locker room,” Gorisch explains.
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Gorisch received a harsh reminder of the contrasts only 24 hours before his meal. Because UCLA had too many positive COVID tests to field a squad against North Carolina State, the Holiday Bowl in San Diego was postponed just hours before kickoff. Fans who flew from all over the country were turned away, and millions of dollars spent to transform the San Diego Padres’ Petco Park into a football stadium were wasted.
Gorisch felt terrible for the bowl’s organizers, but that’s the nerve-wracking nature of the sports and entertainment industry right now. After 22 months of the pandemic, any sense of normalcy is measured on a daily basis.
However, Gorsich claims that this winter is different. While Omicron is highly contagious, it does not appear to have the same severe health effects as past coronavirus strains—at least among those who have been vaccinated. Numerous scientific investigations have also demonstrated that contracting the virus outside is extremely unusual, and this appears to be the case with Omicron.
The San Francisco Chronicle quoted John Swartzberg, an infectious disease researcher at the University of California-Berkeley, as saying, “There’s nothing in this variety that would imply it would transmit more quickly outside or with greater difficulty indoors.”
Last spring, the PGA Tour began allowing larger fans, and the size of the galleries grew with each event. While last year’s four major championships drew crowds in the low tens of thousands, all four hope to sell out this year.
In a telephone interview, Steve John, CEO of the Monterey Peninsula Foundation and tournament director for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, said ticket and corporate pre-sales for the tournament, which will be held Feb. 3-6, are “higher than they’ve ever been.” The event will have a full contingent of celebrity amateurs competing with the pros, which was not the case in 2021, making it a distinctly un-Pebble-like event.
“There’s a lot of pressure on people to get back to normal,” John added. “That is a statement that our entire globe is making right now. Everyone wants things to return to normal.
“We keep a close eye on what’s going on in our neighborhood,” John continued. “We don’t want to be deaf to anything that could cause us problems.” We’ve been in touch with a number of critical stakeholders. However, there is no reason to assume that it would be hazardous to anyone attending our competition at this time.”
Corporate and high-end sales have been “extremely good” in San Diego, according to Gorsich, while a new, mid-priced hospitality venue, the Canyon Club, has sold out for Friday and Saturday at $360 per person. (The Farmers, which will take place Jan. 26-29, encountered a fresh difficulty this year when they switched to a Wednesday-through-Saturday schedule to avoid clashing with the NFL’s conference championship games on Sunday.)
Other events are going all out to lure large crowds. Brad Paisley and Maroon 5 are performing post-round concerts at the American Express (Jan. 26-29), while the Waste Management Phoenix Open (Feb. 10-13 at TPC Scottsdale) is back to its full stadium effect of nearly 20,000 fans at the par-3 16th hole. And, in keeping with the Thunderbirds’ tradition of pushing the boundaries of golf entertainment, a stage will be erected in the middle of the hole after play on Saturday for a live concert featuring Old Dominion and Thomas Rhett.
The PGA Tour as a whole is keeping a close eye on the plans and is cautiously optimistic about them. “The health and safety of everyone connected with PGA Circuit tournaments, as well as the communities in which we compete, is important,” according to a tour spokesman.
According to the spokeswoman, there are no plans to adjust virus measures for the players or other tour staff at this time. About 75 percent of tour-related personnel get vaccinated. Players will not be examined prior to or during tournaments, though on-site testing will be provided to personnel who request it.
“Vaccination, boosters, disguising, and social distancing are all very crucial,” according to a tour letter obtained by Golf Digest and delivered to the membership on Dec. 22.
Because of the Omicron surge, the tour has changed at least one of its plans. It had wanted to expand its player hospitality offerings to include more people, but it has warned players that only they and a spouse or “one significant other” will be permitted to dine, and that masks will be necessary when not eating or drinking.
“While we had hoped to broaden access to restricted places in the new year,” the tour said in the message, “it would not be prudent to do so at this time.” “We’ll continue to keep a close eye on the situation in the communities where we play and alter protocols as needed.”
