This week we’re going to take a look back at the world of men’s professional golf. The PGA Tour is where the game’s best golfers mingle in a quest to secure a place in the history books along with accumulating gobs of cash. The 2020 calendar year marked the 105th year that an organized tour for professional golfers has been in existence. With the possible exception of those seasons in the midst of World War I and World War II, this past year has been a most difficult one because of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Similar to professional team sports, a modified version of the golf season was the end result in 2020.
Golf has a wraparound calendar year that runs from mid-September to late August. The 2019-2020 season went off as planned with the first 22 tournaments played as scheduled. On Thursday, March 12, the plug was pulled on professional golf after the first round was completed at the Players Championship. The PGA Tour would be on hiatus until Thursday, June 11 when a modified schedule was introduced. The most notable item was spectator-less golf. There also was rigid testing and codes of conduct as well. A small number of big-name golfers violated the tour’s policies or tested positive for the virus. Nonetheless, the tour seemed well equipped to handle testing and tournament site safety in a thorough and successful manner.
When the tour did resume in mid-June, the schedule looked nothing like it ever had before. The U.S. Open would be played in September, the Masters moved to November, the PGA filled in an open August date, and the British Open and Olympic Golf were canceled. So too was the Ryder Cup. It would be played at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin in September of 2021.
The resumption of the PGA Tour featured some interesting moments. Muirfield Village in Columbus, Ohio, hosted back-to-back tournaments. Yet the grounds crew radically grew the rough and sped up the greens so that it almost seemed like a different course the second time around for the playing of the Memorial. Later in the fall, Las Vegas would host back-to-back tournaments although at different golf courses. Tournaments scheduled for Asia were relocated and held in Vegas and in Thousand Oaks.
The PGA Championship was contested at San Francisco’s Harding Park in August, a reschedule from its May cancellation. Cal-Berkeley grad Collin Morakawa, a 23-year-old who grew up in Los Angeles County, hit the shot of the year at the 16th hole during final-round play to win the only major championship of the wraparound season. Morakawa was tied for the lead when he carved a driver onto the par-4 16th hole that bounded up to the green and left him with an 8-foot eagle putt. Morakawa went eagle tap-in, par tap-in, par over the final three holes to win the 2020 PGA Championship.
On the bag for Collin was J.J. Jakovac. J.J. played high school golf at Vintage High School in Napa, won a pair of NCAA Division II championships while at Chico State, and previously was the longtime looper for Ryder Cupper Ryan Moore. J.J. has been on Collin’s bag for two years.
Dustin Johnson was the 2019-2020 PGA Tour golfer of the year. He won three times during the season and finished atop the Fed Ex Cup standings and garnered the $15 million bonus check. When he was playing well, no one could match his firepower off the tee and the rock-solid wedge game he had in his arsenal.
When the new season began in September, Johnson was on the sidelines after testing positive for the virus. He returned to the tour in October. In November, he romped to victory at the Masters. He won by five strokes to collect his second career major and his 24th career win. It also marked the 14th consecutive season he has won a tournament on the PGA Tour. Twenty-four wins and two majors is Hall of Fame stuff.
The talk of the PGA Tour in 2020 just so happened to be United States Open champion Bryson DeChambeau of Clovis. DeChambeau powered and wedged his way around the iconic Winged Foot Golf Club and ended up prevailing by six strokes. It was his first major title after 16 tries. Bryson was the only golfer in the field with an under-par aggregate. He also won earlier in the summer in Detroit. In both of his wins, newcomer Matthew Wolff was runner-up.
DeChambeau spent the end of 2019 and the extended layoff of 2020 reworking his body. When he returned to the tour in June, he looked like a linebacker, not a world-class golfer. He had put on some 40 pounds of muscle. He added some 30 yards to his distance off the tee and was first in driving distance in 2019-2020 with an average of 322 yards. As of this moment, he remains in first place in driving distance in the 2020-2021 campaign although he has increased his power off the tee to 337 yards. As long as you’re hitting it dead-solid perfect, the game’s a lot easier when you go driver-wedge and your competitors hits driver-6-iron. When you don’t …
Yet DeChambeau is not alone. Matthew Wolff hits it just as far and so does Dustin Johnson and a bevy of others, including Cameron Champ, Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, Rory McIlroy, Luke List and Tony Finau. There’s a lot of power out there on the PGA Tour.
Yet while a big part of the game is about power and youth, there were some breakthroughs this year coming from the other end of the spectrum. Stewart Cink won the Safeway Open in September at the Silverado Resort in Napa. His fellow 40-something, Sergio Garcia, won the Sanderson Farms in Jackson, Mississippi. Another ageless veteran, Brian Gay, won the tour event in Bermuda. Carlos Ortiz was just the second Mexican professional to win on tour when he came through at Houston this autumn.
The year 2020 was also a very good year for John Rahm and Webb Simpson. They each found the winner’s circle twice. Justin Thomas showed himself to be a regular top-five performer, winning three times this past season. At the other end of the leader board in 2020 was three-time major champion Jordan Spieth and past Players champion and fan favorite Rickie Fowler. It’s not like their careers are over. After all, Fowler is 32 years old and Spieth is just 27. Yet this past year was a lost year for both of them. They simply haven’t played well.
So much for the 2020 season in men’s professional golf. It was the year of Collin Morikawa’s shot, Bryson DeChambeau’s power and Dustin Johnson’s total skill package. It also was the year of the pandemic. During a most difficult year, it was good to have professional golf around.
