The PGA Championship, which has been postponed to 6-9 August, may well be staged without the presence of spectators to eliminate further risk of the Covid-19 pandemic.
CEO of the PGA of America Seth Waugh said in an interview with SiriusXM radio on Tuesday that the organisers of the year’s first Major are currently exploring the best possible options, which will lead to a safe and secure completion.
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According to Waugh, the ideal scenario would be to get the competition over and done with at Harding Park in San Francisco with fans able to attend, but given the current crisis amid the pandemic in the USA, the PGA could be forced to hold the PGA Championship behind closed doors.
Another alternative could be to move the Major to a different location should California, and especially northern California, continue to be a danger zone for the coronavirus.
‘Plan A is with fans. Plan B is without fans. Plan C, if California or San Francisco does not believe they could hold it, we’d have to figure out a drop-dead date on that and figure out if there is somewhere in the country that could hold it,’ said Waugh.
‘It makes it simpler if there aren’t fans to think about things like that. We don’t certainly have a Plan C right now, but we’d be prepared to think about that if that became a possibility. So we’re going to do everything we can to play the PGA Championship this year.’
Waugh is hopeful that the new schedule, which was announced last week and which could see a return of the PGA Tour as early as June, will lead to some salvation for the lost of a number of competitions.
The US Open and the Masters were also postponed till later this year, while the Open Championship was completely cancelled.
‘We’re very hopeful for that date. Our plan is to try to do it as kind of normally as possible if you will, with fans, obviously, and have a fairly normal PGA Championship at Harding Park,’ Waugh added.
‘If the safest way, and/or the only way to do it is to do it without fans, we’re fully prepared to do that. We believe that having it as a television event is worth doing regardless of whether there’s fans there or not.’
