The New York Times - USA (2020-08-06)

B10 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSTHURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020

GOLF

amid the cart-pulling, bag-carry-

ing golfers are joggers and dog

walkers. You can take the Muni,

San Francisco’s transit system, to

get there.

But the course is blessed with a

classic layout — tight fairways

lined by majestic cypress trees, its

SAN FRANCISCO — Fewer
than three weeks ago, T.P.C. Har-
ding Park, a city-owned golf
course, was roamed by duffers of
all abilities. Those were just an-
other stretch of crowded days at
the local muni.
About 65,000 rounds are played
at Harding Park in a typical year,
plus another 30,000 at the nine-
hole course tucked inside the 18-
hole layout, the city said. Some
pay as little as about $50 a round,
depending on residency and the
day’s demand.
But this week, the world’s best
golfers have descended on Har-
ding Park for the P.G.A. Champi-
onship, the first men’s major in
this coronavirus-amended sea-
son.
“It’s a big-boy golf course,” said
Brooks Koepka, the two-time de-
fending champion. “Tough place.
Tough setup.”
It sounds like a magic trick:
How could the same patch of
grass and trees go from being so
accessible to recreational golfers
to so foreboding to the pros?
The transformative task fell
largely to Kerry Haigh, chief
championships officer for the
P.G.A. of America, and the local
parks and recreation crews that
maintain the course, even this
week.
Their method made the most of
time, imagination and geometry,
all made trickier by Harding
Park’s availability to its regulars
through July 17.
“Tee times every day from
dawn to dusk make it challenging
for anyone to grow grass and pre-
pare a golf course in champi-
onship condition because of how
difficult it is to even get onto the
golf course and work in an effi-
cient manner,” Haigh said.
“You’ve got to keep clear of golfers
that aren’t always hitting it
straight all the time.”
Harding Park has held top PGA
Tour events before, including the
2009 Presidents Cup, but this will
be its first major tournament.
Compared to the few other Ameri-
can municipal courses in its elite
class, like Bethpage Black on
Long Island and Torrey Pines in
San Diego, Harding Park feels
comfortably unspectacular, like a
familiar bar. That is its charm.
Phil Ginsburg, general man-
ager of the city’s Recreation and
Park Department, recently came
upon a newspaper story from the
course’s opening day on July 18,

1925. The account called it “the
      most pretentious golf course any
      municipality in the world can
      boast.”
      Ginsburg laughed when he read
      it. Nearly a century later, Harding
      Park “may be the most unpreten-
      tious site ever to host a major,” he
      said.
      That reputation owes as much
      to its location as it does the
      course’s lack of meant-to-impress
      flourishes like those at cloaked

country clubs elsewhere. Harding

Park is an urban playground that

sits next to San Francisco State

University. One side is lined by

dorms and apartment buildings

across a busy boulevard, fenced

by chain-link. There is no

chateaux-style clubhouse, and

front nine folded inside a back

nine that unwinds alongside Lake

Merced. It is all made unpredict-

able by San Francisco’s famous

cool summer wind and fog. Tem-

peratures this week are expected

to be in the 50s and 60s.

“If you’re a little persnickety

about your golf climate, Harding’s

not for you,” Ginsburg said.

It is Harding Park’s core traits

— trees, bunkers and the lake —

that Haigh accentuated to test the

world’s best golfers.

Harding Park will play longer

this week at 7,251 yards, extended

about 800 yards from the white

tees familiar to locals. But length-

ening a course is the easy part.

Haigh said he spent most of his

time calculating angles, trying to

force golfers this weekend to use

their mental protractors to con-

quer the course. Fairways were

narrowed between thick rough

and some were shifted to one side

or the other to put more trees and

bunkers in play.

“I’m a great believer that if you

can make any golfer think and

have to sort of strategize, then

they enjoy — and we enjoy — the

game a lot more,” Haigh said.

Haigh and Ginsburg’s city

crews also took some counterintu-

itive measures. Locals might no-

tice that the longer grass that

slowed stray shots from rolling

into many fairway bunkers is

gone.

“With the design of the course,

if you’re going to have bunkers

and spend all this money on

bunkers,” Haigh said, “why not

have balls roll into them?”

The par-4 13th hole, for exam-

ple, with 30 extra yards this tour-

nament, has a fairway bunker and

a bent cypress on the right, obsta-

cles for golfers daring to cut the

corner. The par-4 16th, a sharper

dogleg to the right with water to

the left, might be drivable for

some, if they can trust their fade

and hit it over or around trees.

“With the overhang of these cy-

press trees, there may be a couple

lost balls here,” Tiger Woods said

of the course he played as an ama-

teur and where he won the 2005

W.G.C/American Express Cham-

pionship. “Cut a corner and the

ball hangs up there.”

Haigh said he does not alter

courses with projected scores in

mind. But the changes to the

course — the length, the angles,

the rough, the faster greens —

probably add 10 strokes to Har-

ding Park’s difficulty usually

faced by locals. Scoring will be

tighter, too, with the par set at 70

instead of the usual 72.

This year’s alterations faced un-

usual hurdles — mainly, Harding

Park’s persistent use by golfers

and the pandemic that shifted the

major championships calendar.

The tournament was scheduled

for May. The original plan was to

spend four months building the

tournament infrastructure —

grandstands, television com-

pounds and so on — and close the

course to the public only for two

weeks before the tournament.

But the onset of the coronavirus

postponed the tournament to Au-

gust. It also shut down the course

to golfers — but not groundskeep-

ers — from mid-March to early

May. There was plenty of public

play, though, when the course re-

opened in late June and through

most of July. By then the P.G.A. of

America had announced that

there would be no fans allowed at

the tournament.

That altered all sorts of logis-

tics. Grandstands were disman-

tled and hauled away. No longer

would there be a need for on-

course hospitality suites or most

concessions and restrooms. There

was no demand for parking and

shuttles for tens of thousands of

fans, no use for armies of volun-

teers and marshalls.

The massive tent erected for a

planned merchandise store was

converted to the players’ locker

room. The planned locker room

became the downscaled media

center.

Fairways and greens are still

lined by ropes, to keep workers,

reporters and others from absent-

mindedly veering into the action.

But players will be able to amble

from green to tee without a crush

of fans.

During practice rounds early

this week, sometimes the only

sound greeting golfers was the

snap of colorful trash bags hang-

ing on stands around the course,

fluttering in crisp ocean breezes.

Gone is the public from the most

public of championship golf

courses.

How the P.G.A. Turned a Municipal Course Into a Major

By JOHN BRANCH

Around 65,000 rounds of golf a year are played at Harding Park, a public course in San

Francisco. Below, Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker and Davis Love III walked up the fairway on the

10th hole on Wednesday during the final practice round for the P.G.A. Championship.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TANNEN MAURY/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

The frustration was under-
standable. After striking out Yan-
kees first baseman Luke Voit to
end a tough inning that included
walking two batters, Boston Red
Sox pitcher Austin Brice stomped
off the mound on Sunday while be-
rating himself.
“Walked everybody,” he
shouted at himself, clearly picked
up by the TV broadcast in an
empty stadium. “Damn it.”

“Believe it or not, I try to be

even mindful of that in all situa-

tions,” Boone said of his language.

“But I’m also going to react hon-

estly to what I see and try and

strike that balance of being mind-

ful and being careful and respect-

ful but also intense.”

Gio Urshela, the Yankees’

standout third baseman, said

players and coaches were trying

to be more cognizant of every-

thing they say — not just profani-

ties — because opponents can also

hear them better during quieter

games this season.

The words uttered in any meet-

ing about strategy on the field or

chatter from the dugout can easily

flutter toward the other side. In

past seasons, paranoid players

and coaches often covered their

mouths with their hands or their

gloves to shield against lip-read-

ing opponents. (With most

coaches wearing face coverings

this year, it may be less of an issue,

though some coaches have put a

hand over their masks during

meetings on the mound.)

None of this will affect Yankees

pitcher Jordan Montgomery, who

said he has always tried to keep

his language clean on the mound

— even before this year.

“I know my mom is watching,

so I try to keep it PG,” he said.

ble to avoid airing a player

screaming an obscenity, particu-

larly in the worst possible spot —

right in front of a microphone. He

said he had a reel of 15 years’

worth of such incidents, with the

commentators Dave Jageler and

Charlie Slowes doing their best to

make light of those moments.

Tyler Glasnow, a pitcher for the

Tampa Bay Rays, admitted he

probably utters profanities after

home runs more frequently than

most. He did so after he surren-

dered a solo home run to Atlanta’s

Dansby Swanson on July 27.

Even though he knows micro-

phones may hear him more this

season, Glasnow said he just can-

not help himself. “I just do it, as

bad as that sounds,” he said. “You

only have so much mental capaci-

ty of what you can focus on, espe-

cially when you’re pitching.”

Last summer, the Yankees man-

ager Aaron Boone managed to

produce a viral, profane moment

even with fans in the stands when

microphones caught him repri-

manding the umpire Brennan

Miller about his strike zone with

naughty words. A phrase Boone

used — “savages in the box” —

during the tirade to describe the

Yankees’ powerful lineup came to

define the team’s 2019 season and

was printed on T-shirts and signs.

“Oooh, OK,” Davis said after Bak-

er’s profanity. “So in empty stadi-

ums, we pick up some things we

don’t normally pick up. Apologies

for whoever the potty mouth is.”

Jeff McNeil, the Mets’ infielder,

has also been heard shouting an

expletive after making outs this

year. He is notoriously hard on

himself, even when he is playing

well. “I’m a really fiery person,”

McNeil said last week, before sus-

taining a torso injury that has him

listed as day to day, adding, “I

want to do everything perfect and,

if I don’t, I get a little upset.”

Colorado Rockies Manager Bud

Black said that there had been so

many changes for this M.L.B. sea-

son because of the pandemic that

watching one’s mouth was simply

another one. It has been easier for

some than others.

“Players are watching their p’s

and q’s,” he said, “and we’ve made

pretty quick adjustments from all

the things that are normal during

a baseball game, from sunflower

seeds to chewing tobacco to lan-

guage. I don’t know whether we

should be commended on that, but

it’s been an adjustment.”

Jack Hicks, the longtime engi-

neer for the Washington Nation-

als’ radio broadcast, said if people

on the field were talking close to

one of the microphones near each

dugout — which are directed to-

ward home plate and meant to

pick up the crack of the bat — he

shifts to another microphone or

turns it down to avoid airing any

private or unfiltered conversa-

tions. In situations when there

could be a lot of swearing, Hicks

said, the studio can trigger a delay

of a few seconds on the broadcast

to filter out any profanity.

And, Hicks said, he does not

want any fans, especially chil-

dren, to inadvertently hear any-

thing inappropriate. “We’re in the

entertainment business, and I’m

not looking to alienate any listen-

ers at all,” he said.

Despite his best efforts, Hicks

said it can sometimes be impossi-

usually created by the fans in the

stands — with varying success.

Teams and broadcasters are us-

ing artificial crowd noise — both a

constant murmur in between

plays and cheering after big mo-

ments for the home team — to add

a measure of familiarity and com-

fort to the experience. But sta-

dium speakers and mixed-in feeds

simply can’t match the volume of

thousands of actual humans and

their real-time reactions.

So, now, the pop of the catcher’s

glove is clearer. The crack of the

bat is louder. And spicy language

on the field is more intelligible.

“Unfortunately, that’s going to

happen,” said Yankees pitcher J.A.

Happ, adding later, “It’s just some

emotion out there that we’re not

used to getting picked up.”

Those running television and

radio broadcasts may have to be

more watchful of the more ob-

scene ambient sounds at stadiums

this season. While some execu-

tives and producers said it had not

become a serious problem for

them yet, there have been a few

instances of adult language leak-

ing through the airwaves already.

In a game last week, Houston

Astros outfielder Josh Reddick

popped out to Los Angeles

Dodgers third baseman Justin

Turner. Just after the ball was

caught, someone off camera — al-

most definitely Reddick — yelled

an audible obscenity. Sheepishly,

the Dodgers broadcaster Joe Da-

vis said, “Sorry.”

The day before, Davis had to do

the same when Astros Manager

Dusty Baker shouted, “Get on the

mound!” punctuated with an ex-

pletive. Baker was yelling at

Dodgers relief pitcher Joe Kelly,

who, in apparent retaliation for

the Astros’ cheating during their

2017 and 2018 seasons, had thrown

behind Houston third baseman

Alex Bregman.

Kelly later fired a pitch near As-

tros shortstop Carlos Correa’s

head and taunted him, which led

to both benches being cleared.

That was only part of what he

said. The rest of his rant was filled

with even stronger expletives.

Professional athletes voicing

their exasperation, or glee, in the

heat of the moment is certainly

nothing new. But now, as Major

League Baseball stages an untra-

ditional 60-game campaign amid

the coronavirus pandemic, play-

ers and coaches are trying to be

more mindful of their colorful lan-

guage without the noisy buffer

Who’s on First, but It Sounds Like #$&!%*! Is on Third

By JAMES WAGNER

Austin Brice of the Boston Red Sox has been known to give

voice, a profane one, to his frustrations while on the mound.

MIKE STOBE/GETTY IMAGES

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