The New York Times - USA (2020-11-15)

THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSSUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020 0 N 31

Before the N.F.L. season began, one of
the big questions the league faced was
whether a close-contact sport like foot-
ball, with 22 players on the field and doz-
ens more on the sidelines along with
coaches and trainers, could avoid a co-
ronavirus outbreak stemming from a
game.
That has largely been answered: yes.
Yet as the season passes the halfway
mark, and more than 200 people on or af-
filiated with teams have been infected,
the N.F.L. has been grappling with con-
trolling the virus not just on the field but
off it, sometimes far from it. And players
are far from the only problem.
Between Aug. 1 and Nov. 7, 218 out the
nearly 8,000 players, coaches and per-
sonnel have been infected, with players
making up about one-third of the positive
cases. Only one player is known to have
been hospitalized, and most players have
had mild symptoms and returned after
their mandatory isolation.
League officials have said there is no
evidence of players transmitting the vi-
rus on the field despite the close contact
between teams, and there has been little
transmission inside team facilities,
where social distancing guidelines are in
place.
Instead, the 78 players and the 140
staff members who support the teams,
including coaches, trainers and employ-
ees, have picked it up outside the facili-
ties, either when they congregated in
restaurants or shared car rides, or came
in contact with people outside the N.F.L.,
like nannies.
In response, the N.F.L., which has had
to postpone but so far not cancel games,
has expanded testing, and adopted and
strengthened rules for isolating infected
people or those in close contact with
them. Coaches and players have been
fined tens of thousands of dollars for fail-
ing to wear protective equipment prop-
erly on the field and outside team facili-
ties.
But as the number of infections in the
country skyrockets yet again, so too

have the number of infections in the

N.F.L. This will test the league’s efforts to

keep the coronavirus at arm’s length in

the second half of the season as teams

exhaust their bye weeks, which were

used earlier this season to reschedule

games.

“Tip of the hat for their success so far,

but it’s something that requires consis-

tent vigilance,” said Dr. Michael Saag, an

infectious diseases expert at the Univer-

sity of Alabama, Birmingham. “These

mitigation strategies are tenuous. They

are guesstimates in terms of what will

work. If I were the N.F.L., I wouldn’t be

too comfortable, because all it takes is

one super spreader event to shut down a

facility or two.”

League executives say their measures

are working because thus far few infec-

tions have been transmitted inside a

team complex. The biggest scare came in

Tennessee, where two dozen Titans play-

ers, coaches and staff were infected in

October, though the league has not dis-

closed specifically what it learned about

the origin of the outbreak.

But in recent weeks, the number of

positive cases on teams from Green Bay

to Miami to Pittsburgh has jumped, forc-

ing players, including star quarterbacks

like Ben Roethlisberger and Matthew

Stafford, to stay away from team facili-

ties because they were in close contact

with teammates or team personnel who

tested positive. Five coaches on the Dol-

phins skipped the team’s trip to Arizona

last weekend. Four offensive linemen on

the Las Vegas Raiders had to quarantine

for five days after coming in contact with

right tackle Trent Brown, who tested

positive for the virus.

“All of us are aware there has been an

uptick in cases that we’ve seen in the

N.F.L. last week,” said Dr. Allen Sills, the

league’s chief medical officer. “That’s

very reflective of what’s going on in the

country as a whole. It’s not a surprise,

and it’s something we’ve been preparing

for.”

After practice every day, coaches,

team personnel and players leave their

team facilities and mix in their communi-

ties, including places where infections

are surging. In Minnesota and Wiscon-

sin, for instance, the average number of

cases has grown fivefold since Sept. 6,

the first Sunday of the season. The in-

crease in infections has risen even faster

in Colorado and Illinois, home to two

other N.F.L. teams.

Some players continue to put them-

selves, and their teammates, at risk.

Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley of the

Giants were recently photographed in-

doors with other teammates at a restau-

rant. Ten players on the Raiders were

fined for attending a large gathering

without masks, and the team was fined

$500,000 and docked a sixth-round draft

pick because of repeated violations of the

league’s virus protocols. The Titans were

fined $350,000 for their lax handling of

the outbreak.

“Everyone is right to be worried, be-

cause the number of cases is going up na-

tionwide and unfortunately they will

continue to go up,” said Dr. Patrick God-

bey, the president of the College of Amer-

ican Pathologists. “I don’t think anyone

has a good way of knowing what people

are doing when they leave the team facil-

ity.”

There have been a few cases of fans

who attended N.F.L. games testing pos-

itive, though where they got the virus

has not been established. But many

teams have stopped increasing the size

of their already limited seating capacity

at stadiums, mindful of the risk to the

broader community. The Minnesota

Vikings and the New England Patriots

have given up any hope of hosting fans

this season. Fans are also watching less

football at home. Viewership for N.F.L.

games has slipped.

Commissioner Roger Goodell contin-

ues to say that the league expects to com-

plete a full slate of games and play the

Super Bowl, as scheduled, on Feb. 7 in

Tampa, Fla. But the league is consider-

ing allowing only about 20 percent of the

seats to be filled, with fans socially dis-

tanced in small groups if they know each

other. League sponsors, including

Bridgestone, which typically invite hun-

dreds of clients and employees to the Su-

per Bowl city, have scaled back their en-

tertainment plans.

The league is also making contingen-

cies for an incomplete regular season. On

Tuesday, the 32 owners approved a plan

that would add one more playoff team in

each conference if some teams are un-

able to complete their 16-game schedule

and end up playing an uneven number of

games.

The surge in coronavirus cases, cou-

pled with the lack of flexibility in the

league’s schedule, makes that more than

a possibility. When an outbreak shut the

Titans’ facility for about two weeks, the

league postponed two Titans games by

reordering bye weeks and shuffling the

schedules of other teams.

After this weekend, though, only six

teams will still have a bye week. If out-

breaks occur on the other 26 teams, the

league will have to shuffle its schedule to

fit in their games or delay the start of the

playoffs by one week and add an 18th

week to the regular season for makeup

games to be played.

It would be yet another wrinkle in an

already rumpled 2020 season, another

acknowledgment that despite the

league’s success at containing outbreaks

thus far, risky days and weeks lie ahead.

“We’re seeing the benefits of the con-

cepts we’ve implemented,” Dr. Sills said.

But “it is hard because we’re all tired of

this, everyone’s tired of the pandemic,

we’re tired of the procedures we have to

go through on a daily basis.”

He added, “It continues to feel very un-

usual and abnormal because it’s not nor-

mal for us.”

The N.F.L. Has Contained the Coronavirus Everywhere but Off the Field

By KEN BELSON

Many N.F.L. teams have stopped increasing the size of their already limited

seating capacity at stadiums. Cutouts, though, seem to be another matter.

GAIL BURTON/ASSOCIATED PRESS More than 200 people on

or affiliated with teams

have been infected.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — By the time he
reached Augusta National Golf Club’s
17th tee during Monday’s practice round,
Cameron Champ had talked with his
stand-in coach and tour guide about his
upcoming wedding and how to navigate
the course’s greens.
Now Phil Mickelson, 50 years old and a
three-time Masters winner, had more ad-
vice for the man half his age who was
making his first Masters appearance.
“If you’re going to miss this fairway,”
Mickelson counseled, “miss it right, be-
cause you have an angle into the green.”
More than two dozen players made
their Masters debuts this year under ex-
traordinary circumstances because of
the coronavirus pandemic — mandatory
testing, a course largely emptied of spec-
tators, the ritual springtime tournament
being played in November. But the infor-
mal tradition of Augusta tutelage did not
ebb. And at least some of the advice, con-
spicuous to any passer-by thanks to the

absence of crowd noise, may have
helped: On Saturday, 14 first-timers
made the rain-delayed cut, a Masters
record.
At day’s end, the top of the leaderboard
was crowded with players in their inau-
gural appearances. The first-timers
Abraham Ancer and Sungjae Im were
tied with Cameron Smith for second at
12-under par, four strokes behind Dustin
Johnson. Sebastián Muñoz finished Sat-
urday tied for seventh at nine-under par.
Champ, who shot a 68 on Saturday, will
be at six under and tied for 15th as he
starts the tournament’s final day, less
than a week after his crash course with
one of the most celebrated golfers of the
era.
“I wanted to play with him and pick his
brain and ask him questions,” Champ
said after his practice with Mickelson.
“He’s fun to be around, super talkative,
and obviously, he’s a Masters champ.”
Augusta National has not crowned a
Masters champion in his debut since
1979, when Fuzzy Zoeller won the green
jacket. The course is among the most
challenging in golf for a rookie to unlock,
in part because access to it is so rare out-
side the tournament. Ancer played it for
the first time just last week. Im went
through all 18 holes alone on Monday, his
first day on the course.
“I watched the Masters growing up so
many times that I feel like I’m used to
playing this course, even though this is
my first time,” Im said through an inter-
preter on Saturday.
Still, advice is often welcomed. Im said
he had spoken with K.J. Choi, who fin-
ished in the top 10 at the Masters on three
occasions, about how to approach the
course and had ended the conversation
feeling encouraged. On the fairways and
the greens this past week, other veterans
proved eager to offer counsel about Au-
gusta National, but still stopped far short
of spilling every secret of the par-72
course.
“Ray Floyd, Crenshaw, Nicklaus,
Palmer — they would all talk about putts,
shots, things to watch out for,” Mickelson

said, naming winners of a combined 13

Masters tournaments.

But for all the wisdom available to

early-career players, there is only so

much that can prepare a Masters rookie

for the rigors of a course that is far more

challenging, Ancer said Friday, than it

appears in televised splendor. Besides,

there was no guarantee that the tricks

devised from successes and regrettable

plays in Aprils past would hold up in No-

vember.

Tiger Woods, the defending champion,

recalled that he had received advice

from figures like Jack Nicklaus and Seve

Ballesteros. But he said that they — and,

later, he — had not shared all. Instead,

Woods, a five-time Masters winner who

is tied for 20th at five under, suggested

there was no substitute for raw experi-

ence at Augusta.

“That’s just something also that you

have to go through,” he said.

Woods’s approach may still represent

something of an advancement for rookie-

veteran relations.

Bob Goalby, the 1968 champion, re-

called on Wednesday that players like

Doug Ford and Sam Snead, both of them

Masters winners, had offered him ad-

vice. Those exchanges, though, were of-

ten based in friendships, not necessarily

pay-it-forward sensibilities, he said.

“Most people are more helpful today

than they used to be — they used to try to

trick you,” Goalby, 91, said, laughing.

“We didn’t play for a lot of money, and

you had to get the best little edge you

could get, no matter how it was. You’d try

to beat that guy by a stroke. Playing for

the kind of money they play for today,

they can gamble, and the next week

they’re playing for $9 million instead of

playing for $15,000, total.”

These days, some of the advice that

the old lions dispensed is obsolete be-

cause Augusta National has evolved.

“I remember Palmer saying on seven

that if he was playing well enough to win,

he was playing well enough to hit a

driver in that fairway and then he’d have

a little sand wedge in,” Mickelson said.

“But that has gone from a birdie hole to

one of the hardest pars, so little things

like that don’t really fly anymore.”

Muñoz figured that out when he prac-

ticed alongside the past champions Vijay

Singh and José María Olazábal. He

summed up their assessment as, “Man,

it’s completely different from what we’re

used to.”

“I think that kind of helped me because

I didn’t try to play it the way it usually

plays and just the way I perceive it right

now,” Muñoz said.

Indeed, a barrage of advice carries its

own perils.

Adam Scott, the 2013 winner, recalled

practicing alongside Greg Norman in

2002, his first Masters entry, and Nor-

man advising him simply to play the

game. Scott finished ninth that year.

“In the years after that, I started ask-

ing people more and more things, and I

found out where all the trouble was and

never played good for about eight years

here,” Scott said.

So on Monday when Scott practiced

with Erik van Rooyen, who ultimately

withdrew because of injury, he tried not

to unnerve him.

“I told him the story of my first time

here,” he said, “and I didn’t know any-

thing and I did fine.”

Masters Rookies Get a Little Help From Their Older Friends

By ALAN BLINDER

Phil Mickelson, above left, walking with Cameron Champ during a practice

round at Augusta National on Monday. Abraham Ancer, left, a first-time play-

er at the Masters, finished Saturday’s third round four strokes off the lead.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Advice is welcome, but

in the end there’s no

substitute for experience.