Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament may be the first PGA Tour event on the revised 2020 schedule that allows spectators on site.
The Governor of Ohio cleared the path for that on Friday and that’s good news because on July 16, we could be seeing Tiger Woods for the first time since his rough outing at the Genesis.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced last Friday that he has approved a limited spectator safety plan for The Memorial, staged at Muirfield Village outsid Jack’s home town of Columbus.
“These sectors have come up with plans that reduce the number of people, provide for sanitation, and in some cases, provide for one-way traffic,” DeWine said on his Twitter account. “They are elaborate plans that we believe are consistent with protecting the public.”
The Memorial Tournament said that more details would be released soon regarding the “protocols designed to promote the health & safety of all who will be on-site at this year’s tournament.”
The Tour has already announced that the first five events on the upcoming schedule – including this week’s first event back at Colonial for the Charles Schwab Challenge – will be held with only essential personnel on-site.
Muirfield Village is hosting back-to-back Tour events, with that hastily-assembled replacement for the John Deere Classic, sponsored by Workday. It will start July 9 and will not have spectators.
Augusta National Forks Over $26 Million For Shopping Center:
It’s no secret that Augusta National is on its own rendition of “Manifest Destiny.” It has spent a huge amount of cash acquiring properties contiguous to the club for the past few years and now it’s made a blockbuster of an acquisition.
The guys in the Green Jackets recently bought the very large shopping center across the street from the club — the National Hills center, a 179,000-plus square foot retail center for an eye-opening $26 million. That’s about $153 a square foot, totally in the realm of reality for anchored shopping centers.
Total size of the shopping center footprint is 15-acres.
The shopping center abuts Washington Road right next to the public entrance the club uses during the Masters. Between the center and the road is a large parking lot, which many patrons have used as a location to rendezvous without cell phones.
If you’re keeping count, Augusta National has spent in the neighborhood of $70 million over the past three years to purchase property near its boundaries.
4 Comments
baxter cepeda
Good for them buying some elbow room.
I know the shopping center. Not only is it an ugly shopping center contrasting Whats across the street (not in a good way); a lot of activity happens there; Tix sales and such.
Hopefully they tear it all down and make it look Augusta woodsy again.
Augusta has to be considering slowly increasing attendance. There’s talk of housing which would be used during the tournament. Imagine how nice that would look.
Tom Edrington
To tear it down they would have to wait until the leases expire or buy them out, I see it has an anchor grocery store and they typically sign long-term leases…
baxter cepeda
8000 or 20% capacity.
Imo that would be enough to run a team event.
Gonna be interesting to see what kind of impact that many people can make.
GC reported today Some other significant people saying it would be better to have the Ryder cup without fans than non at all.
Imo a Ryder cup with no fans or less fans would make it very memorable.
If Ohio is successful at 20% it would be reasonable for Wisconsin to allow at least that for the Ryder Cup. That is more than enough people to make some noise for USA!
Tom Edrington
We’ll see, they have to make a decision pretty soon, like in the next couple of weeks…