The post What’s it like for Justin Leonard to return to The Country Club? ‘It all feels very familiar.’ appeared first on Golf.

The post What’s it like for Justin Leonard to return to The Country Club? ‘It all feels very familiar.’ appeared first on Golf.

BROOKLINE, Mass. — Golf fans know the scene well.

It’s September of 1999 in suburban Boston. Justin Leonard, decked out in an oversized (and unsightly) Team USA polo, stands on the 17th green. He’s fought back from four down with seven to play and has tied his match with Jose Maria Olazabal. Both men face lengthy birdie putts — Leonard 40 feet from the cup, and Olzabal about 15 feet closer.

If Leonard hangs on and earns a half point, the U.S. team will win the Cup, completing an improbable Sunday comeback. All eyes are on this match.

The American reads his putt with steely eyes tucked underneath the brim of his tan cap. Leonard is winless in six career Ryder Cup matches, but all he needs is a tie to become a golf legend. As he prepares to draw the putter back, he has one thought in his mind.

“Make sure you get it up the hill,” Leonard recalls. “I didn’t want it to roll back to my feet.”

The rest is history. The putt rolled into the center of the cup — with plenty of pace — and Leonard cemented his place in Ryder Cup lore.

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Twenty-three years later, the now-50-year-old is back at The Country Club for just the second time since that fateful fall day — and he’s enjoying every minute of it.

“It’s fun,” Leonard told GOLF.com. “It really is. The feel is the same. It’s changed a little bit — certainly the routing is a little different — but it all feels very familiar.”

The swoons from the galleries are familiar, too. Although Leonard hears seemingly daily from fans in regard to his Ryder Cup-clinching putt, returning to The Country Club only amplifies it.

“People tell me where they were, who they watched it with, those sorts of things,” he said. “It’s been fun to relive everything.”

This time around, though, Leonard won’t be the one authoring history. Instead, he’ll be covering it as a member of Golf Channel’s Live From broadcast team. There may be no better man for the job of analyst at The Country Club than Leonard.

Not only does Leonard have personal experience around the course, but as a student of the game, he’s also well-versed in its history — and that history runs deep.

From Francis Ouimet’s improbable victory in 1913 to Matthew Fitzpatrick’s triumph at the U.S. Amateur in 2013, these fairways have some tales to tell. Leonard intends to to do his best to weave that historic context with the storylines that develop this week.

“A lot of our viewers may have seen ’99, they may remember the [U.S.] Open in ’88, but it’s been a while,” Leonard said. “There’s a great history here and I’m sure there will be some more added to it this week.”

Whether or not that history can stack up to Leonard’s Ryder Cup moment remains to be seen.

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The post What’s Justin Leonard up to? The ’99 Country Club hero is diving back into golf appeared first on Golf.

The 1999 Ryder Cup hero is on the phone from his home in Aspen, Colo.

Dylan Dethier: Colorado? That’s not a place a lot of golfers necessarily end up.

Justin Leonard: It’s not. Back in 2015, when we moved here, I wanted to step off the grid a little bit. I knew I was going to pull back my schedule or stop playing altogether, and it seemed like a good place to just slow life down. For my wife and me, for my kids, we love being outdoors, and it seemed like the right time and right place to do it. Funny timing, though. We’re moving to Florida at the end of June. My wife has family there. And it’s a lot easier for me to travel from Florida. Also, I want to be somewhere that I can play a little golf.

DD: You turn 50 on June 15 and have plans to compete on the PGA Tour Champions. What does 50 mean to you?

JL: Well, I haven’t thought a lot about birthdays the last few years. This one, however, I’m a bit more excited about. I’m excited to go play a little. I’ve been spending more time on my game and gearing up for the next chapter.

DD: Has time away gotten you hungry for competitive golf again?

JL: It was an interesting process, getting into TV. I learned a lot about myself when I stopped playing, like, What was my motivation? It wasn’t necessarily the competition; it was the process. It was putting in the work to try to improve and get better. I was able to channel that passion into my work with Golf Channel and NBC, so I haven’t necessarily been hungry for tournaments. But I’ve been excited to put in the time and effort and to learn where my game is now.

DD: How are your preparations different now from when you were playing full time?

JL: I’m kind of at the mercy of the weather up here, but I was able to get out when I worked some Florida Swing events. And I was just out in Carlsbad getting equipment dialed in. So I would say it’s going pretty well. I’ve gotten used to the fact that I don’t hit balls every day. I’ll go three, four weeks without touching a club. That means keeping things as simple as possible.

DD: You had a hot start to your career. Won the U.S. Am. Two-time All-American at Texas. Straight to the PGA Tour, no Q-School. Given everything you now know about the Tour and the sport, is there anything you wish you knew when you were coming out of college?

JL: That’s a great question. Maybe the most important thing I learned over the course of my career is just not to take it too seriously. There were times, certainly early in my career, where I lived and died with it. If I missed a cut or two in a row, I was ready to blow things up and start over again. But you’re never too far away from some pretty good golf. Outside of that, I felt like I did a fairly good job of maintaining some normalcy—having friends on Tour and also outside of the game that kept me grounded when I needed it.

DD: The Country Club at Brookline is about to take center stage at the U.S. Open. You’re at the center of arguably the most iconic moment in its history—1999’s “Battle of Brookline”—when you sank a 45-footer on the 17th hole to snatch the Ryder Cup from the Euros. How would you describe the course to someone who’s never been there?

JL: Well, it’s changed quite a bit since ’99. But, overall, it’s going to be a great U.S. Open test. It’s going to require precision. But looking at how they’ve set golf courses the last few years, they’re also going to reward a guy if he can hit the ball a long way but keep it in play. It’ll be fun to be back up there; it’s probably been nine or 10 years. To see it set up and to see some of the changes they’ve made—I’m excited about it.

DD: You recently said that you hear about 30 Ryder Cup comments for every other comment you get about your career. Was that an exaggeration? Do you love it? Do you ever get tired of it?

JL: No, that’s pretty true. Unless it’s about the Open Championship or the Players [tournaments Leonard won, respectively, in ’97 and ’98], the other 50 weeks of the year, it’s probably between 20 and 30 to one, Ryder Cup to everything else. I don’t get tired of it at all. The Ryder Cup is different from everything else because people have a rooting interest. You’re rooting for the U.S., you’re rooting for Europe, even if you’re not from either place you’ve probably taken a side. When I won the Open, there weren’t many people rooting for me outside of my own family. Same thing at the Players. But when you can add a team element, where people have a rooting interest, that’s why I get the amount of comments I do. People were pulling for us.

DD: When you think back to that putt, that pivotal Sunday and the celebration that followed, what sticks out?

JL: It’s the moments that led up to that putt that made it important. It was Davis Love III coming back, when I was on the 10th or 11th fairway, and telling me he was going to come watch my match. It was Phil Mickelson sitting at breakfast, 45 minutes before his tee time, not going out to the range until he felt like we could win as a team. And then, all of a sudden, two or three minutes later, he didn’t say a word, he just got up and left. Even back to the night prior, Saturday night, when we got the pairings and thought, ya know, this is actually set up pretty well for us. It was all the little moments that led up to that putt even making a difference.

DD: You broke out that—let’s face it—hideous shirt at the last Ryder Cup, after you said it had been sitting in a closet for 22 years. How does it feel that perhaps the most famous moment in U.S. Ryder Cup history came while wearing, arguably, the most dubious shirt in Cup history?

JL: [Chuckling] I get asked about the shirt often, just this past weekend in fact. Ya know, it was a nice idea, just impossible to execute. Portraits of all the winning Ryder Cup teams printed on a shirt? A great idea for, like, a quilt. Maybe the inside liner of a sport coat. But to wear that as a shirt? It was a bold move. Fortunately, it paid off.

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The post At home club, Scottie Scheffler is the smack-talking king of money matches appeared first on Golf.

Dave Howe suspected Scottie Scheffler might play well at the Masters.

That’s because six days before the first round, Howe had become one of Scheffler’s latest victims.

Howe is a member of Royal Oaks Country Club, in Dallas, the same club to which Scheffler belongs, and on the Saturday before the Masters began in earnest, Howe found himself in a money match with Scheffler.

You might think that the No. 1 player in the world would go easy on his fellow members, but that style of charity is just not in Scheffler’s DNA.

Scheffler birdied the first three holes and never looked back, shooting a seemingly effortless 64.

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“We were playing Wolf, and he was the only one that made money that day,” Howe said Sunday afternoon from a lively Masters viewing party at Royal Oaks. “I felt lucky I only lost $68.”

As for the slightly more important contest that was looming the following week, Howe said Scheffler barely mentioned it all day.

“After the round, we were sitting around having drinks and finally he said, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to travel tomorrow.’ I think we mentioned Augusta a total of two times.”

Howe was one of more than 100 members who had gathered at Royal Oaks on Sunday to cheer on their former junior star. On the menu was egg salad and pimento cheese sandwiches; on members’ minds were stories of Scheffler’s propensity for pulling out the needle in friendly club matches.

When Scheffler’s opponents hit a poor iron shot, for example, Scheffler might say something like, “Good try, you almost made the green,” said Royal Oaks member Brian Aube. “We rarely hear ‘good shot’ from him.”

Scheffler has won more than $17 million in career prize earnings on Tour, but that doesn’t mean he won’t gleefully take a few more bucks off his Royal Oaks pals.

“My father-in-law couldn’t believe I text Scottie to set up golf games,” Howe said. “I told him I’ve got his Venmo address too, because I have to Venmo his a– every time we play. It only goes one way,”

The only time Howe recorded a win over Scheffler, he screenshotted the payment for posterity and sent it around to several members. Another member, Mark Schultz, said that Schultz is the only Royal Oaks regular to have beaten Scheffler straight up since Scheffler turned pro, edging him 72-73 in late 2019. But Scheffler refuses to let Schultz gloat about it.   

“He usually has some smart comeback to that,” Schultz said.

Indeed, with his new status as golf’s top dog, Scheffler has become a tough guy to razz. There aren’t many comebacks for “best golfer on the planet.”

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Scheffler doesn’t spend all of his time at Royal Oaks emptying the pockets of his fellow members — he also finds time to lend his expertise and mentorship to the club’s junior contingent. Scheffler is paying forward the same guidance he received as a youngster from Royal Oaks members and PGA Tour winners Justin Leonard and Harrison Frazar.    

“I didn’t play with Scottie, but spent some time with him while practicing,” Leonard said from his home Sunday, while watching Scheffler march to victory at Augusta. “He would come over and sit and watch as Randy [Smith, Leonard’s teacher] and I worked on things a bit. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, he just kind of hung out and observed. He certainly had a thirst for knowledge.”

Royal Oaks’ juniors have learned some of the nuances of the game from Scheffler as well as — no surprise — the art of smack-talking. Head professional Dean Larson said he works with a 10-year-old, with the last name Ballotta, with whom Scheffler has developed a light-hearted rapport.

“[Scheffler] is always going up to him, saying, ‘What’s up, Ballotta?’” Larson said.

After his World Golf Championship win in Austin, Scottie jokingly requested that the club’s young’uns address him at “Mr. World No. 1 .”

There is one thing about which Royal Oaks members can give Scheffler grief: his car.

Scheffler still drives a used GMC Suburban with 175,000 miles, which he inherited from his father, Scott, while in college at the University of Texas.

“We ask him about it and he says, ‘I travel all the time, I don’t need a nice car,” Schultz said.

The elder Scheffler drove the Suburban from Dallas to Augusta last week; before the long drive back to Dallas Monday, he needed to get the car an oil change.

With his latest payday, maybe the new Masters champ will upgrade his wheels. He could pay for the car, and his Royal Oaks winnings should more than cover his gas.

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The post This would-be agent wants to transform how golfers are represented. All he needs is a client appeared first on Golf.

If golf has a real-life Jerry Maguire, it’s Mac Barnhardt, who has, over the past 25 years, represented Davis Love, Justin Leonard, David Duval, Lucas Glover, Brandt Snedeker and other popular favorites. At the moment, he doesn’t represent anyone. Still, his quest remains: to sign the first new client of the rest of his life.
 
When the U.S. Amateur is played, as it was at Bandon Dunes last week, it’s a holy week for amateurs. The event is also a confab for agents, at which (in normal times) they size up talent and chat up parents and swing coaches. In this odd year, owing to the pandemic, the agents were not hovering, but last year, like every year, they were. Any winner of a U.S. Amateur can expect to be overwhelmed with agent attention. Last year’s Amateur champ, Andy Ogletree, found that out. Barnhardt was among Ogletree’s suitors. Every agent is trying to sell something. Barnhardt sells the lessons of his life. To be frank about it, it’s not what most young golfers or their parents want to hear. Barnhardt doesn’t particularly care. He knows it’s the best thing he has going for him because he knows it’s the best thing he can give a potential client.  
 
In 2013, the company Barnhardt owned, Crown Sports Management, was bought out by Lagardère Sports, which has a golf division run by Steve Loy, Phil Mickelson’s agent. In May 2018, Barnhardt was, in his own candid telling, fired. That act triggered a noncompete clause. Barnhardt was pushed to the sidelines for a two-year period. Those two years have come and gone and then some. Which brings us to the comeback he is attempting.

In the story of his business life, to turn our subject’s 58 years on this earth into a movie script, Barnhardt’s in the part of Jerry Maguire where Jerry (Tom Cruise) is trying to recruit the fictional NFL receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to be the first client in the new, we’re-humans-first agency Jerry wants to launch. In real life, Barnhardt settled on his Rod Tidwell last summer. That’s when he started focusing his particular brand of attention, with its curious blend of purposefulness and nonchalance, on Ogletree, a tall, lean golfer from Union, Miss., where his father owns a Piggly Wiggly grocery store.
 
There have been U.S. Am winners who were destined for professional greatness (Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods). And many more who were not (Bill Sander, Nathaniel Crosby, Steve Fox). The cognoscenti don’t consider Ogletree a can’t-miss kid. The Georgia Tech golfer was ranked No. 120 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. But Mac is a true believer. 
 
“I love his work ethic, his intelligence, his maturity, his family, his value system,” Barnhardt told me during the PGA Merchandise Show. That was in January, at a time when Barnhardt, among others, was trying to get a commitment from Ogletree, without endangering the young man’s amateur status. (Doable, if you know the applicable USGA and NCAA rules.) Ogletree’s plan then was to choose among his suitors, play in the Masters in April as an amateur, turn pro the next month, after the NCCA tournament. Then a nasty virus turned the world on its head.

So instead, Ogletree stayed amateur. He played in three Tour events as an amateur and missed three cuts. At this year’s U.S. Amateur, he played in the 36-hole stroke-play qualifier and missed a playoff to qualify for the match play portion of the championship — that is, the main event — by a shot. Being an agent in pursuit of a high-profile amateur is a high-wire act, with a lot of ups and downs. It can be like being a Hollywood director where one’s status is dependent on your last movie’s box office.
 
As it happens, Barnhardt’s story actually does share a lot of Jerry Maguire. Except that is mainstream entertainment and you know how it’s going to end. If Barnhardt were available on Netflix, it would be a documentary with a familiar beginning, a revealing behind-the-scenes middle and a TBD end. 

In truth, Barnhardt is looking to do more than come back. He’s looking to reinvent how golfers are represented. The last time that happened, in the early 1960s, Mark McCormack was wearing a plaid coat and could deliver Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, as a package, to your pro-am and cocktail party. Barnhardt in 2020 (and beyond) does not want to be an agent in the traditional sense. He wants to be a performance coach, an advisor, a member of the golfer’s board of directors. He wants to vet and manage the group around the golfer that will help the golfer play better golf. “Talent minus distraction equals performance,” Barnhardt likes to say. He wants to reduce distraction. 
 
A telling phrase of the management business describes how the agent “looks after” (a chiefly British phrase) this player or that one. Mark Steinberg, for example, of Excel Sports Management, looks after Tiger Woods, Justin Rose, Matt Kuchar. Barnhardt doesn’t want to hold the hand of his golfers after their rounds or walk with them for 72 holes. “Those things aren’t going to help the golfer perform better,” he says. Barnhardt’s starting point is that to make it today, a golfer needs a team.

Mock that belief if you like, but at your own peril. Not a team with a big roster, mind you, but a team nonetheless. The right caddie, swing instructor, mental coach, fitness guy, club-fitter, accountant, travel-and-docs person. Plus, a designated place to meet these people and do the associated work during tournaments and on off weeks, too. In the mission statement in his mind, Barnhardt says that his job will be to make sure the fits are good ones, that the relationships are managed appropriately, that the financial terms make sense.

“The professional golfer should think of himself as the CEO of a small business,” Barnhardt says. “The product is tournament golf scores, the lower the better, the more years at it the better. Everything the golfer earns comes from that, and every person in the golfer’s life should contribute to performance. The best golfers have always thought about what they earn on the course, not what they make for showing up someplace.”

Barnhardt is a plus-four talker who sprinkles in references to psychologists, philosophers, ballplayers, snow-boarders, business visionaries and military generals in his conversation. His father was a Methodist minister, and the son learned at his feet, except now Mac doesn’t believe in divine anything. He believes in planning, staying the course, adjusting as necessary. He believes in work, even if work is playing golf at home with your buddies five days a week. He does not believe in get rich quick.
 
“A lot of the fathers of a lot of the kids looking to turn pro ask the same questions,” Barnhardt says. “’How many tournaments can you get him in? What guarantees can you give him?’
 
“Those aren’t the right questions. The right way to look at it is this: You hope this is the start of a 15-year career. Your son’s good, but he needs to get better and these are the things he needs to do.”
 
Now that doesn’t sound particularly fun, does it? It has the advantage of being Barnhardt’s hard-earned truth. But fun it’s not.
 
All the things Barnhardt has learned over the past 25 years are the things that, if he said them, practically guarantees that he won’t sign the young player. This conundrum is known broadly as a Catch-22.
 
“It could reinvent the business — or I could wind up working as a lift operator at Sun Valley,” Mac will tell you.

It’s an amusing comment and a telling reference. Barnhardt came up in a legendary agency, Pros, Inc., located in Richmond, Va. That agency represented Tom Kite, Lanny Wadkins, Davis Love and other golfers catching southbound trains. Mac’s job was to make the trains run on time. He looked the part and knew the lines. In 1999, Pros, Inc. was bought by Octagon. In 2003, Barnhardt broke away and became Love’s full-time guy. Soon after, he started Crown, signed Jonathan Byrd and Glover, made Sea Island, where Love and Barnhardt both live, a center for Tour players. None of this is as tidy as it sounds. It couldn’t be. 
 
As Mac became more of his own guy, he started dressing more like the snowboarder Shaun White and less like Steve Loy and Mark Steinberg. You’d often see Barnhardt at tournaments wearing a hoodie, a flat-brimmed cap and tennis shoes, talking about new-agey things.
 
All the while, he was taking a lot in. He could read players — his own and others. He’d casually make prescient observations. When Player X, a winner and a star, bought a home with an elevator, Barnhardt said, “He’s broke, he just doesn’t know it yet.” (That proved to be true.) Barnhardt has a keen understanding of the PGA Tour’s C-suite execs and how they work with Capitol Hill pols, network television deal-makers, mono-named star golfers. He knows how to read the fine print of a contract, how to ask for sponsor exemptions, how to get Korn Ferry Tour status. There’s more to being an agent than standing under a tree and chatting people up, although that’s an important skill, too.
 
Barnhardt is eager to see what Ogletree does playing alongside Tiger Woods at the Masters in November, if traditional Thursday-Friday threesomes are maintained.
 
Maybe Ogletree will be the 36-hole leader at Augusta in November. Maybe he’ll shoot 150 and miss the cut. Either way, this is Barnhardt’s view: The kid is 22. He’s good at golf, loves the game, works hard at it and has already accomplished way more than most. Let’s see what the next 15 years brings. 
 
Michael Bamberger may be reached at Michael_Bamberger@Golf.com.

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The post Backspin: Looking back at a classic Tiger Woods Nike commercial (with a special cameo!) appeared first on Golf.

After Tiger Woods won the 2008 U.S. Open – essentially on one leg – he took a long break from professional golf to recover physically. This 2009 Nike Golf commercial depicts what the PGA Tour looked like in his absence, and then what it looked like during his return.

Tiger has been a part of some legendary commercials, but this one is special due to a few surprise cameos. I won’t ruin who the big name is before you watch the video, though, in case it’s your first time watching.

Being that this commercial is such a classic, we figured it was perfect for our new Backspin series, where equipment editors Jonathan Wall and Andrew Tursky (that’s me) watch old golf videos for the first time in years and provide our thoughts. If you missed them, we’ve already checked out the old Alien Wedge and Hammer X infomercials.

Enjoy our Backspin version of the classic Nike Golf commercial above, and stay tuned for more nostalgic videos next week!

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Last week, speculation was rampant that Tiger Woods might be teeing it up at the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C., when his luxury yacht, Privacy, left its Palm Beach, Fla. dock for St. Simon’s Island, Ga. — just a short jaunt from Hilton Head.

Alas, Tiger didn’t commit to the tournament by the Friday deadline, nor did he make this week’s deadline for next week’s Travelers Championship in Connecticut, and golf fans were left wondering, once again, when they could expect to see the Big Cat play an official tournament for the first time since February’s Genesis Invitational.

Earlier this week, I spoke with 12-time Tour winner, Ryder Cup hero and Golf Channel analyst Justin Leonard on a range of topics, including where he thinks Tiger will make his debut on the Tour’s newly revamped schedule, and his expectations for Woods’ performance.

“I thought he might play one of these first two or three events just to see where he was,” Leonard conceded. “He looked so good during the match that he played with Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning back just a month or so ago. But then again, Tiger is a creature of habit.

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“We may not see him again until the Memorial or the week before, which is also going to be played at Muirfield Village Golf Club,” Leonard continued. “[Tiger] likes to go to the same places.”

Tiger is indeed comfortable at Muirfield Village, having amassed five victories there over the course of his career. As for his expectations for Woods’ performance this season, Leonard is optimistic — especially given what he saw from Woods at The Match: Champions for Charity.

“[Tiger’s] body looked great. His swing looked fantastic. It looked like he was moving very well. So I think the prospects of Tiger Woods, knowing him as I do and as a competitor, he’s not concerned about how his game feels right now,” Leonard said. “He’s keying in the FedEx Cup playoffs. He’s going to key in on the major championships, the first one being the PGA championship, which will be the first week of August. That’s what he’s trying to get ready for. And knowing Tiger Woods, understanding what he’s been through and seeing how good he looked just a month ago, I think Tiger will be ready to play and contend at major championships this fall.”

For more from Leonard, including his picks for the perfect last-minute Father’s Day gift (hint: hot-foot it to your nearest Dick’s Sporting Goods store!), check out the video below.

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The post A fan-free Ryder Cup would give Europe a huge advantage, says Justin Leonard appeared first on Golf.

The post A fan-free Ryder Cup would give Europe a huge advantage, says Justin Leonard appeared first on Golf.

The PGA Tour is in the midst of a five-week stretch in which tournament golf is being played but galleries are prohibited. July’s Memorial in Dublin, Ohio, is slated to be the first event to welcome fans back to the course, though only at 20 percent of the course’s total capacity, which equates to around 8,000 people.

A decision has yet to be made regarding fan attendance at the upcoming Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. Two high-profile Tour players, Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy, have already made it known that they do not support a Ryder Cup being played without fans, with Koepka going so far as to say he would consider not playing if fans are not allowed.

One person who knows something about the potential impact of fan support at the Ryder Cup is 1999 Team USA hero, Justin Leonard, who memorably holed a 45-foot putt to cap what was at the time the largest come-from-behind victory in Ryder Cup history.

“I’m not sure if it would have happened on that Sunday in ’99 without the support of those fans in the New England area,” Leonard told GOLF.com in an interview conducted via Zoom. “I think it would have been more difficult for us to make that comeback. We took a lot of energy from the crowd that day.”

Leonard, 48, has 12 career Tour victories, and is a regular contributor to Golf Channel tournament broadcasts as an analyst, making him uniquely positioned to offer perspective as both a player and a member of the media. When asked about Kopeka and McIlroy’s reluctance to embrace the event without fans, Leonard said he understood the sentiment.

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“The fans really make the Ryder Cup experience what it is,” he said. “So I am not so sure I wouldn’t be lobbying to play it without fans. I think that it’s important for the game of golf. It’s important for sport. And it’s important for people’s morale, and give people something to look forward to during the times of uncertainty.”

Another reason a fan-free environment isn’t ideal? When you get the chance to play on home soil, having the gallery on your side can make a huge difference.

“If I was a European player, I would love to play in the Ryder Cup in Wisconsin without fans because having that home crowd is an advantage for that home team,” said Leonard.

Rather than stage the exhibition without fans entirely, Leonard is hopeful that Whistling Straits can welcome a reduced number of fans, similar to what we can expect to see at the upcoming Memorial.

“Instead of 20,000 to 25,000 [fans] per day, maybe it’s just a few thousand people,” Leonard said. “It allows the players to have that experience. It allows for fans to have the experience of attending the Ryder Cup. And it gives us all who will be watching at home something to really look forward to.”

You can check out the video of our conversation with Leonard below.

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Justin Leonard on where we might see Tiger Woods return to the 2020 PGA Tour Season.

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Justin Leonard talks about a fanless Ryder Cup and how it would favor Team Europe.

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Justin Leonard’s review of golf’s return and the prospects of playing without fans for the next few tournaments.

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