It is the time when tournament officials set up the golf course and, normally, hospitality tents and grandstands. But there’s no need for any seating this year, as spectators won’t be allowed at the PGA Tour event amid coronavirus concerns. The 3M Open is the seventh event to be held since the Tour returned to action in mid-June. None of them have featured fans.
“It’s busy,” 3M Open tournament director Mike Welch said of advance week. “But as people have told me, it’s not as busy as it normally is.”
While the event is in just its second year as a PGA Tour event, very little about this 3M Open will feel normal.
Size
Usually, the 3M Open — which replaced the longtime 3M Championship played on the PGA Tour Champions — would feature about 1,000 volunteers. They are, as much as anyone else, the lifeblood of the event. This year, that number will be cut to somewhere between 300 and 350.
Welch is disappointed for the volunteers who won’t be able to attend, particularly those who have been with the tournament since the beginning.
“The ones that we do have, we’ve just made it more of a skeleton crew for each area,” Welch said.
For instance, there typically would be about 100 volunteers working in operations. This year, there will be 30 to 35.
“So they’re going to wear a few more hats, but their job functions don’t change all that much,” Welch said. “I think we’ve been able to just scale down. Now, for future years, we don’t want that. We need that to go back to what it was, because we want as many volunteers as possible.”
The broadcast crew, from CBS and Golf Channel, is similarly cut down. As is the number of PGA Tour personnel.
“And that’s amazing, because when you watch the TV broadcast, nothing is going to change,” Welch said. “It’s going to look and feel just like any other Tour tournament would be, so it’s quite amazing to see … what a skeleton crew can put on here to conduct this tournament.”
Welch anticipates somewhere between 850 and 900 people on the course each day — 312 of whom will be players and caddies, all spread out over 254,000 acres.
COVID precautions
There will be two categories of people at the 3M Open — those who are in the bubble, and those who are not.
The determining factor is simple: If you will come into contact with players during the week, you will be in the bubble. Those in the bubble will be regularly tested for the coronavirus, just like the players, starting this Sunday.
Those who will be in the bubble include Welch, people working in operations, the tournament committee, PGA Tour staff, clubhouse staff and even the starters on the Nos. 1 and 10 tees.
Throughout the weekend, those in the bubble are encouraged to keep to themselves as much as possible, going only from their hotels to the course, maintaining social distance at all times.
That’s a big change from previous years. 3M Open executive director Hollis Cavner and his company, Pro Links Sports, are well known for how they take care of the players and caddies at tournaments, providing dinners, gatherings and events for competitors to attend with their families throughout the week.
“We’re not doing any of that,” Welch said.
The dining facility is solely for those making and serving the food. All of the meals for players and caddies are pre-set and will be served to-go. Players will text the dining staff 15 minutes prior to when they want their food, and it will be delivered to them in a box near the clubhouse.
Those who are not in the bubble will receive a thermal scan each day upon arrival, and be admitted if they record a temperature below 100.5 degrees. They also will answer a brief questionnaire each day.
Welch said the PGA Tour has had to make only minimal adjustments since the restart, as only a handful of players and caddies have tested positive for the virus.
“The Tour has done an unbelievable job of this so far,” he said. “They were extremely thoughtful from the get-go, and there hasn’t been a lot of changes.”
Revenue
Once the decision was made that the tournament would indeed be played, but without spectators, Welch and Co. knew generating revenue to fuel their charitable giving wasn’t going to be easy. Ticket sales and sponsorships steer that ship, and now spectators couldn’t attend and hospitality tents were also a no-go.
They thought they had maintained at least one revenue stream in keeping their Monday and Tuesday pro-am rounds, as well as having “honorary observers” who could walk alongside a specific threesome during the first and second rounds of the tournament, only to have the Tour nix those two weeks ago.
“So then we had to sort of backtrack once again and plan for that,” Welch said. “Operationally, it’s been business as usual. From a revenue side, we’ve had to pivot three or four times. The pro-am vertical was a decent-sized chunk of change for us, and all of a sudden, that became a zero.”
So the tournament has had to go back to its partners and offer them other aspects of promotion, largely from a social and digital standpoint. Some have said yes to that. Others have said they’ll donate 25 percent of what they were going to give, just because they believe in the causes to which their money will go.
“We’ve just been so grateful for that. … They just want to get behind 3M,” Welch said.
3M has been an industry leader in the battle against COVID-19, both in its work to increase production of personal protective equipment to its $20 million donation to help fight the virus. The 3M Open identified eight causes to donate to with the revenue from this year’s tournament, with an eye on assisting in the battle against coronavirus, fighting social injustices and rebuilding the Twin Cities. The causes are: M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital, Greater Twin Cities United Way, VEAP, Urban Ventures, Lake Street Council, YWCA of Minneapolis, YWCA of St. Paul and the Science Museum of Minnesota.
The tournament is getting creative in its giveback efforts. It started a social media campaign, asking people to “tip your cap” to essential workers. For each tweet that uses #3MOpen, the tournament will donate $3 to the Children’s Hospital, VEAP and the Twin Cities United Way. It is also looking into a mid-week exhibition event featuring a few notable players to raise more money.
The tournament hopes to showcase its chosen causes throughout the tournament, and then get involved in boots-on-the-ground efforts after the event.
The non-profit organization donated $1.5 million to charitable funds after last year’s tournament. Such an amount is likely not feasible this time around. Still, the 3M Open is trying to do what it can to still make a difference.
“When you have nothing to sell, including pro-ams, you can imagine revenues are tough to come by,” Welch said. “I’ll say the only way that we’ve been able to still provide for these charities is because of the commitment of our 3M Open partners and our 3M supplier partners. We’re just so humbled by their graciousness.”
Welch said the majority of the tournament’s partners already have agreed to roll their commitments forward to next year.
“We’re encouraged by what 2021 will hold,” he said. “We don’t really know today how the economy is going to rebound, but we do see and what we’ve been hearing from partners is, ‘Hey, we want to be a part of this next year.’ ”
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