Remembrance

Filed in archive Golf News on September 11, 2007

Courtesy: AP/Mark Lennihan

It was the day that changed the world, the day that ushered in a time of fear and suspicion.

The events of September 11, 2001 swept around the world like an emotional tsunami.

Here is a brief look at the reverberations from that day and the days that immediately followed in the world of golf.

Phil Mickelson, flying to Houston to promote the Tour Championship which he'd won the year before, is grounded in Austin in the hours after the collapse of the twin towers.

Mickelson then pulls out of the World Golf Championships set to begin the next day in St. Louis. A total of 20 players in the 66 player field had not arrived by Wednesday. 18 of them were planning to fly in.

PGA Commissioner, Tim Finchem announces the next day that the WGC, the Tampa Bay Classic, the Buy.com Tour event in Oregon and the Senior Tour event in North Carolina are all cancelled.

Ty Votaw, then commissioner of the LPGA Tour issues a statement saying that week's Safeway Classic in Portland, Oregon, is cancelled.

"Each and every one of us with the LPGA is horrified by what happened on Tuesday, and we have always had the victims of last Tuesday's events in our hearts, minds and prayers," said Votaw.

On Friday, to mark President Bush's call for a national day of prayer and remembrance, organizers of the Safeway Classic hold a service alongside the 18th green attended by the players, their caddies and tournament organizers.

On the European PGA Tour, the Monte Carlo Invitational on the Seniors Tour is cancelled. But the Tour decides to carry on with the Telia Grand Prix on the European Challenge Tour in Stockholm.

On the Friday after Tuesday's terrible attacks, Tiger Woods pulls out of the Lancome Trophy tournament in France, saying it is too dangerous to be an American flying anywhere in the world.

Indeed, no Americans enter the 2001 World Matchplay Championship in England the following month; it is won by Padraig Harrington.

And, of course, the 2001 Ryder Cup is postponed one year, throwing off the dates of the biennial event for the first time since the Second World War. The American side competed in 2002, wearing their 2001 hats and shirts in remembrance.

It was a week before the PGA Tour took steps to return to normal. The first step was taken, not without sad irony, with the Pennsylvania Classic held just 15 miles from where the third jet had crashed into a field after passengers overcame the terrorists on board.