Rozner: Tiger Woods on an empty golf course is so 2020

This long strange, trip that has been 2020 took another step in an odd direction Thursday, offering a close-up glimpse into what serves as current reality on the PGA Tour.

As golf balls were placed on a peg and served up into the sizzling morning air at Olympia Fields, the BMW Championship was underway in almost total silence.

No cheers for first tee announcement, no claps for the first great shot, no burst of energy as the first red number went up on the board, and no hustle and bustle of spectators rushing onto the property in hopes of witnessing a single Tiger Woods shot.

Having seen hundreds of rounds of golf in person between the PGA, Korn Ferry and LPGA Tours, not to mention a Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup, NCAA Championship and even an International Crown, the certainty was that this was unlike any of them.

With no hospitality tents, no grandstands surrounding tee boxes, no seats around greens or lining crucial fairways, it looked a lot like your local muni.

A few marshals on each hole kept an eye out for errant shots and there were cameramen and walking officials with groups, with perhaps a lone scribe outside the ropes. Normally with Woods, if you're not inside the ropes you would have little chance of seeing anything.

You also had to be aware of your movement as occasionally the only person within foot wedge of a golfer. It's noticeable if you're walking or even writing on a notepad, whereas normally the ridiculous amount of traffic would swallow up a person amid the swarm.

Weird.

As Woods teed off at 12:14 p.m. on the 10th hole, it was quiet, the only racket a repeated ding-ding and clickety-clack from a Metra engine bordering the first hole a few hundred yards away.

Woods' best round since the restart, only three tournaments going into Thursday, was Sunday in Boston when he shot a 5-under 66, a stripe show that offered much lower. Toss in a couple burned edges and the Big Cat might have been in Scottie Scheffler territory heading to the back.

With temps in the mid-90s Thursday and a heat index of about 100 degrees, Woods - playing four rounds in consecutive weeks for the first time in 18 months and needing solo fourth or better to reach the Tour Championship next week - opened the BMW Championship with a 3-over 73 and a tie for 35th.

Woods had it back to a very respectable even-par with a bird on No. 2, his 11th hole of the day, but he finished the day with 3 straight bogeys and an atrocious 32 putts.

Woods had a lot of company struggling to get to the clubhouse.

Set up much more like the 2003 U.S. Open at Olympia Fields than the birdie festival a week ago in Boston, the course was playing nearly 3 shots over par as the greens were baked, the fairways running hot, the rough uncut for a week and at times a two-club wind.

The leader is Hideki Matsuyama at 3-under with only three players under par on what felt precisely like a U.S. Open setup, players hoping the forecast rain gets here Friday afternoon and softens up the putting surfaces.

The last time there were four or fewer players under par after the first round of a PGA Tour event was the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnecock.

"The course was fine," said a displeased Woods in a short postgame interview. "Not the way I wanted to finish, but the golf course is playing difficult for sure."

Woods spoke earlier of losing the advantage that is the circus that surrounds him, no less a star than Rory McIlroy admitting last year that it probably costs players a shot or two a day being in the GOAT's group.

"Usually you have between 20,000 and 40,000 people screaming and yelling. That's one of the things I've become accustomed to every round I've played for over two decades," Woods said. "That's an advantage for me and some of the other top players who have experienced it, trying to deal with all that noise and movement.

"That experience is no longer there."

There's also the noise a Woods birdie makes that can be heard everywhere on the course. When it happens, it gets every player's attention.

"I think that's one of the reasons why you're seeing more low scores now," Woods said. "Guys aren't shooting as high as they normally would."

Even getting from green to tee box is quite different without having to traverse the galleries.

"Our walks are very different. Coming off the greens, there's no grandstands," Woods said. "The build out is nowhere near what we had, and it is very different and very foreign.

"Some of the greens complexes look - how can I put it? - a lot bigger because they don't have the structure around the greens. We don't have thousands upon thousands of people walking around this golf course.

"It's a very different atmosphere."

Also different is the postgame meal, which Woods would always have to eat in the clubhouse or at his rental. Last Saturday in Boston, Woods and McIlroy set up shop for 30 minutes at a picnic table outside the media center and gobbled up burgers and put down Diet Cokes like you might after a round at your favorite course.

Under normal circumstances, this would of course be impossible, but no one needs a reminder that nothing is normal in 2020.

It was easier to find shade from the broiling sun than leader boards Thursday, and there were more fans outside the fence (5) watching from Vollmer Road than players under par (3) on the course.

That's 2020 in a nutshell.