PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Nobody has to hoist The Players Championship trophy this weekend wondering if the guy who handed it to him washed his hands.

Who wants to take home a trophy wondering if it needs to ferment in a bucket of disinfectant for four days?

Yes, nobody wins a championship this week, but nobody loses, either.

Well, that’s the hope anyway, that risks are narrowed as our best science and medical minds try to figure out what impact the coronavirus is really going to have now that it’s breached the U.S. border.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan’s late call Thursday night to cancel the rest of The Players as well as the Valspar Championship, WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play and the Valero Texas Open puts his organization in good company with most sports entities putting their seasons on hold.

The idea behind these massive cancellations of sporting events is to help the CDC prevent the kind of spike in infections that can overwhelm health-care personnel and put the most at-risk victims in danger. 

It theoretically buys time to allow the experts to better understand statistically and anecdotally what the COVID-19 disease’s actual impact will be here.

It took PGA Tour officials a little longer than the NBA, Major League Baseball, the NHL, the NCAA, the LPGA and the MSL to make the decision to shut down its events, with this reversal of the day’s earlier decision to try to play into the future with no fans permitted to watch, but they got there. They got there before finding out one of their players has contracted the disease.

That would have been awful, to know what happened in the NBA and not understand the implications.

While losing our games and events for awhile hurts, we can applaud sport’s collective sacrifice in teaming together to kick this pandemic’s you-know-what.