PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan says they had little choice but to postpone tournaments for the next three weeks due to the coronavirus.
The Players' Championship in Florida was canceled last night after the opening round at Sawgrass and no events will take place on the PGA Tour until the Masters at Augusta.
"I'm a fighter, I wanted to fight for our players and our fans and for this Tour to show how golf can unify and inspire," Monagan told a press conference in Florida this afternoon.
"But as the situation continued to escalate and there seemed to be more unknowns, it ultimately became a matter of when, and not if, we would need to call it a day.
"We took all the steps to make certain that, if we were playing today, we were playing in a safe environment.
"We had minimised the number of people that were going to be out here, and we weren't going to have more than 250 people in any one location. And we, along with Andy Carroll, the head tournament chairman, had taken all the right steps.
"But when we got to late in the day and players came off the golf course, and to some of the questions that we received here, particularly from international players who were trying to figure out what they do with their family, how they get home, how they get their families here, and just uncertainty for a number of players generally.
"Even though we feel like we have a safe environment and we've done all the right things, we can't proceed, and it's not right to proceed. Our goal now is to focus on a plan for the near and long-term and maintain the strength we've built through our organisation over the past 51 years, and I'm confident we'll do exactly that."
