PGA Tour Announces Mid-June Return in Texas

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“I hope we start in June, I just think it’s a little unrealistic,” Koepka said Wednesday in a question-and-answer session conducted on Instagram by his swing coach, Claude Harmon III. “You think about all these guys that are going to be in airports flying everywhere. There are so many guys. Everything has to be cleaned. Is it really possible?”

A PGA Tour event would probably have a field of about 140 golfers, many of whom — as Koepka noted — would be traveling to the site from far away. The logistics would typically require dozens of workers or volunteers, not to mention a multitude of employees from a television network, should the event be broadcast.

Golf’s first major championship, the P.G.A. Championship, is scheduled to begin on Aug. 6 in San Francisco, although the P.G.A. of America, a separate golf entity which oversees the P.G.A. Championship, has acknowledged that it may have to move its event out of California, or host the tournament without spectators.

The United States Open, once scheduled for mid-June in Westchester County, N.Y., was postponed last week until Sept. 17-20. At the same time, the British Open was postponed until 2021 and the Masters tournament was rescheduled for Nov. 12-15 in Augusta, Ga.

On the subject of sporting events without spectators, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading public health expert on the president’s coronavirus task force, said in an interview that there was a way that athletic contests in pro baseball and football, and college sports could return this summer or fall.

“Nobody comes to the stadium,” Fauci said, adding that players would have to be housed in “big hotels.”

“Wherever you want to play,” he said, “keep them very well surveilled, but have them tested every single week and make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family, and just let them play the season out.”



Source : NYtimes