Detroit — The PGA Tour will keep on swinging, including next week at Detroit Golf Club, even amid a recent mini-surge of positive COVID-19 …
Detroit — The PGA Tour will keep on swinging, including next week at Detroit Golf Club, even amid a recent mini-surge of positive COVID-19 tests.
Five players have withdrawn from this week’s Travelers Championship in Connecticut, after one player and two caddies tested positive for coronavirus. Cameron Champ tested positive and now won’t be able to play in Detroit next week, while Graeme McDowell also withdrew this week and said he’s now taking two weeks off after his caddie tested positive. McDowell, a former U. S. Open champion, also was scheduled to play the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit next week.
Superstar Brooks Koepka, whose caddie also tested positive, his brother Chase Koepka and Webb Simpson, another former U. S. Open champion and last week’s winner in South Carolina, also pulled out of this week’s tournament out of caution. None had been committed to the Rocket Mortgage Classic.
“We feel a great responsibility to inspire people and to be in their living rooms Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a hastily called press conference Wednesday. “We feel like we’re on a path where we’re going to be able to continue to sustain our return to golf.
“We all need to remind ourselves that we’re all learning to live with this virus.
“It’s pretty clear that this virus isn’t going anywhere.”
The PGA Tour, now in its third week of the restart to the 2019-20 schedule, is instituting some stricter safety measures, starting this week in Connecticut, after a conference call with members of the players’ advisory council Tuesday night.
The additional safety measures were outlined in a detailed memo from Monahan sent to players Wednesday, a copy of which was obtained by The News.
More: A g’day for the Rocket Mortgage Classic: Aussie, former world No.1 Jason Day commits
For starters, all players and caddies will be tested on-site upon arriving at that week’s tournament. Previously, those players who traveled by the PGA Tour-sponsored charter from one event to the next were tested before boarding the plane, and then didn’t have to be tested at the next stop.
