Golf’s top governing bodies are monitoring the coronavirus and its effects with a number of golf events likely to be impacted in the coming months.
It remains to be seen how the USGA will react to the outbreak with US Women’s Open qualifiers scheduled for China, South Korea and Japan in late April. Japan will host a final qualifying stage for the U.S. Open in late May.
‘People are trying to be proactive and think through what is kind of the worst-case scenario and what do we need to be doing now,’ CEO Mike Davis said.
John Bodenhamer, the USGA’s senior managing director of championships, added, ‘We have a great security consultants team and they’re watching this closely through the State Department. … being mindful of how we are going to prepare in the coming weeks, not months but weeks.’
‘We have weather protocols. We have emergency situation protocols,” Bodenhamer said. “I think the answer is absolutely yes, and we’re in the middle of progressing that now.’
The PGA Tour released a statement to say ‘it’s closely monitoring the coronavirus situation with input from the CDC and WHO.’
This comes three weeks after the PGA Tour Series-China postponed two qualifying tournaments scheduled in Indonesia and Thailand.
‘We are establishing additional protocols to promote the health and safety of all participants and fans at our tournaments, and we will regularly review our schedule in light of revised CDC and WHO reports and make any updates as necessary,’ the Tour’s statement said.
