From a logistical standpoint, getting ready to resume tournament golf on the Korn Ferry Tour next month won’t be quite as daunting as doing the same on the PGA Tour.
But one area isn’t being compromised: the safety of players, caddies, tournament staff and volunteers as professional golf continues to ramp up during the coronavirus pandemic.
“The scale is a little bit different,” said Korn Ferry Tour president Alexandra Baldwin on Thursday of the preparations for the Korn Ferry Challenge at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley course June 11-14, the same week that the PGA Tour resumes its schedule with the Charles Schwab Challenge at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. “We’ll only have about 400 people on site . We won’t have a TV broadcast window and fans, so we can control it more.”
But the protocols for testing players, caddies and staff for the COVID-19 virus will be exactly the same at both sites and at future venues — including June 18-21 when the Korn Ferry Tour moves to the World Golf Hall of Fame King & Bear course.
“There won’t be any difference and there shouldn’t be any difference in the most important area,” said Andy Pazder, the chief tournaments and competitions officer for the PGA Tour. “We will adhere to the same protocols in a tournament city, the initial screening process, sheltering at the tournament hotel and enforcing the same social distancing.”
Baldwin said staging a 72-hole tournament with 156 players and keeping everyone as safe as possible “is a huge responsibility.”
She also pointed out that players on the Korn Ferry Tour, which is the main path to the PGA Tour, have been inactive longer and had played in fewer tournaments (six) than PGA Tour players (22) who last hit shots that counted in the first round of The Players Championship on March 13.
“We haven’t hit a tee shot since March 1 in Mexico,” she pointed out. “This is their livelihood and we recognize the importance of providing them with playing opportunities. They’re trying to put food on the table. But ensuring the health and safety of players, caddies, staff, the host organization and the communities is paramount and as much as we’re eager to play, we’re not going to do so unless we’re being safe and responsible.”
The first four PGA Tour events and the first six Korn Ferry Tour events out of the gate will not allow fans or players’ families, and will be conducted with a minimum of volunteers and media. Players on both tours are being encouraged to use home testing kits before they leave for Fort Worth and Ponte Vedra Beach, but will still be tested for COVID-19 upon arrival.
“We hope the players use the home kits,” Pazder said. “I would want to know before I left whether I was positive or not.”
The Tour also is providing a host hotel for players to keep them in a “bubble.” It’s not required but the Tour is requesting in the strongest terms that players stay in those hotels.
Charter flights also are available between sites to keep players and caddies traveling together as much as possible — and minimizing their exposure to those outside the bubble — but to get on the charter flights they have to be tested again after playing in the third round on Saturday and will require a negative test to get on board the plane the following Monday.
Those players who are able to fly because of negative test won’t have to go through the initial test at the next tournament stop.
Even though the Korn Ferry events at the Valley Course and the King & Bear are at courses that wind through a residential area, Pazder said homeowners are still not allowed on the course and will be asked to retreat to their backyards if they stray too close.
However, he did acknowledge that many homes have good views of the course and as long as the residents and their friends stay within their property, the players probably wouldn’t mind hearing a few words of encouragement.
“If a few of them want to see what they can and cheer from their back patio, that would be great,” he said.
The Tour rolled out its plans to return during a May 13 teleconference. While it seemed ambitious to begin in less than a month, Pazder said the process has gone as well as he could have anticipated.
“I am confident we’ll play golf,” he said. “There were things we were still working on that have come together very nicely. We’ve finalized all of our vendors for our testing plans at home and on-site testing, the Department of Homeland Security has granted waivers for pro athletes from all sports who live overseas to travel back to the U.S. from countries that were on a prohibited list and the state of Texas has repealed some of their travel restrictions, which actually were domestic. All of those things transpired since we did that and it has furthered our level of optimism.”
“Everything is proceeding,” Baldwin said. “It’s intense. We’re planning two new tournaments in weeks when it normally would take a year, and undertaking and implementing protocols we never realized we’d have to do on a golf course. We’ve crafted a plan that I think is logical, efficient and effective, but it’s new and we’re all adapting.”
And what will the golf look like?
Baldwin said she doesn’t expect much rust on the Korn Ferry Tour players.
“They’re competitors,” she said. “They want to return to their field of play. Let’s get the balls in the air.”
