As the global golf schedules get pieced back together, the PGA Tour has announced how it’ll handle its three international tours in 2021.
The good news?
The Mackenzie Tour – PGA Tour Canada is back after having its 2020 season wiped out by the COVID pandemic.
The Mackenzie Tour announced six qualifying tournaments to be played in the U.S., and one, its traditional Canada Q-School, is set for British Columbia. Registration for these will open Jan. 18. The tournaments will be February through April.
The U.S.-Canadian border remains closed to non-essential travel, but the tour is making these plans “now in order to prepare for the potential lifting of this restriction prior to the traditional late-May start to the Mackenzie Tour season,” according to a statement.
Specific tour dates and sites will be announced at a later date.
“We can only go forward with a 2021 season if we complete all our qualifying tournaments,” Scott Pritchard, Mackenzie Tour Executive Director, said in a statement. “Because the bulk of those are held in the U.S., where permitted, we will proceed with these tournaments in a safe and responsible manner.”
More good news is that the PGA Tour Latinoamérica is back as well. In fact, the tour already staged two events on its current schedule, with MJ Maguire winning the Shell Open in Miami and Brandon Matthews winning the Puerto Plata Open in the Dominican Republic, both in December. The complete tournament schedule will be released soon but tour officials anticipate the full restart to be in March and run through mid-June.
The bad news?
There will be no PGA Tour Series-China for a second straight year. The 2020 season was canceled last July. On Friday, it was announced the 2021 season will also be wiped out, “because of the pandemic and the uncertainty of the situation in Asia at this time,” according to a release sent by the tour.
“We remain committed to the region and want to do everything we can to give competitive opportunities for players in Asia and from the Pacific Rim,” Greg Carlson, PGA Tour Series-China Executive Director, said in a release. “We are trying to pursue other opportunities for our players to play in 2021. We will also take this pause and evaluate what we might be able to do in 2022.”
