Coronavirus pandemic
Golfers going nowhere fast
Strict rules will keep those not based in US like Fleetwood from playing for some time
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Tommy Fleetwood carrying his own clubs at Sandiway Golf Club in Northwich, Cheshire last month. The English golfer, who dropped out of the world's top 10 after missing the Tour's restart, will resume his season only at the end of next month at the St Jude Invitational following a two-week quarantine.
PHOTO: REUTERS
LONDON • England's top golfer, Tommy Fleetwood, was the world No. 10, one spot ahead of Tiger Woods, when the PGA Tour suspended its schedule in March.
With four top-three finishes in his seven worldwide starts before the coronavirus halted both the US and European circuits, he had momentum on his side.
But when Tour play resumed on June 11 at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Texas, Fleetwood was on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
In its haste to return, the Tour, whose playing membership spans the globe, set up the stakes so that any player not based in the US was effectively out of bounds.
From Fleetwood's perch in north-west England, the hazards were many, including a two-way quarantine, the possibility of catching the virus from a fellow passenger on a trans-Atlantic flight, and a months-long separation from his wife Clare, their two-year-old son Franklin, and his stepsons Oscar, 13, and Mo, 12.
"If I was living in America," the 29-year-old said, "I'd be playing right now."
But he does not, and so he is not. Golf is not the only sport that has forged ahead without the full support of its competitive membership.
Last week's decision by the US Tennis Association to hold its marquee event, the US Open, in late August in New York, one of the cities hardest hit by the Covid-19 disease, drew a sharp rebuke from Australian player Nick Kyrgios.
Compatriot Adam Scott, the 2013 Masters champion, was the only golfer based outside the US besides Fleetwood in the top 10 when the season was suspended. He has also struggled with the restart.
In an interview last month with the Australian media, Scott, who is married with young children, has expressed his reservations about the Tour's testing protocols.
He is worried about contracting the virus from an asymptomatic player, and of triggering the nightmarish - for him - possibility of having to ride out the illness in self-isolation alone, far from his family.
Scott, 39, has said that he is not likely to return to the Tour until the July 30-Aug 2 WGC-St Jude Invitational in Memphis.
That is one week earlier than Italian Francesco Molinari, who was in the process of relocating his family from London to the US when the lockdown began.
The closure of most government offices prevented him from completing the embassy paperwork he needed to finalise the move.
The 2018 British Open champion expects his next Tour start to be the year's first contested Major, the Aug 6-9 PGA Championship in San Francisco.
Fleetwood has also decided to sit out the restart. Instead, he will turn his Tour return next month into an extended family summer vacation.
With his wife and sons in tow, he will travel to New York in mid-July, and after a two-week quarantine, rejoin the Tour for the WGC event in Tennessee.
He plans to stay in the US till the end of September, though the health and well-being of his family remains a primary concern - Oscar has Type 1 diabetes, putting him at more risk if he were to be infected with Covid-19.
Fleetwood admitted he was frustrated that the official world rankings, which were frozen in mid-March, were unlocked when the Tour restarted, especially while other tours, whose players are represented in the rankings, have yet to get under way.
He stands to lose money in sponsors' performance bonuses as his world ranking falls, but he insisted that would not alter his decisions.
"My ranking drop doesn't affect me as much as someone trying to stay in the top 50 or top 100," the world No. 11 added. "Golf is more than the PGA Tour, and the players on the other tours are the ones who are really affected."
Compatriot Lee Westwood, a former world No. 1, is one of them. Because he still has reservations about leaving his home in Britain to rejoin the Tour, the 47-year-old is backsliding in the rankings, dropping to world No. 33.
However, top-ranked Rory McIlroy has expressed little sympathy for his fellow Europeans who are being displaced as part of the pandemic's tectonic shifts.
"If you really care about your career and care about moving forward, you should be here (in the US)," the Northern Irishman said last week.
From 6,437km away, Fleetwood stood his ground. "Yes, golf is important," he said. "But family comes first."
NYTIMES
