PGA Tour Restart In Texas Needs Plenty Of COVID-19 Questions Answered

Five weeks from attempting to restart the 2019-20 PGA Tour season in Fort Worth, Texas, the state still requires a 14-day quarantine for travelers from California; Connecticut; New York; New Jersey; Washington; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan, and Miami, Florida. International travel quarantining is unclear.

Logic would say the PGA Tour needs to have things buttoned up soon given that players coming from so many locations have just three weeks to get tested and then in place in Texas.

Adding to the situation in the Lone Star State, as Governor Greg Abbott reopens his state, he’s been heard on tape this week admitting that it’s “almost ipso facto” that reopening the state for business “will lead to an increase” in COVID-19 spread.

Welcome to the great state of Texas boys!

Until questions are answered by the Tour about how everything will work, they are rolling out a player each week to select, special media.

So this week’s player who answered his phone at just the wrong time was Brendon Todd. He presented his sense of how player testing will work (pre-tournament, start of the week on arrival and once more during the tournament) and that sounds solid, assuming testing is more prevalent by then.

Beyond that, I would have thought things would be more defined for players by now, at least off of his remarks. With three weeks to go until many in the field will need to know the plan on hotels, flights, clubhouse, locker room and other indoor elements (where the virus is more likely to spread). But at least Todd endorsed the idea of changing shoes in the parking lot, one of the stranger elitist peccadilloes facing an imminent and timely demise.

From Bob Harig’s ESPN.com report on the call.

Todd, who said he spoke with Pazder, acknowledged there are risks, such as air travel and hotels, although he was told by tour officials they are working on one to two hotels where all of the tour players, caddies and officials would stay.

It is unclear at this point if clubhouses or locker rooms will be open. Todd said the latter would not be a problem.

"You're talking to a guy who played 20 Monday qualifiers two years ago and probably 10 last year,'' he said. "I'm all too used to changing my shoes in the parking lot. Even when you play the Desert Classic in Palm Springs we have different courses, you're in a parking lot. As funny as that may sound, it's not that big of a deal.''