PGA Tour offers return to sports blueprint for other leagues to follow

The PGA Tour is the first North American pro sports league to reveal just what sports will look like in the middle of a pandemic

Life on the road is about to look a lot different for golfers on the PGA Tour once play resumes on June 11.

Let’s start with before they even arrive at a tournament site. Each player will have to fill out a health questionnaire to ensure that they’re safe to travel. The tour will offer a socially-distanced charter flight (i.e., no middle seats) to every city at a cost of $600 per player, $300 for caddies.

Once they get on-site, players will be led to a designated hotel, unless they travel by RV or have a tour-approved rental home. There they will be administered a COVID-19 test. Anyone who tests positive will be forced into 10-day quarantine and unable to participate in the tournament. They will also be screened daily, including temperature checks.

Interactions between players and caddies will also be different. While caddies can touch flagsticks and rake bunkers, they will be required to wipe them down afterward. The tour is also encouraging limited physical contact, meaning the player will have to pull his own club from his bag as well as tees and balls.

Equipment staff won’t be allowed into the designated players’ area. Coaches must remain at least six feet apart from their pupil with no physical touching. Family members are strictly prohibited from attending the tournament. There won’t be an interview room, only a flash area with limited media personnel allowed in.

All these changes were outlined in a 37-page memo sent to players on Tuesday and made official by the tour on Wednesday. They will be put in place immediately, starting with the first event of the PGA Tour’s revised schedule, the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas.

The PGA Tour is the first major North American sports league to implement safety procedures to protect players and staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. The other leagues that want to resume play at some point in 2020 should take notice because those sports will look quite similar to what the PGA is doing.

There won’t be any high fives between teammates. It will feel like players will be in a bubble, with limited mobility once they’re isolated. And there will be testing. Lots and lots of testing. Even with a skeleton staff at each tournament, the PGA Tour expects 1,100 people on-site each week, of whom about 400 will be regularly tested.

Since the ability of sports to go on during the pandemic depends on quickly finding and isolating COVID-19 cases, even one positive test can upend everything. Anyone the player or staff member came in contact with will also have to be isolated, at least temporarily; for a team sport with a crowded locker room, that’s a recipe for quickly shutting down the entire sport.

Each league will have to acquire enough tests, potentially in the tens of thousands, to properly screen everyone on a regular basis. Players will need to approve being separated while on the road and in an isolated environment. And they need protocols in place in the event of a positive test.

The PGA Tour showed on Wednesday what the sports world will look like in the middle of a pandemic. The other leagues now have two options: implement similar safety measures, or sit out the rest of 2020 entirely.