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PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Bernd Wiesberger was on edge long before the PGA Tour canceled the Players Championship and the next three events.
On Thursday, he woke up to disturbing videos that friends and family had sent him from his homeland of Austria, where concerns about the coronavirus had led to civil unrest.
“I’m getting videos from supermarkets being completely robbed basically from people panicking at home, and it’s not nice news you want to wake up to,” said Wiesberger, who shot 74 before the PGA Tour canceled The Players Championship. “It’s crazy news.”
When Wiesberger got word late Thursday night that the tournament had been canceled, his immediate thoughts were to get home as quickly as possible. Before he headed to TPC Sawgrass to clean out his locker on Friday, he secured a flight.
“I’m on the last flight back to Europe. The last Austrian Airlines flight back to Vienna departed this morning, it’s on the way, and the last is going back this afternoon,” he said. “I’d like to be on that one.”
Once home, golf will be secondary.
“It’s unprecedented times,” he said. “We all need to kind of stick together and do the right thing for everyone, for the elderly, to not have anyone affected that doesn’t need to be, and therefore I think it’s good we’re packing up today and going home to try and help out at home and help any elderly, my grandmother, my parents with any sort of grocery shopping so they don’t have to go out too much and just trying to get through this on our own or all together.
“It’s crazy times. I’m sure most of us probably haven’t experienced anything like that. Tough times, stick together, do the right things, stay healthy and just lay low for a while. But golf will return at some point, we don’t know when, but it’s not a priority right now.”
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