As the weeks piled up from the LPGA’s February stoppage of play because of the coronavirus pandemic, one thing remained constant on Pernilla Lindberg’s calendar: a weekly meeting of the LPGA’s player directors.
“For quite a while, it was the only thing I had on my schedule,” said Lindberg, a major winner who sits on the LPGA’s six-player advisory board.
Lindberg spoke on a Wednesday media call with other LPGA officials to give clarity to a restart plan shaped greatly by player feedback. After so many weeks without an LPGA event, the tour’s return is coming down the pipe quickly. The tour’s first round back, at the newly created Drive On Championship at Inverness Golf Club in Toledo, Ohio, is on July 31.
The uncertainty of 2020 has prompted a flood of questioning from LPGA members, or as LPGA commissioner Whan joked, “we are leading the league in questions per capita.” But the commissioner has succeeded in providing options for his players, making it possible for players who aren’t itching to compete to hold back a little longer.
The next five events on the schedule take tour members from a Toledo double-header to two events in Scotland and then back stateside for the Wal-Mart NW Arkansas Championship.
There’s even a major embedded in there, the AIG Women’s British Open. It will be the first LPGA major played in 2020.
For players who aren’t quite ready to dive in, an LPGA decision made earlier in the year preserves the status a player took into 2020 for 2021. Essentially, it keeps players who are uncomfortable competing from taking a hit when it comes to status.
“Start, don’t start, play a major, don’t play a major, but there’s a lot of options here in just these first five weeks of our restart,” Whan said.
The Drive On Championship will be played without fans, and Whan said the Marathon Classic at Highland Meadows the following week will be played whether or not the decision is made to allow fans. Allowing a small number is still on the table and could be achieved with what Whan calls “aggressive roping” at Highland Meadows.
Marathon has been one of the tour’s leading pro-am stops, and has raised a significant amount of money for charity in past years. This year’s event will still feature two pro-ams on Tuesday (off-site) and Wednesday of tournament week, down from the five originally planned. They won’t be in the usual scramble format – to avoid four players standing on top of each other all day – and participants will be subject to the same testing protocol as players.
The LPGA will utilize saliva testing across the board, both at home and on site. If a player arrives on site on Monday, her results will likely be processed by Tuesday afternoon. Until results come back, players will only be allowed on the course and on the practice facilities – not indoors. The tour’s testing protocols and safety measures – social distancing, hand-washing, face masks – have been discussed at length with the tour’s medical director.
The LPGA will charter flights from Detroit to Edinburgh, Scotland, and then back again from Glasgow to Rogers, Arkansas. Players will be tested before departure and upon arrival. Should a player test positive at any point before or during an event, the LPGA will help arrange a quarantine location. On-site staff or tournament partners will help with meal and grocery delivery and other details like laundry and medical assistance.
While the $5,000 sum for a positive COVID-19 test is drastically lower than the up to $75,000 a PGA Tour player would get under the circumstances, Whan called the LPGA approach more of an assurance that incremental costs associated with a positive test – like those brought on by the need to stay behind in quarantine – were covered. The player stipend was never intended to supplement income.
“If you feel like getting COVID, as a result you should somehow be compensated for opportunity cost,” he said of the message to players, “maybe not the year to play because it’s just not something the LPGA could have a regular diet of and still be trying to build a schedule for everybody.”
Whan is quick to acknowledge how much the LPGA has benefited from being able to watch how the PGA Tour has gotten back in action these past few weeks. The whole sports world has. Golf is a small world, and the phone lines have been active between the two professional tours. In fact, someone from the LPGA is on the phone with someone from the PGA Tour on a daily basis. Communication has been open with the R&A and the European Tour, too.
As Whan said, “It’s a pretty cool time in golf despite being a terrible time in general.”
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