A college golf tournament scheduled to take place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico next week has come off the calendar due to coronavirus fears. The Iowa women’s golf-hosted Hawkeye El Tigre Invitational is thought to be the first college golf tournament to be affected by the virus.
Iowa has been hosting the event at El Tigre Golf Club in Puerto Vallarta for the past three years. Head coach Megan Menzel said that as this year’s event crept closer, the university was leery of the idea of international travel.
“I think most universities are tracking all the international travel so that was the only thing that we were just kind of day-to-day waiting until we heard something from our campus,” she said.
Iowa ultimately pulled out of its own event at the direction of its Board of Regents. But even when the team wasn’t going to play, assistant coach Michael Roters still tried to facilitate the event for the other 17 teams originally committed. Eventually, the field started dwindling.
By Monday, only 13 teams were still committed. Eventually, Menzel said, it reached the point where it didn’t make much sense to still host the event. The staff at El Tigre was supportive of the decision, she said, and she hopes to put El Tigre back on the schedule in 2021.
“They’ve always been very interested in hosting a collegiate event so they’ve been a great home for us over spring break the last three years,” Menzel said. “The tournament has grown.”
The Hawkeyes wrapped up a runner-up finish at the BYU at Entrada Classic on Tuesday and were headed back to Iowa City as the El Tigre event was officially canceled. The university’s spring break is next week. After some scrambling to see if the competition dates could be salvaged, Menzel and Roters were able to stage a last-minute event in Las Vegas instead.
Iowa will return west next weekend to play March 17-18 at Spanish Trail in Las Vegas. Menzel is calling the event the Diane Thompson Invitational, which is the name Iowa’s fall event normally takes.
“We looked at different options,” Menzel said of potentially hosting the event in Iowa. “We were trying to collect teams from different parts of the country that were attempting to come down.”
Menzel expects the field at Spanish Trail to include nine or 10 teams. For now, many teams are working to rebook flights from Mexico. Menzel expects her team to be able to recoup much of the funds toward their flights south and use it as credit for future travel.
“I think it’s just been a little bit of a scramble for everybody trying to figure it out, certainly something we don’t do every day.”
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