Perrine Delacour couldn’t wait to get to Scotland. After her fill-in caddie tested positive for COVID-19 ahead of the Marathon LPGA Classic, Delacour, who tested negative, was forced to withdraw and quarantine in Toledo, Ohio, for two weeks.
When it came time to test again, Delacour didn’t want to solely rely on the LPGA’s saliva test that needed to be driven from Ohio to New Jersey over the weekend to be processed. She had a 7 p.m. flight to Scotland Sunday and wanted to make sure that she was on it for her debut in the AIG Women’s British Open at Royal Troon. (Her Inverness caddie, who never showed any symptoms and never again tested positive, had already been cleared for Troon.)
Delacour wanted to take as many tests as she could but struggled to find a place locally that could turn around the results fast enough. She called the LPGA, but their only option was the test center in New Jersey.
“It was like a nightmare again,” she said.
Delacour then called her regular LPGA caddie, Jeremy Young, who was working on the PGA Tour for Jim Herman, winner of the Wyndham Championship, for help. Young suggested checking to see if the PGA Tour could test her over in Akron, Ohio, site of the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.
Delacour drove the 2 ½ hours from Toledo to Akron on Saturday for a 1 p.m. appointment and received her negative results by 8 p.m.
She also took tests in Detroit and Toledo. All came back negative.
Once Delacour arrived in Glasgow on Monday, she took another COVID-19 test and waited in her hotel room for the results. She passed that one too and is cleared to play in the year’s first major.
Doctors also cleared her to practice last week in Toledo provided that she practice social distancing. She was able to get work in at Highland Meadows and played once more at Inverness. Prior to that, her host family in Toledo mowed down their yard a little shorter than usual so that she could practice wedge shots. Delacour said she can’t thank them and Young enough.
Going forward, she’d like to see the LPGA offer more tests for players after getting exposed to COVID-19, rather than waiting the full 14 days to get re-tested.
“Now I feel confident,” she said of her return to the tour. “I feel happy.”
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