A report in Scotland’s Sunday Post indicated that travel bans could be an issue if Donald Trump is headed to Scotland for Inauguration Day.
Just over two weeks remain in Donald Trump’s term as the president of the United States, but what’s next for Trump? A report in Scotland’s Sunday Post indicated that Scotland, where he owns a major golf resort, could be a possibility.
Except that a travel ban could prevent him from entering that country.
The Sunday Post reported that Prestwick Airport in Scotland has been told to plan for the arrival of a U.S. military Boeing 757 aircraft on Jan. 19 – a day before President-elect Joe Biden is to be inaugurated.
In reporting the booking for the Boeing 757 on Jan. 19, the Sunday Post’s source, who remained anonymous, said of the aircraft: “That’s one that’s normally used by the Vice-President but often used by the First Lady. Presidential flights tend to get booked far in advance, because of the work that has to be done around it.”
Trump has used that aircraft previously, and the Sunday Post further cited sources at Prestwick that said two U.S. military surveillance aircraft were circling Trump’s Turnberry Resort in November.
Airport sources also described surveillance planes landing at Prestwick on Nov. 12. The survey aircraft reportedly was at Prestwick for a week, which generally signals that Trump “is going to be somewhere for an extended period.”
The issue would lie in COVID travel restrictions. According to the Independent, Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said travel in and out of the country is not permitted without a valid reason and “coming to play golf is not what I would consider to be an essential purpose.”
NBC News reported last month that Trump is not expected to attend Biden’s inauguration and that a Trump announcement of a 2024 presidential campaign is a possibility.
The Vols might have a shot to land this 5-star forward.
Tennessee basketball is in the mix to land an elite talent in the 2022 recruiting class, as 5-star power forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield released his top five schools on Friday.
Tennessee is competing with Auburn, Ole Miss, Kansas and Wake Forest for Huntley-Hatfield’s signature.
Huntley-Hatfield is a 6-foot-9, 220-pound forward that is rated as the No. 1 power forward in his class, and the No. 6 player nationally by the 247Sports Composite.
Although he plays his high school basketball at Scotland Performance Institute in Scotland, Pennsylvania, Huntley-Hatfield is a Clarksville, Tennessee native.
A lot of time will pass before Huntley-Hatfield’s recruitment comes to an end, as the Vols are looking to add to its 2021 recruiting class, as well. Tennessee is still in the running and will have an entire recruiting cycle to convince him in coming to Knoxville in 2022.
Stacy Lewis fired a 5-under 66 to take a share of the second-round lead at the Aberdeen Standard Investments Ladies Scottish Open.
For Stacy Lewis, last week’s Marathon LPGA Classic ended on a high note. She closed the week at Highland Meadows in Sylvania, Ohio, with a 6-under 65 (that left her inside the top 10) and felt like it could have been much lower.
Lewis said she was feeling reenergized after making a posture change in her golf swing. A week later and an ocean away, it sure is looking that way. Lewis fired a 5-under 66 on Friday at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, Scotland, to take a share of the second-round lead at the Aberdeen Standard Investments Ladies Scottish Open.
Azahara Munoz is also at 5 under after rounds of 68-69 at the Renaissance Club.
“I finished really good in Toledo. Hit it awesome the last day,” Lewis said. “The golf swing has felt better every single day. I truly love playing in Scotland. I love links golf. All the different shots you get to hit, the different weather. You have to battle the elements which we did yesterday. I was just more than anything excited to come play some golf.”
Lewis won the Women’s British Open at the Old Course at St. Andrews in 2013. She’s always had a love for links golf and credited her caddie at the 2008 Curtis Cup at St. Andrews as being the one who truly taught her some of the nuances to playing that style of course.
“He picked out all these shots for me and helped me visualize things,” she said. “I really think it was the experience with him and playing the Old Course as many times as we did last week is what made me fall in love with it.”
This two-week stint in Scotland is only the second two-week span Lewis has ever spent away from daughter Chesnee, who is not quite 2 years old. Lewis also took an extended leave last year to play the Evian Championship and the Women’s British Open.
With her daughter another year older, FaceTime goes a little smoother.
“Now it’s actually fun on FaceTime because as soon as my face pops up, she says ‘Mama’ and she’s all excited,” Lewis said. “She’s showing me all her toys and all the stuff she’s getting into.
“It’s not full-blown conversations yet, but she at least knows I’m there and understands that I’m on the phone and talking to her. It makes it a lot easier being here.”
Behind the leaders, Jennifer Song is solo third at 4 under. Olivia Cowan and Amy Olson share fourth at 3 under and then it’s a crew of youngsters tied for sixth: rookie Andrea Lee, Cheyenne Knight and Nanna Koerstz Madsen along with Nicole Broch Larsen.
The Home of Golf will allow the game to continue, but pro shops and restaurants are to remain closed in response to coronavirus concerns.
Golf courses in Scotland were allowed to reopen in limited capacity Friday in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic after having been closed since March. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced the relaxation of closures Thursday.
“Over the last few days, it has been fantastic to see the anticipation building, with many wonderful photographs and videos of courses ready for play,” Karin Sharp, COO of Scottish Golf, said on the organization’s website. “The greenkeepers and volunteers the length and breadth of the country are to be congratulated for their hard work, under essential maintenance guidelines in preparing for golfers to return.”
Scotland follows United Kingdom course reopenings in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Golf courses in Ireland also were allowed to open earlier this month.
Clubhouses, restaurants and pro shops will remain closed, according to St. Andrews Links, which operates the Old Course and several others. Scottish Golf has published a list of guidelines as courses reopen.
In the United States and United Kingdom, resorts and tour operators say few rounds and trips are being canceled in response to coronavirus.
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Golfers will play through rain, wind, heat and cold. And, apparently, the current coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. and around the world.
From the West Coast to the East and stretching all the way to the United Kingdom, resorts and tour operators say that very few rounds and trips are being canceled in response to the pandemic. Even as the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has risen past 600 and the U.S. death toll has climbed past 25, most people with golf travel already planned appear reluctant to cancel their trips.
Golf travel offers a very different story in general than the airline and cruise industries, which have been hit hard by cancellations.
“We have experienced no impact,” Bryan Hunter, public relations director at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina, wrote in an email to Golfweek. “In fact, we just hosted 88 two-person golf teams for our annual Friendship Cup weekend, and we had no cancellations. We are obviously monitoring the situation and educating employees on how to be responsible, just as we would with any communicable illness. Kiawah Island Golf Resort is operating business as usual.”
The response was much the same at Pebble Beach Company in California.
“Pebble Beach Company is actively monitoring the Coronavirus (COVID-19) situation, and has taken supplemental precautionary measures to ensure the continued health and well-being of our guests and employees,” officials of the famed resort wrote in a statement. “These measures include resort-wide hygiene training and more frequent cleaning of public spaces. To date, there have been no reported cases of COVID-19 in Monterey County. From a business perspective, the impact to date on our business has been minimal.”
International golf booking companies have seen similar responses to the coronavirus outbreak, with a few exceptions. Gordon Dalgleish, president and founder of international booking agency PerryGolf, said he has fielded calls from some worried customers considering canceling their travel plans, but those mostly have been offset by new customers who are still eager to travel.
“In 35 years, we’ve seen hand-foot-and-mouth (disease), we’ve seen post 9-11, we’ve seen SARS, we’ve seen volcanoes in Iceland, we’ve kind of seen most of everything,” said Dalgleish, a Scotsman who lives in Wilmington, North Carolina. “The very strange thing about this (coronavirus), people’s perception of it are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. We can talk to one person who wants to tweak a tee time or add something on their trip that’s booked for July, and the next person thinks the world is falling apart and just wants out. It’s about their own personal level of comfort.”
Photo courtesy Kiawah
PerryGolf sells trips to destinations ranging from golf stalwarts Ireland and Scotland to farther-flung South Africa and Tasmania. The company also sells golf cruises, where players travel by boat and sleep onboard, then disembark to play golf. These cruises include trips around the Mediterranean and Italy – which has been hit hard with more than 10,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 60 deaths, according to USA TODAY – as well as the U.K., South America and many other global destinations.
As with many in the cruise industry, Dalgleish was upset with a U.S. State Department warning Monday that travelers avoid cruise ships altogether. The cruise industry supports about 422,000 jobs in the U.S., according to a Washington Post story, and Dalgleish is afraid the State Department’s blanket warning is too severe with an unlimited scope that could cost thousands of people their livelihoods.
“Vendors for ships are getting clobbered,” Dalgleish said. “Can you imagine being a vendor in Florida right now? … The purpose of government is to be specific and concise and for the information so be secure, not to introduce more questions than answers.”
While the cruise side has been more of a struggle as coronavirus threats have grown, Dalgleish said the numbers for conventional golf trips have remained relatively stable.
Peak season for travel to the U.K. and Ireland is mid-April through early October, Dalgleish said, and people who have bought trips are approaching or already have passed their final payment dates. Those countries have not been added to warning lists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or by the World Health Organization. Some customers have called PerryGolf looking for reassurances, but in general they are keeping their plans.
Dalgleish also said PerryGolf is working with vendors to delay final payments when necessary, and that the normally strict terms and conditions of a travel contract might be made flexible to assuage fears.
“People fundamentally want to wait as long as possible before they have to make a final financial commitment,” Dalgleish said. “We have laid out our terms and conditions from the outset, but that’s under, well, let’s call it normal conditions. If we have to modify those to find that happy middle ground, to where it makes sense for the consumer and it makes sense for us as a business and they have to wait 30 days (to make a payment), then that’s what we do. We’ve worked with different folks in coming up with reassurances.”
Sam Baker, founder and CEO of Cincinnati-based Haversham and Baker Golfing Expeditions, said his international booking company has seen almost no impact from the coronavirus outbreak. Haversham and Baker mostly sells to country club members who travel in familiar groups with friends, and most trips are booked nine to 18 months in advance. Ninety percent of the company’s trips are to Ireland or Scotland.
“Right now, 2020 is the biggest season we’ve ever had by 10 percent,” Baker said. “And we continue to add to bookings for 2020. So it’s going to grow even more. And our early bookings for 2021 are also running higher than they ever have. So contextually, we’re not seeing any effect yet in the numbers.
“Having said that, we continue to monitor the situation really closely. I think that caution is the smart move here. We’re working with our suppliers (to promote guest safety).”
Baker said none of the 200-plus hotels and courses with which his company books are in areas flagged by the CDC or WHO. Still, most hotels have implemented new safety measures, such as frequent cleaning of high-touch areas – think elevator buttons, door knobs and the like, Baker said.
“As we’ve had people call us out of an abundance of caution, we continue to tell our clients what’s going on, and here are the facts on the ground,” Baker said. “Does that mean you shouldn’t be concerned? Of course not. You should be, and you should exercise caution.”
And Baker said he couldn’t overstress the importance of good travel insurance. With golfers paying an average of about $6,000 each for golf, on-the-ground transportation and hotels on a Haversham and Baker trip, he said it’s important to buy travel insurance from a major carrier and to read the fine print.
“There’s an old saying in the industry: Good travel insurance is never cheap, and cheap travel insurance is never good,” Baker said. “Don’t shop by price, and instead shop by coverage. … In all our literature, when people book with us, we tell them you really need to insure against a loss. We are having more people ask questions about that.”
Both Baker and Dalgleish said that despite the outbreak, many people will continue to travel to play golf, both domestically and internationally. Nobody knows how long the outbreak will last or to what extent the illness might reach, but it’s important to base any travel plans on realistic precautions and not on hype, hysteria or ignorance.
“When is this all going to kind of clear up? I don’t know,” Dalgleish said. “The reality is, at some point this will be in our rearview mirror. This is not the new normal. But it’s not as if somebody is going to come out one morning and blow the all-clear whistle. The reality is that people are going to be concerned until we start to see a serious, ongoing reduction in the number of cases and the news cycle finds a shiny new object. …
“Our view is that people, for the most part, want to travel and they’re just looking for some level of reassurance that travel makes good sense and they’re not just throwing good money after bad.”
Josh Taylor will defend his junior welterweight titles against Apinum Khongsong on May 2 at The SSE Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland on ESPN+
The next chapter in Josh Taylor’s career will begin at home.
Taylor’s mandatory title defense against Apinum Khongsong will take place in Scotland on May 2 in his first bout since his surprising jump to Top Rank in early January, about 2½ months after his dramatic majority-decision victory over Regis Prograis for two pieces of the junior welterweight title.
Top Rank announced Thursday that Taylor (16-0, 12 KOs) will face Khongsong (16-0, 13 KOs), of Thailand, in at The SSE Hydro in Glasgow on ESPN+.
Taylor, who is from Edinburgh, will be fighting at the arena for a fifth time.
“I am super excited to kick-start the new year with a fresh start and with a new team,” said Taylor (16-0, 12 KOs), who won his first 140-pound belt in Glasgow by a unanimous decision over Ivan Baranchyk on May 18.
The Taylor announcement came on the same day that Prograis’ next bout against Maurice Hooker on April 17 was formally announced at a news conference. It might have been coincidence, but Taylor and Progais appear to be on track for a rematch in the busy junior welterweight division.
Jose Ramirez, who also holds two belts, faces Viktor Postol in a rescheduled bout on May 9 in Fresno, California, Ramirez’s hometown.
It’s still not clear who will train Taylor, who has been working with former Tyson Fury trainer Ben Davison and Adam Booth. Taylor split with Shane McGuigan when he left Barry McGuigan and Cyclone Promotions for Top Rank.
Josh Taylor wants to unify the 140-pound titles against Jose Ramirez and then move up to 147 and face Terence Crawford.
First, Jose Ramirez. Then, Terence Crawford.
That’s a bold plan, but Josh Taylor’s move to Top Rank has emboldened the Scottish fighter.
Taylor, who announced a multi-year deal with Top Rank on Thursday, told his hometown newspaper that Crawford has always been somebody he has wanted to fight.
“It’s been an ambition of mine to fight him for a long time,” Taylor told the Evening Edinburgh News
Taylor might be getting a little bit ahead of himself. Crawford, ranked first or second in the various pound-for-pound ratings, is a welterweight. Taylor is at junior welter and is expected to face Ramirez later in the year for all of the significant belts at 140 pounds. First, Ramirez has to beat Viktor Postol Feb. 2 in China on ESPN.
If, as expected, Ramirez beats Postol, then Taylor faces a challenge as daunting as the one he wants against Crawford. Taylor-Ramirez looks to be a pick-em fight. But Taylor is nothing if not confident. His fearlessness is a reason Top Rank signed him. His long-term ambitions also might be welcome news to Crawford, who is looking for a well-known name with proven talent who can silence the critics who dismiss the quality of his opposition
That name might be Taylor. Might be Ramirez.
“We both now operate under the same banner so there’s no reason for boxing politics to get involved,” said Taylor, referring to Crawford. “If I move up to 147 pounds, then that fight with Crawford should be easily made. The only negotiating that would need to happen would be if it is going to be here or in America.‘’
A more immediate task for Taylor is to find a new trainer. In leaving Barry McGuigan’s Cyclone Promotions, it’s expected that Taylor will also leave trainer Shane McGuigan, Barry’s son.
