LPGA commissioner Mike Whan said that he is working on three scenarios for a possible return to competition, knowing that any firm timetable depends on global success in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whan, in comments to the No Laying Up podcast posted on the LPGA Web site on Thursday, said that it has been “a busy, stressful time” trying to juggle options for the first LPGA event since Feb. 16 in Australia.
“Just like any other tour you talk to, we’ve got three scenarios — a scenario that says we start playing in the next month, a scenario that says we don’t start playing until mid-July, a scenario that says we don’t start playing until mid-September,” Whan said.
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“Each one of those scenarios has a schedule with it. Each one of those schedules has economic repercussions that we have to deal with. Each one of those schedules have regulation adjustments and changes that we have to think through,” he added.
The next scheduled LPGA event is on May 14 to 17 at Belleair, Florida, with events set for the following weeks in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Galloway, New Jersey, ahead of the US Women’s Open on June 4 to 7 in Houston, Texas.
Mid-July offers the Great Lakes Bay Invitational, a pairs event on July 15 to 18 at Midland, Michigan, and no other events before four European stops in August.
The year’s first scheduled major LPGA event, the ANA Inspiration, was moved to Sept. 10 to 13, with October and early November set for events in Taiwan, China, South Korea and Japan.
“I’m usually spending my time working on a season two or three years from now,” Whan said. “Now I’m working on the season two and three months from now.”
“To be spending virtually every minute of every day working with different sponsors and different tournaments — how to get them in a date [this year] that works, and we obviously have more events than dates — it has been a busy, stressful time,” he added.
After two January events in Florida and two February stops in Australia, Whan canceled events in Thailand, Singapore and China. Five more events planned for last year to early May are now listed as postponed.
“We were COVID before most of this side of the world had heard of COVID,” Whan said. “Late January, we started talking to our tournaments in Thailand, China and Singapore.”
“Back then, and it feels like three years ago now, we probably canceled those more out of what we didn’t know. There was this new virus. There were a lot of countries having different reactions to it. We were not sure how widespread it was going to be,” he said.
“If you jump forward to the last cancelations, that was definitely based on what we did know,” he added.
A major issue was going to be the possibility of 14 to 21 days in quarantine if anyone at an event tested positive, Whan said.
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