HILTON HEAD, S.C. — The PGA Tour reported a second straight week of zero positive coronavirus tests with the RBC Heritage set to begin Thursday at Harbour Town Golf Links.
The tour has yet to disclose the exact number of tests conducted, but it included the 90 or so players, caddies and family members who boarded chartered flights from Dallas on Monday to travel to Hilton Head for the second event on the PGA Tour’s revised schedule after a 13-week shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Those who traveled to South Carolina on their own were required to take a test on-site, with somewhere around 900 players, caddies, officials and tournament personnel now tested over the past two weeks.
“It doesn’t surprise me, because I feel like the plan that has been put in place here has been very good,” said Rory McIlroy, the No. 1-ranked player in the world. “It’s great to hear that two weeks in a row there’s no positive tests. That’s what we just have to keep doing.
“Just because things are starting to lift and it’s getting a little more normal doesn’t mean that we just stop doing what we’ve been doing over the last 12 weeks. We still need to stay pretty vigilant.
“People have called it, like, this coronavirus fatigue or whatever, where people could become a little more complacent or sloppy. But again, most guys out here, their career really matters to them and they’re going to do everything they can to make sure that they’re safe and the people that they’re coming in contact with are safe.”
The first five events of the revised PGA Tour schedule are being played without spectators, with plans to have a limited number of fans for the Memorial Tournament beginning July 16.
Coronavirus testing is required of all players, caddies and assorted other tournament personnel. But only about half of those who are on-site are tested, something that will change at least for one week when the Travelers Championship is played next week in Connecticut.
The tournament said all volunteers and media will be given a COVID-19 saliva test.
“Every market is different,” Travelers Championship tournament director Nathan Grube said. “Holding these events in different areas, different regions, that was all under consideration. The tour obviously had their protocol. We built a lot of what we wanted to do off that protocol.
“We wanted to look back, two weeks after the tournament, look back and say, ‘Did we do everything?’ We wanted to be accused of doing too much. Did we do everything we could possibly think of on the back side of this? In looking at it that way, we said, you know, we want to try to test everyone. We wanted to do that for our event and our market. The tour was very supportive. Our partners, the volunteers, the vendors, the networks, really everybody involved completely gets it. We just felt it was the right thing to do.”
Players and caddies taking the tour’s chartered flight to Hartford on Monday will be required to get tested on Saturday. Anyone who tests positive would not be allowed to travel.