The PGA Tour continues to lose tournaments in light of the coronavirus pandemic, and this time it is a Major Tournament that is canceled. The 149th Open Championship was canceled on Monday, according to The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews (R&A). The tournament was scheduled to take place from July 16-19, but tournament organizers are worried that there is still a chance that the pandemic will be present.
The R&A announced that the 2021 Open Championship would be held at Royal St. George’s in Sandwich, England, which is where the tournament was supposed to take place this year. This is the first time that the Open Championships have been canceled since 1945, when fighting in WWII caused the cancellation.
Next year was supposed to be the 150th Open Championship, and there was a major celebration planned. The Old Course in St. Andrews was set to host the 150th-anniversary celebration, but that will be pushed back until 2022. Royal Liverpool was set to host the event in 2022, but they will be given the Open Championships at a later date.
Other Three Major Tournaments Rescheduled
The cancellation of the 2020 Open Championship wasn’t the only major golf announcement of the day. The PGA Tour, along with other tournament organizers, announced that the other three Major Tournaments would all be rescheduled for a later date. The 2020 Masters Tournament was already forced to be postponed to a later date, but that event is now being moved again.
Augusta National was set to host the Masters Tournament this week, but golf fans will now have to wait until November for this iconic event to take place. The Masters Tournament schedule will now begin on Nov. 9 and will conclude on Nov. 15. The tournament was initially pushed back until August, but it had to be moved to accommodate the postponement of other Major Tournaments.
The PGA Championship was originally scheduled to take place from May 11-17, but will now be pushed back to August 3-9. TPC Harding Park in San Francisco will still host the event. This will now be the first of three major golf tournaments played this year, assuming that it does take place.
California has been hit extremely hard by the coronavirus pandemic, and the state has taken very aggressive measures to combat the spread.
The US Open will now be played from Sept. 14-20, after it was originally scheduled to take place from June 15-21. Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, NY, is set to host the second major to take place in 2020.
New York is another state that is one of the epicenters of the pandemic, and Governor Andrew Cuomo is not going to allow the event to take place until the spread of the disease has been flattened.
Rory McIlroy is the current betting favorite for all three of the major events set to take place. The number one player in the world will not get the chance to play in front of his home fans at the Open Championship.
The PGA Tour plans to resume play at the Memorial Tournament, which is scheduled for June. The PGA Tour did not announce any plans about fans attending this event, but they are hopeful to return to play at this time.
The organization announced that it would continue to follow the guidelines and recommendations of health officials before they put together an initial start date. Several other tournaments will also need to be moved now that the Major Tournament dates have been changed, but the PGA Tour did not make any further announcements.
