European Tour to return with six UK tournaments

The European Tour will visit the Forest of Arden as part of a new "UK Swing"

European Tour set to resume in July with six UK tournaments – including a return of the English Open and several brand new events.

With the PGA Tour due to resume shortly, at the Charles Schwab Challenge on 11 June, European Tour golfers and fans have been wondering when professional golf may recommence in Europe. 

Read more: How the PGA Tour plans to play on despite Coronavirus

More than 30 European Tour events have either been postponed or cancelled due to Coronavirus so far.

European Tour CEO Keith Pelley has announced that the Tour will return on 22 July, with a series of six British events, starting with the British Masters at Close House.

European Tour UK Swing schedule: 

British Masters @ Close House – 22-25 July

English Open @ Forest of Arden – 30 July – 2 August

English Championship @ Hanbury Manor – 6-9 August

Celtic Classic @ Celtic Manor – 13-16 August

Wales Open @ Celtic Manor – 20-23 August

UK Championship @ The Belfry – 27-30 August

The venues have been selected as they include large on-site hotels that can safely host players. 

The European Tour hopes that an extended stay in the UK will limit potential Covid-19 exposure for players as no air travel will be required, while making a two-week quarantine period more worthwhile for players travelling from overseas. 

It will be music to the ears of players like Tommy Fleetwood, one of 24 PGA Tour players currently outside America, who may see it as a way to return to action without having to worry about getting to the USA. 

“On the one hand, you want to get back to playing tournament golf as soon as you can, but to do that I’d have two weeks of quarantine before the event and now two more weeks when I got back,” he says, dismissing the idea of flying to the USA for a tournament while travel restrictions are so tight. “That’s a lot of time, so it’s very unlikely I’ll be there for Colonial [host of the PGA Tour’s first tournament post-lockdown].”

“I’m not going to travel to America and stay away for four months, that is simply not a consideration,” adds Fleetwood, who lives in Cheshire with his wife and three children. 

“One ideal scenario is we all spend the summer as a family in America but we’ll have to talk it through and see if the boys want to be away after such a strange year,” he says.

Lee Westwood has a similar view. 

“I’m entered for the Colonial and the RBC Heritage as well as there’s top-50 in the world exemptions for those two events, but right now I won’t be playing them,” Westwood told the Golf Channel.

“Not with having to leave here two weeks before, quarantine, then play the two tournaments, then come back and quarantine again. It’s six weeks for two tournaments and, to me, it’s just not worth it.

“It’s not worth taking the risk if everybody thinks that those kind of precautions have got to be in place. I don’t feel like golf’s a priority, it’s that severe.”

Westwood is due to host the British Masters at Close House. 

“All being well, it’ll be the first one back,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anything really planned before that. We’ve got our fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong, there’s no second waves, quarantines get lifted and we can have a successful tournament.”

European Tour players currently outside the UK will be given plenty of notice to fly over and quarantine before competing in the series of UK tournaments, each of which is expected to have a €1m prize fund.

Pelley also announced the European Tour’s new ‘Golf for Good’ campaign, with three key aims:

– Supporting the Communities where the European Tour plays.

If PGA Tour and European Tour golf does resume as planned, it increases the likelihood of the Ryder Cup going ahead this year. The qualification process and how many picks each captain has remains to be seen.   

Read more: Why the Ryder Cup should be cancelled (but probably won’t be)