Italy has just gone into lockdown and around the world sports events are starting to be impacted by the Coronavirus crisis. All golf events cancelled to date have been mainly in Asia but now Europe and the USA are beginning to take action to stem the spread of the virus. The Masters is only a month away, and the signs are not promising.
It was a worrying time for the European Tour as Italian golfers Edoardo Molinari and Lorenzo Gagli were quarantined in Muscat and originally forced to pull out of the Oman Open over fears they may have contracted the coronavirus. However, the pair will now play, partnering each other after Gagli’s test proved negative.
Back last August the European Tour announced a four-point plan for dealing with slow play on the tour. They have now revisited the plan and beefed up the regulations and penalties. The new tougher regulations come into effect at this week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship presented by EGA.
Well they’ve had the boxing, Tiger and Rory have declined big pay days to play there and now Saudi has made history by announcing the first-ever professional women’s golf event in the Kingdom. The fully-sanctioned Ladies European Tour event will be staged in collaboration with Golf Saudi and the Saudi Golf Federation and carry a purse of $1 million.
It’s Manic Monday, so here is a very quick round up of all the results and stories from the weekend on the PGA Tour, European Tour, LPGA and Women’s European Tour.
European golf legend Ian Woosnam has based his new indoor swing room around SkyTrak, golf’s most affordable launch monitor and simulator.v
Now we're talking. If you want to speed up play on the golf course, just put the image of free ice cold beer on the end of a stick and wave it in front of players as they embark on nine holes. That's what they did at Palmares and it worked...
Eddie Pepperell is up a tree. GolfPunk put him there. Well, we asked if he’d do it and he happily obliged. He's using his range finder to see into the future. He must be liking what he’s seeing. Six days later he would be British Masters champion...
Has Tiger finally made a political statement by refusing Saudi riches? Probably not, but it does beg the question...
We've been looking back at the best read articles from GolfPunk in the past year, and our exclusive interview with Tommy Fleetwood seemed to hit the mark with you. Here it is for you to enjoy again, or catch up with it if you missed it first time round. Wow. One simple word. Wow. And that’s all you need to sum up the last 18 months of Tommy Fleetwood’s career. So what has he done to make all this happen?
10 caddies earned more than $700,000 on the PGA Tour last year. And whoever is on the bag of the FedEXCup winner will walk away with a cheque for over $1,000,000.00. But who are the greatest caddies of all time?
Pete Cowan is coach to both Brooks Koepka and Henrik Stenson. So he knows a thing or two about what the Ryder Cup will have in store...
