PGA Tour Wants Fans At Tournaments By July

The Tour is hoping for a limited number of fans to return on-site at the John Deere Classic in early July

PGA Tour Wants Fans At Tournaments By July

Fans may begin to return to events on the PGA Tour in July, with the John Deere Classic week pencilled in as a 'placeholder'.

The Tour is initially planning to allow some fans attend the John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run from 9th-12th July, although nothing is certain as things stand.

The first four events back, the Charles Schwab Challenge, RBC Heritage, Travelers Championship and Rocket Mortgage Classic, will be played without crowds but there is hope that fans might be able to slowly return after that.

PGA Tour Chief Tournaments & Competitions Officer Andy Pazder said in media call, "When we issued the revised schedule I believe it was April 16th, we stipulated in there that for at least the first four tournaments we would play without spectators on site.

"I considered that all along to be a placeholder and not some sort of a line on a calendar that we were pushing for the week of July 6 through 12 to be a point in time where we begin allowing some number of fans.

"We are not wedded to any specific date. Obviously it's going to be dependent on local, state and federal regulations that will largely dictate when we're able to resume having some number of fans.

"I would absolutely anticipate that whenever that occurs, it would initially be on a limited basis to ease ourselves back into spectators being on site.

Related: Is the European Tour planning a series of UK-based events in July?

"I think maybe what you might be referencing is some comments I read maybe late last week related to the Memorial Tournament. I would just say that tournament and others are parallel planning with spectators, limited number of spectators and without spectators.

"We obviously hope that there will be a point in time this summer where we are able to welcome back our fans on site, but as we've said from the very top of this call and every other call that we've done, we're only going to return to golf when we can do it in a safe and responsible manner, and it's certainly not going to be just so we can hit some target date that isn't supported by the local state and federal authorities."

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