While golf clubs are starting to reopen around the world after the Covid-19 lockdown, and players are rallying back to their training routines in the open air, the time to restart the tournaments schedule has not come yet. The dramatic situation caused by the global pandemic has produced a line of question marks on all professional tours, in golf as in all other sports.
There are a number of challenges and needs to be addressed in order to safely return to play, but the main concern are the travel bans and restrictions that the players might have to face in order to reach the tournament venues in different countries. There are no official indications yet on how we will all have to deal with this complicated subject.
Alps Tour 2020 Season had regularly started in Egypt with two tournaments held last February which produced two young, brilliant winners just before the outburst of Covid-19 emergency.
On March 6th, the Board of Directors decided to postpone the second swing of the Egypt Winter Series which was supposed to start on March 19th and from there, the season has been kept on hold, similarly to what all other golf tours did just a few days later.
At present, Alps Tour is envisaging to resume its tournaments in August and play until November, then hold the traditional Qualifying School in Spain, mid-December. There will be some postponements and some cancellations, but “our main goal is to play eight-twelve more tournaments, so that we can complete our season and have a suitable ranking”, says Estelle Richard, Alps Tour Chief Executive and Operations Director. “We are working closely with the promoters and stakeholders of tournaments to plan different possible scenarios depending on the evolution of the pandemic, and will try to manage the rest of the season as best as we can, also accordingly to the European Tour and Challenge Tour decisions”.
The provisional schedule is published at this link.