NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, England – A journalist walks into a bar with a hotel reservation number in hand and a mask covering his face.
This is not the beginning of a joke. This is how on Tuesday I accidentally went through the carefully crafted bubble that the European PGA Tour had created to facilitate a six-stop swing in Britain as part of its new 2020 season.
It was all an honest mistake. It turns out that the European Circuit health and safety procedures, an intense testing regimen described by former world No. 1 Lee Westwood as “almost military-style,” were nearly sabotaged by a third-party online travel website, I processed my prepaid reservation for a two-night stay at the so-called bubble tour hotel in north east England.
The European tour believed he had closed the hotel, which is a field launch from Newcastle International Airport and a short drive from Close House Golf Club, the site of this week’s British Masters. The only guests allowed were those associated with the tournament, and only after they had passed a pre-event coronavirus test and underwent daily temperature checks upon arrival.
Upon learning that I had momentarily broken that circle of trust, a tour official immediately and urgently informed me that I would have to find a new place to stay. And with his bubble restored, the tour went back to work and started playing on Wednesday morning.
As sports leagues and tours return to action after a month-long shutdown triggered by the pandemic, most athletes are getting used to performing in front of few, if any. But that does not mean they are free from scrutiny. Your personal movements are meticulously tracked and your health is monitored as if they were startups about to go public, so great is the fear that careless steps, a food delivery on the verge of a bubble or a quick trip shopping, they can thwart even the most meticulous reboot plan.
“There is no time in the day,” said Westwood, “when you don’t feel like your health is being checked or someone is watching you.”
For the cities and towns that visit the tours, everything has changed too.
This corner of England lavished attention at the British Masters in 2017, the last time Close House hosted the tournament. About 70,000 spectators converged on the course during the week, culminating in a victory for Irishman Paul Dunne, who contained a strong field that included Rory McIlroy.
Three years ago, those same crowds had been pouring out for days in the small town of Wylam, less than two miles away, filling places like the Black Bull pub on Main Street. As owner Paul Bowes fondly recalled this week, the guests stood shoulder to shoulder at his place that week with some of the approximately 2,000 residents.
“And there were more people outside the pub than inside,” Bowes said. “It was fantastic.”
Three years later, the day of the opening of the tournament was quiet, played under a layer of gray clouds. The town was so eerily still, it was as if one had used the wall-mounted yellow-shell defibrillator next to the Ship Inn to revive it.
Black Bull is closed, as it has been since mid-March, the start of the pandemic. The only reason Bowers and his wife were sitting at the bar, he said, was because they were interviewing a new chef to head the kitchen once they reopened. But then, there is hardly anyone to serve this week.
Like the rescheduled PGA Tour events in the United States, the British Masters takes place without fans, so there are no spills on the streets or local businesses.
Seismic waves emanating from Close House in 2017 shook Gosforth Park Racecourse, where many of the players mingled with the locals during a night of thoroughbred racing. They spread to the bustling bars and restaurants on Gateshead Quayside along the River Tyne, where Westwood drew crowds as he hit balls on a floating island.
Many of those same bars are closed now, or run on reduced hours and sheets of paper where users are required to provide their email addresses or phone numbers, or both, in case they are needed later for tracking contacts.
On Wednesday, a short distance from Black Bull, Fox & Hounds, it was open for lunch. It was nearly empty around noon when three men on a break from their job as green caretakers at Close House entered, ordered pints from the bar and retired to a back table. There they spent the next half hour watching live coverage of the first round of the tournament on a cell phone.
They had been on the course since 4:30 am, they explained, to finish polishing it for the first round, and would return later in the day to prepare it for the second day on Thursday. For lunch, the leaderboard had reflected the scope of the European tour, with players from six countries occupying the top eight after the first round.
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Frequent questions
Updated July 23, 2020
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What will school be like in September?
- Many schools are unlikely to return to normal hours this fall, requiring the routine of online learning, impromptu child care, and delayed work days to continue. California’s two largest public school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, said July 13 that instruction will be remote only in the fall, citing concerns that rising coronavirus infections in their areas pose too serious a risk to students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll about 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution will not be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the country’s largest New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending a few days in classrooms and other days online. There is no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what’s going on in your community.
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Is the coronavirus in the air?
- Coronavirus can remain in the air for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, growing scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded interior spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain overcast events reported in meat packing plants, churches, and restaurants. It is unclear how often the virus is transmitted through these small droplets or sprays, compared to the larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or is transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, Linsey said. Marr, Virginia Tech aerosol expert. Aerosols are released even when a symptom-free person exhales, speaks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have summarized the evidence in an open letter to the World Organization. Of the health.
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What are the symptoms of coronavirus?
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What is the best material for a mask?
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Does Covid-19 transmit asymptomatic?
- So far, the evidence seems to show that it does. A widely cited article published in April suggests that people are most infectious approximately two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms, and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were the result of transmission from people who still had no symptoms. Recently, a senior expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people without symptoms was “very rare,” but later withdrew that claim.
The nearby airport still operates flights from the countries of origin of at least two of the first leaders, the Italian Renato Paratore and the Portuguese Pedro Figueiredo. But on the eve of the tournament, the airport had so few travelers in the terminal that one could have hit a golf club for an hour without worrying about hitting a soul.
Andrew Glover, the manager of DoubleTree by Hilton, the tour’s restricted access venue this week, looked out a window and noted that the airport parking lot, which was nearly empty three weeks ago, was starting to fill up again.
So is his hotel, which only a few weeks ago suffered some gloomy nights when only three of its 193 rooms were occupied. In 2017, Glover said, the hotel was a hive of activity during the tournament week, as spectators mingled with tournament officials. This week, form the outer periphery of the tour bubble.
After apologizing for not being able to accommodate my reservation this week, Glover told a story. In 2005, he said, he was working in Britain for another hotel chain based in the United States.
In response to an outbreak of bird flu in Asia that year, he said, the hotel chain, through guidelines established by President George W. Bush’s administration, was required to maintain a room equipped with pandemic kits in each of His properties. Supplies consisted of thermometers, face covers, hand sanitizer, and gloves.
“I remember thinking it was silly,” said Glover. “I was spending all this money on things that I would never need.” The pause. “If I had all that equipment three months ago, it would have been tremendously useful.”
But what is past is past. For Glover, there was no point in living in 2005, or even 2017, when the European tour came to town and Newcastle filled with people and pride.
Three years ago, Bowes said inside Black Bull, the tournament “definitely put Wylam on the map.” His return this week has given tired companies a ray of hope that not all is hopelessly lost.
