No play, no pay: Asian Tour golfers suffer while rest of world swings

No play, no pay: Asian Tour golfers suffer while rest of world swings

Image: AFP

While the world's top golfers play for an almost obscene $45 million prize fund at the PGA Tour Championship in Atlanta on Friday, many of their fellow pros in Asia will not have swung a club, or earned a cent, for six months.

Players from India to Australia have been idle since the Asian Tour was halted after the Malaysia Open on March 7, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Some haven't even been able to practise. 

They should have been teeing off next week at the Shinhan Donghae Open in South Korea, the first of three restart events.

But along with tournaments in Japan and Taiwan it has been cancelled, with little prospect of the circuit resuming before 2021.

Asian Tour CEO and Commissioner Cho Minn Thant had been hoping to stage 10 to 12 tournaments before the end of 2020 in the sort of bio-secure "bubbles" that have enabled the US, European and LPGA tours to resume. 

"We've approached countries with the same protocols that the US, European tours and other sports have employed -- testing, players kept in a bio-secure bubble," Cho told AFP.

Full story: https://sports.yahoo.com/no-play-no-pay-asian-015836693.html