Could the PGA Tour be creating a temporary feeder tour?
That’s the plan, according to an email that was sent by the Tour to members of its international tours – the Mackenzie Tour, PGA Tour Latinoamerica and PGA Tour China – gauging interest in a potential U.S.-based replacement tour that would help make up for playing opportunities lost because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The proposed idea, per the email, which was obtained by GolfChannel.com, calls for approximately six 54-hole tournaments, each with 36-hole cuts, to be played from August to mid-October. The goal is for two to three consecutive tournaments to be played in the same region. Members of those three aforementioned tours would have first priority to enter.
The email also states that the “hope” is to have $100,000 purses for each event.
“This idea is very much in the exploratory phase, but we are trying to assess player interest before further developing a plan, contacting potential venues and trying to secure the appropriate sponsorship monies to help run the events,” the email read.
Players were asked to fill out an anonymous survey by June 8 that included questions about preferred tournament locations and number of events they would play.
The potential host regions: Carolinas/Georgia, North Florida, South Florida, Northeast Texas and Arizona.
The Mackenzie Tour canceled its entire season last week while PGA Tour Latinoamerica, which got one event in before the pandemic shuttered professional sports around the world, and PGA Tour China have yet to announced restart dates. The Tour said in the email that it “will continue to monitor the situations in China and Latin America as we try to start/restart our seasons later this year.”