Report: European Tour UK Venues Confirmed For July Restart

The European Tour is said to be planning five events in the UK this summer

Report: European Tour UK Venues Confirmed For July Restart

The European Tour is set to restart in July with five UK events, as Golf Monthly reported earlier this month, starting at the British Masters at Close House.

The following four tournaments will be in the UK and the venues for those tournaments will be, according to Golf Digest's sources, Forest of Arden, Hanbury Manor and Celtic Manor.

The Telegraph is also reporting this, saying that the British Masters will be brought forward a week to begin on the 23rd July and that Celtic Manor will host two tournaments.

The venues have been chosen due to the fact that they all have large hotels on-site to house the "bubble" of players, staff and officials needed to run the events during this Coronavirus pandemic.

Players from overseas will be given plenty of notice to come to the UK and quarantine before competing in the tournaments that can be easily driven to-and-from.

Golf Digest's sources confirm that the tournaments will have €1m prize funds, much less than the European Tour's huge Rolex Series tournaments but those fees are not a surprise after Keith Pelley's leaked email where he said the Tour would look "drastically different" upon its return.

The Telegraph is reporting that the British Masters will have a purse of £2m, and that there could be a two-day event before the British Masters.

It will all be shown on Sky Sports.

In an email seen by Golf Digest from earlier this month, Pelley assured members he would have “definitive news on the schedule in the very near future,” and that it would be "robust."

The Telegraph say that 22 tournaments could be played this season with other countries also hosting numerous events back-to-back.

Related: Why the European Tour cannot afford a postponed Ryder Cup

There will also be no European Tour Q-School this year and no promotion from the Challenge Tour, with playing rights from 2020 guaranteed for 2021.

European Tour players may have a dilemma on their hands with golf resuming throughout July.

That's because the USPGA Championship, the first Major of 2020, is set to take place in San Francisco from 6th-9th July.

This essentially means that European Tour players qualified for the USPGA will have a very tough decision on their hands.

However, from Keith Pelley's original leaked email to players, it could be that these UK events are not traditional Thursday to Sunday 72-hole tournaments taking place seven days apart.

We could see three events within a fortnight and, possibly, all five completed within three weeks.

None of the events will have fans on-site, with tickets and hospitality packages currently suspended for the foreseeable future.

An announcement from the European Tour is set to come fairly soon on the restart so more will be known then.

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