The PGA Tour is set to allow three golfers still testing positive for COVID-19 to compete in the Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio, this weekend.
Dylan Frittelli, Denny McCarthy, and Nick Watney — all of whom have continued to test positive for COVID-19 — will be paired together for the first two rounds of the tournament. The PGA Tour issued a statement on Wednesday to clarify the trio's inclusion in the Workday Charity Open field.
As the Tour explained, the three players satisfy the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Return to Work" guidelines, as they are all three days past recovery and 10 days removed from the first appearance of their symptoms.
"In the beginning stages of the illness, that virus is assumed to be active virus that can cause infection, can be contagious," said PGA Tour medical advisor Dr. Tom Hospel. "As time passes and as symptoms resolve and the patient or individual doesn't have any fever and 10 days have passed, at that point the thought and theory is that this virus, this particle that's being detected in the nasopharyngeal swab, is no longer active or contagious or can potentially cause ongoing infection.
"What we have learned along the way is that in some instances, individuals can continue to test positive for weeks if not months beyond when their illness started, and the thought is that those individuals are no longer contagious, but you're picking up dead virus. … They are not presumed to be contagious at that point."
In the statement, the PGA Tour emphasized that it was still taking an abundance of caution with regard to the players' return to the course. Frittelli, McCarthy, and Watney will be paired together on Thursday and Friday and will have no access to any indoor facilities at the tournament.
Should any of the three players make the cut to play through the weekend, they will continue to be paired together or potentially play as a single.
"The mindset is that they have complied with the guidance from the CDC," said PGA Tour senior vice president of tournament administration Andy Levinson. "They have met the medical requirements for isolation, and with respect to the opinions of our medical advisors, including infectious disease experts and the CDC, they're clear to play. They're clear to return to work, whether it was a player, a caddie, you, or me."
Levinson said that the players' inclusion in the tournament was not the result of any new rules, but rather a part of the new normal as players attempt to return to play.
"This is not a rethinking. This is not an adjustment. This has been our policy from the beginning with respect to symptomatic positives," Levinson said. "This is just a clarification so that everybody understands what's going on now that we're four weeks in, we've had some positive cases, and we have people returning to competition."
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