The 2020 Royal Bank of Canada Canadian Open has been cancelled for this year because of coronavirus. The Professional Golf Association Tour event was to take place from June 8 to 14 at the St. George’s Golf and Country Club in Toronto, Ontario as the host course.
This will only be the third time ever that the Canadian Open will have been cancelled. It did not take place in 1943 and 1944 because of World War II.
The cancellation of the Canadian Open is a huge blow to many Canadian golfers because the event is considered the pinnacle of Canadian golf and the only time they get to participate on the PGA Tour every year. Last year there were 26 Canadians who competed.
The Canadian Open is one of 10 events on the PGA Tour that have been cancelled this year because of the pandemic. The others are the British Open, the Players Championship (played one round before cancelling), the Valspar Championship, the World Match Play Golf Championship, the Valero Texas Open, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, the Wells Fargo Championship, the AT&T Byron Nelson Classic and the Barbasol Championship. The men’s golf tournament at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo was postponed to 2021.
There are currently 7 953 cases of coronavirus in the province of Ontario and 274 deaths. One issue in Ontario at the moment has been the lack of testing. According to Brooklyn Neustaeter of CTV News, the province is only doing approximately 3500 tests per day even though they can accommodate 13,000 tests per day.
