NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, England — A reporter walks into a bar with a hotel booking number in her hand and a mask covering her face. It’s how, on Tuesday, I — accidentally — pierced the carefully crafted bubble the European PGA Tour had created to facilitate a six-stop swing in Britain as part of its remade 2020 season. It turns out that the European Tour’s health and safety procedures — a testing-heavy regimen described by the former world No. 1 Lee Westwood as “military style, almost” — were nearly sabotaged by a third-party online travel website, which processed my prepaid booking for a two-night stay at the tour’s so-called bubble hotel in northeast England. The European tour believed it had sealed off the hotel, which is a pitch shot from the Newcastle International Airport and a short drive to Close House golf club, the site of this week’s British Masters.

Source: International New York Times July 23, 2020 18:45 UTC