The Open Championship cancelled - US Masters, US Open and PGA Championship moved

The Masters, US Open and US PGA Championship have all been rescheduled and the 149th Open Championship cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Open was supposed to take place at the Royal St George's Golf Club in July, but the Kent-based course will now host the competition 12 months later than planned.

In a statement jointly issued by the organisers of golf’s four Majors, new dates have been made for the other three tournaments but it was reiterated that they would only take place should it be “safe and responsible to do so.”

The US PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco is now scheduled to be the first Major of 2020 between August 6-9, while the US Open at Winged Foot in New York will take place a week before the Ryder Cup between September 17-20.

The Masters, originally scheduled to start on Thursday, has been moved to mid-November (12th-15th).

However, the Open Championship will not be staged at all in 2020 meaning that the 150th edition of the event will be played at St Andrews in July 2022.

Speaking about the postponement Martin Slumbers, Chief Executive of The R&A, said: “Our absolute priority is to protect the health and safety of the fans, players, officials, volunteers and staff involved in The Open. We care deeply about this historic Championship and have made this decision with a heavy heart.

"We appreciate that this will be disappointing for a great many people around the world but this pandemic is severely affecting the UK and we have to act responsibly. It is the right thing to do. I can assure everyone that we have explored every option for playing The Open this year but it is not going to be possible.

“There are many different considerations that go into organising a major sporting event of this scale. We rely on the support of the emergency services, local authorities and a range of other organisations to stage the Championship and it would be unreasonable to place any additional demands on them when they have far more urgent priorities to deal with.

In recent weeks we have been working closely with those organisations as well as Royal St George’s, St Andrews Links Trust and the other golf bodies to resolve the remaining external factors and have done so as soon as we possibly could. We are grateful to all of them for their assistance and co-operation throughout this process.

“Most of all I would like to thank our fans around the world and all of our partners for their support and understanding. At a difficult time like this we have to recognise that sport must stand aside to let people focus on keeping themselves and their families healthy and safe. We are committed to supporting our wider community in the weeks and months ahead and will do everything in our power to help golf come through this crisis.”

Rory McIlroy had been the 9-1 favourite for the Open.

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