All fan-less of course, and with appropriate testing in place:
I’ve heard golf courses are still open with restrictions in some states.
I think you can still have PGA golf under the following safety guidelines:
No twosomes or threesomes. I know this will make the rounds twice as long, but maybe set up stiffer cut offs for the later rounds.
The caddies must either stand 6’ away or a headphone system set up between the golfer and the caddy. The golfer carries his own gear or is allowed to ride in a cart with the caddy in a separate cart. OR, just no caddies.
No one picks the ball out of the hole without a disposable glove; a fresh ball and new set of gloves must be used for each hole. And the hole is sprayed with an alcohol disinfectant by a third party after each golfer goes through.
Instead of hotels, the golfers travel and live in motorhomes.
Other than that, I can’t see the danger of professional golf. And Long Drive competitions??? Fuggetiboutit!
Certain** track and field events**:
Javelin, shot put, discus (with all the athletes bringing their own projectiles), long jump, broad jump, even have runners run by themselves in time trials.
Tennis. No ball girls/boys. Six balls, three for one player and three for the other, easily distinguishable. Each player touches only the three balls assigned and if the ball ends up on the other side of the net the opposing player returns it to the correct side without touching the ball by hand. (If you can’t pick a ball up and send it to the other side of the net without handling the ball you shouldn’t be playing.) No handshake.
Doubles, same rules along with no handslap after every point, or at all. Again, no handshake.
Ha, who am I kidding, that pros would play with no ball boys/girls?
I like it the only limitation on tennis at the highest levels is the international travel involved which is the main reason Wimbledon was cancelled (great story here BTW):
No ball boys/girls? Oh my God I’ve been locked up for a month and have to dress like I’m under a gas attack to go shopping, you are being paid hundreds of thousands to hit a tennis ball!!! Get out there!
Well, it’s hard to imagine them wasting time chasing down balls, after being spoiled with ball kids. And if someone shanks one into the stands there would be nobody to throw it back. The horror!
I wish I were smart enough to make videos of my cats fighting. In this corner Simba, weighing in at 17 pounds. In this corner Smudge, 14 pounds of lithe fighting spirit. Smudge feints! Simba pounces! Smudge gets Simba in a headlock! Simba reverses it, sits on Smudge. Then they both decide they need to do some grooming.
I was also thinking the snow sports. Including bobsled and luge. However, I don’t know how much social distancing would impact prep for the venues. Does preparing a ski course for a race require a lot of people working close together, or just a groomer and then someone setting flags? Also, injuries are frequent enough that medical teams would still be required on-site rather than where they maybe are more needed.
A course requires constant maintenance during a race. People are resetting gates, slipping the course, fixing netting after a crash. If the weather is warmer you’d have people salting as well. So it would be hard to keep the course consistent during the course of a race.
You also have referees and judges all over the course, at each gate and top and bottom. Plus timers top and bottom, together in the sheds. Setting a speed course (SuperG and Downhill) requires a large gang to set all the netting but you could probably avoid most of that by just running Slalom and Giant Slalom but even there some protective netting is probably in place.
This is probably the bigger challenge, but again you can eliminate a big chunk of the danger by removing the speed events. However there’s still enough danger during Slalom and GS that you’d need (and probably use) the medical teams.
I don’t think this would work. Doubles players often pass very close together when playing a point, and even under normal circumstances are relatively close on the court. Have you seen the graphics that have been circulating about how far droplets can spread by a person running and breathing heavily? The researchers who produced those studies suggest that joggers should practice a distance of 15 fee from those around them. If those graphics and figures are accurate, doubles players would be constantly running through a mist of each others’ exhaled particles. If that’s true, it doesn’t really matter if they’re not touching the same balls.
One thing about tennis is that any virus on the ball could be dislodged when it is struck. If an infected player contaminates the ball, the virus could be released into the air when the ball is returned by the other player. The virus might also get transferred to the racket. This could happen with any similar sport, like ping pong, bad mitten, etc.
Bowling could likely be done safely if the players were several lanes apart.
Mini golf where only one player is on the hole at a time.
Perhaps a form of shuffleboard could be invented where the goal is to get your puck to the middle of the lane rather than the end. The teams could be on opposite ends of the lane and the pucks could be automatically cleared and sanitized from the lane when the round ends.
