Tyrrell Hatton tests positive for coronavirus

Tyrrell Hatton (Jacob Gralton, Wikimedia Commons)

World number eight Tyrrell Hatton of High Wycombe, England has tested positive for coronavirus according to ESPN on Tuesday. As a result, he has withdrawn from the 2021 Valspar Championship which starts Thursday from Orlando, Florida.

Hatton is one of four PGA players that tested positive. The others are Sepp Straka of Vienna, Austria, Will Gordon of Davidson, North Carolina, and Brice Garnett of Gallatin, Missouri.

Currently, Hatton has 298.56 points in the Official World Golf Rankings. There is only one other player in the world from outside the United States who has a higher ranking than Hatton. That is Jon Rahm of Barrika, Spain, who has 425.73 points, and is presently third in the world.

Like many elite European players, Hatton shares his time between the European Tour, and the American-based PGA Tour. So far in 2021, he has one title and that came at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in the United Arab Emirates in January. Hatton won the Rolex Series event with a winning score of -18 to beat Australian Jason Scrivener by four strokes.

Hatton continued the success of English golfers at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. Paul Casey won in 2007 and 2009, Robert Rock won in 2012, Tommy Fleetwood won in 2017 and 2018, and Lee Westwood won in 2020.

Straka meanwhile is 151st in the world, Gordon is 204th in the world, and Garnett is 226th in the world. Of the four golfers who tested positive, Hatton and Garnett have won on the PGA Tour before. Garnett won the 2018 Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship in the Dominican Republic, and Hatton won the 2020 Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando. The only other top 10 player besides Hutton to test positive for coronavirus so far is world number one Dustin Johnson.

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