Italian golfer sent home from Qatar due to coronavirus

Last week in Oman we very nearly had Lorenzo Gagli and Edoardo Molinari ruled out of the tournament due to the coronavirus. This week Francesco Laporta hasn’t been so lucky in Qatar after arriving in Doha.

Any passenger arriving on a direct flight from Italy, or having been in the country in the last fortnight, will be taken into quarantine for 14 days or get back on a flight to Italy.

Speaking to an Italian news agency Laporta, the 2019 Challenge Tour order of merit winner, said: “I found myself there with 40 compatriots who arrived from Milan. We were treated with respect and welcomed also by the Italian ambassador but there were two solutions: quarantine for two weeks or return home, I had no alternative. I took a flight to Rome and now I’m going to Puglia.”

“It’s a really strange situation, which I can’t explain and that penalises me strongly. I had no fever or anything and now I don’t even know when I will be able to return. Next week I should play the Kenya Open but I still don’t know if I will be able to do it because of the epidemic emergency situation.”

Laporta, ranked 128th in the world, is currently fourth in the Italian rankings for the Olympics behind Francesco Molinari, Andrea Pavan and Guido Migliozzi.