South Africa’s Dylan Frittelli is delighted to be back on the course but admits ‘it definitely felt weird’ to be competing in a bubble.
Frittelli tested positive for Covid-19 at the beginning of last week and together with Nick Watney and Denny McCarthy, who also contracted the virus, was paired together in a bio-secure bubble for this week’s Workday Charity Open, which got underway on Thursday.
READ: Frittelli tests positive for Covid-19
Frittelli opened with a one-over-par 73 at Muirfield Village Golf Club but is happy to be back in action after a testing couple of days.
‘I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take to get over everything and get back on the course, but I’m super happy to be playing again. It’s been pretty boring the last five or six days just sitting around doing nothing. It was fun to get out there,’ said Frittelli upon the completion of his first round in Ohio.
‘Obviously a few hoops to jump through yesterday. It was a little tricky situation that went on. But that’s fine; life is full of surprises, so we’ll move on from there and hopefully get everything cemented in the coming weeks.’
The 30-year-old, however, says he wasn’t that surprised when the news broke that he had contracted the virus.
ALSO READ: Frittelli to play Workday Charity Open
‘I spoke to my physician and quizzed him on how it works, and he said, oh, there’s a chance that you could be testing for up to a month.
‘That I knew was a possibility, but I still thought it had to come along with a negative test according to the TOUR, but obviously the TOUR is trying to monitor things as they move. I did one saliva test on Monday, and that one came back Tuesday afternoon. That was positive. And then I did the nasal test Wednesday sometime around midday.’
Speaking about the symptoms he had, Frittelli also admits they were very minor and didn’t cause him too much distress.
‘I had started basically getting some nasal congestion just like you would from an allergy, just had some kind of constriction in the tubes up there, but then I had slight muscle ache for an hour that evening.
‘I worked out Saturday morning, so those same muscle groups that I worked out were a little bit sore, and then I had two headaches in three days that lasted about maybe 20 or 30 minutes, but besides that, it was really nothing. I did feel a little lethargic and slow, but that’s normally the case when I don’t work out or I don’t get outside or I’m not busy,’ he added.
