If Olympic golf is to become relevant, then young players need to grow up watching/dreaming of participating in the Olympic Games from the time they take up the game. I do not believe that is the case today.
Golf is set to make its fourth appearance at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Golf was first featured at the 1900 Games in Paris, then (for men only) at the 1904 Games in St. Louis, Missouri. After an absence of over a century, it returned as a featured sport at the 2016 Olympic Games. It was played at the Olympic Golf Course, located within the Marapendi Natural Reserve in the Barra da Tijuca zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Great Britain’s Justin Rose and Korea’s Inbee Park each took home a gold medal.
The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo will host over 339 events across 39 sports, and you can find the latest odds for these events at Betway Sports. Among the expected 11,091 athletes are 120 male and female golfers from 42 countries. These golfers will play a 72-hole individual stroke play competition (four rounds over four consecutive days). Like most other golf tour competitions, the player with the lowest score after four rounds wins.
The men’s event will take place from July 29-August 1, and the women’s competition will be held from August 4-7. Both events will be held at The Kasumigaseki Country Club, a private course in Kasahata, Saitama, Japan, which is located about 65 kilometers northwest of central Tokyo.
The men’s and women’s qualifiers got into the Games based on the Olympic Golf Rankings. For men, the rankings replicate the Official World Golf Ranking. Women qualified using the Rolex World Golf Rankings. The men’s qualification period ended after the U.S. Open, which was won by Bryson DeChambeau. The women’s qualification period ended after the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, which was won by first-time major winner Nelly Korda.
The top 15 players in the Olympic Golf Rankings (to a maximum of four players per country) qualify automatically. After that, the 60-person field is made up of the top-two ranked available players from any country on the Olympic Golf Rankings that does not have two or more players ranked in the top 15.
If you are a golf fan and regular PGA Tour, European Tour, or LPGA Tour follower, you’ll recognize some, but not all, of the 120 players in the final men’s and women’s field. Only about one-third of the players in each field are ranked 50th or lower in their respective world rankings. In the same field, you will have the world’s #1 player, John Rahm, and you will also see India’s Udayan Mane, who is ranked 356th. There is a similar ranking gap in the women’s field. The world’s #1 player, Nelly Korda, will share the fairway with Norway’s Tonje Daffinrud, the world’s 419th ranked player.
But do golfers really care about playing in the Olympics? Do they view participation as a priority?
It’s quite a contrast to what happens during regular tour play. At the recent men’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, for example, all of the top 50 ranked players were in the field of 156. At the Open Championship at Royal St George’s in England, 46 of the top 50 players were in the field of 156. On the other hand, only 20 of the world’s top 50 ranked golfers are in the Olympics’ field of 60.
This difference in field strength shows. Some, like Rickie Fowler in 2016, do care. For others, the dream growing up was winning one of golf’s major championships, not standing atop the podium at the Olympic Games. They saw themselves holding the Masters’ Trophy, the Wanamaker Trophy, or the Claret Jug aloft, not a 556-gram gold medal.
In defense of those top golfers who declined an opportunity to participate in Japan, professional schedules are jam-packed. By the recently completed Open Championship, some golfers had played six major championships in 12 months. Add in the upcoming Olympics, the FedEx Cup playoffs in August, the rescheduled Ryder Cup in September, and the top golfers have had nearly 13 months of perpetual travel and golf.
What about the women? Many more seem to care, but we also need to recognize that their schedule is far less congested than men. And the women got a boost from the LPGA, which included the Olympics as part of its 2021 season. This ‘Super Season’ of 34 official events includes the five LPGA majors, the Olympics, and the biennial Solheim Cup.
When you add everything together, I think change needs to happen if the Olympics are to become more relevant for professional golfers.
First, the major professional tours must include the Olympic Games as an event in their tournament schedules. That will enable the massive viewing audience an opportunity to see the game’s top talent competing for Olympic Gold. Second, the format must be appealing and entertaining, like the Ryder Cup, which captures fans’ imagination.
The bottom line is this. If Olympic golf is to become relevant, then young players need to grow up watching and dreaming of participating in the Olympic Games from the time they take up the game. I do not believe that is the case today.
Without relevance, the risk is that Olympic golf will fade into obscurity. That would be a shame when you consider how millions of fans follow players and view big tournaments, like The Masters and The Open. That won’t happen in Japan.
