Building the new golf course in Rio de Janeiro in time for the Olympics once was considered the biggest obstacle.
Now there is a new problem facing golf — getting the stars to play it.
The perception is worse than reality. It is not like golf will not have its best players in Rio the first full week in August, because Jordan Spieth, Jason Day and Rory McIlroy have said they are going, and they are the best three players in the world.
Photo: Reuters
Still, it did not help the sport’s pampered image when four Major champions said they would not be competing for gold, silver, bronze or even pride.
Adam Scott was the biggest name to drop out and the least surprising. The first Australian to win a green jacket, and the No. 7 player in the world, Scott has been lukewarm to the Olympics all along and has said for more than a year that it was not a priority.
Louis Oosthuizen, the sweet-swinging South African and The Open champion at St Andrews, said he was not going because of family and scheduling issues. That enabled Charl Schwartzel to move into position to play for South Africa, but only for a day. Schwartzel, the 2011 Masters champion, said he was not going, either.
It is easy to criticize these players because it is rare in other Olympic sports for qualified athletes to stay home.
However, golf is not like other Olympic sports, which is why it has been 112 years since it was part of the Olympic program. George Lyon is the previous gold medalist in golf and for years nothing more than a trivia question.
Golf ticks just about every box for Olympic values and virtues, especially with its global appeal. However, it misses the most important box when it relates to the significance of winning a medal. It is not the pinnacle of sport. It is not even in the top five this year — with respect to The Players Championship, we are talking about the four majors and the Ryder Cup.
Was it worth golf getting back into the Olympics? Absolutely. It does far more good than harm.
Officials are touting how much this will grow the game by the sheer audience of the Olympics and with governments funding the sport in countries where it is seldom played. Heroes are born in Olympic competition, and there is no reason to believe that golf — in time — will be any different.
Problems were to be expected, whether it was the format or full participation. Golf did not do any favors by not having a team competition, and it might have changed the minds of some players not going.
When a tight schedule is cited as a reason for not going, the officials carrying the Olympic torch for golf — mainly the PGA Tour — share the blame.
They have produced a schedule that causes them as little disruption as possible. If the Olympics were so important, could they not have done more to space out the biggest events that mean more to the players?
Instead, golf’s two oldest tournaments, the US Open and the Open Championship, along with a World Golf Championship are played in a five-week stretch. If that was not bad enough, the PGA Championship in New Jersey starts 10 days after The Open in Scotland.
And when the Olympics are over, PGA Tour players have one week before the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs, the US$35 million bonanza that the PGA Tour billed as the “new era in golf” before it chased a spot on the Olympic program. That is four big tournaments in five weeks, with the Ryder Cup right behind it.
Most other sports spend the entire Olympic year building toward that one big moment. For golf, the Olympics are plopped in the middle of big moments.
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