Rio Report: Golf Can Prove Itself as an Olympic Sport
OLYMPIC PARK, RIO DE JANEIRO — The 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, was a peculiar event. Taking place in the days before air travel, only 12 nations and 630 athletes participated in a competition that lasted 146 days (that’s nearly five months!).
There were 16 sports on offer, including lacrosse, roque (an American form of croquet that was exclusively contested by American athletes) and, bizarrely, a tug of war.
It was also the last time that golf was on the Olympic agenda. The sport had debuted at the 1900 Games in Paris four years previously and was only contested by golfers from the United States and Canada (it’s hard enough to get golf clubs to an Olympics in modern times, let alone when a boat was the only viable way to cross the Atlantic). The winner was Toronto’s George Lyon, who actually started his sporting career as cricketer.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Lyon came to London to defend his title at the 1908 Olympics in London but was disappointed to find that golf had been cancelled at the 11th hour as the organisers were unable to agree upon a format.
And thus began golf’s 112-year exile from the Olympic Games.
In Rio, however, the sport will make its welcome return on Thursday with a field of 60 men and 60 women in a 72-hole individual stroke play tournament.
Like many aspects of this Olympiad, however, golf’s return has not come without controversy.
At the 1904 games, most of the world’s top players shied away from competing, presumably due to geographical issues. A large proportion of golf’s top talent will also be missing in Rio, with Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth—the top four players in men’s PGA rankings—declining to participate. A total of 21 eligible men’s players dropped out, with six from the women’s side withdrawing (as per Forbes).
Some players have pointed to concerns about the Zika virus, with Day telling Golf Digest: "I just can't put my family through that, especially with the future children we're looking at having."
However, there are a trio of reasons that might hold more weight: the lack of cachet an Olympic medal holds in the sport, the complete lack of prize money on offer and the timing of the event within a busy PGA tour.
Attending the Olympics means missing out on the John Deere Classic in Illinois and its $4.8 million prize pot and North Carolina’s Wyndham Classic, which offers $5.4 million in prizes (as per The Wrap).
With the $35 million Fed Ex Cup team competition hot on its heels and the Ryder Cup in late September, the temptation to skip the long-haul flight to South America is understandable. After all, if a player starts to fall out of medal contention, they will have very little to play for.
There have also been issues with the course. Built within the Reserva de Marapendi nature reserve in the affluent Barra da Tijuca, the construction of the $19m 240-acre course enraged environmentalists. A local biologist called it "an environmental crime." A protest group that named themselves "Occupy Golf," meanwhile, condemned IOC president Thomas Bach as a "nature killer."
(A counter argument, however, suggests that the course has actually introduced several more species of animals and allowed them to thrive.)
The land on which the par-71 course now sits is home to a variety of exotic animals, including boa constrictors, crocodilian caimans and the capybara—a guinea pig-like creature that carries ticks that carry harmful tropical diseases.
The course also carries with it financial strife: The Canadian Globe and Mail noted that the course was supposed to be paid for with private funding. It ended up as another burden on the Brazilian taxpayer.
Golf in Rio—and at the Olympics in general—clearly has some hurdles to overcome. However, it would not be the first Olympic sport to experience teething problems upon its reintroduction to the Games: A clear parallel can be drawn with tennis.
Tennis was dropped from the Games in 1924 before making its return in Seoul in 1988. Eight of the top 10 men's players in the ATP rankings did not play at the 1988 Olympics, which fell one week after the conclusion of the U.S. Open.
"An Olympic gold medal wouldn’t be like winning the Davis Cup or a Grand Slam tournament," said top-ranked Swede Mats Wilander at the time, which may reflect the opinion of some of the golfers who did not travel to Rio.
Tennis and golf are both individual sports that boast highly lucrative tour circuits and tournaments that are already regarded as the pinnacle of the sport.
Yet the racket sport has prevailed at the Olympics, perhaps gaining more kudos when Andy Murray and Rafa Nadal won gold in 2012 and 2008, respectively. Granted, half of the top 10 players are not in Rio—many absences have been forced—but it is a fan favourite and there is little conversation about removing the sport from the Games.
Many of the professional golfers who have travelled to Rio hope their sport will follow a similar Olympic trajectory to that of tennis. Team GB’s Justin Rose echoed this sentiment when I met with him near the Olympic Park last weekend. “That’s exactly the pattern I would hope for in golf,” he said when the tennis comparison was offered.
I asked what he would prefer to see atop his previous mantle piece: an Olympic gold or another major title. "That’s a tough question, but I will live in the present and choose the gold medal."
A cursory glance at Rose’s Twitter timeline shows how proud he is to be an Olympic athlete, and he has often described his "seven-year dream" to reach the games. Per the BBC, he said:
"Growing up, you never really thought of golf and Olympic gold in the same sentence.
But when it was announced, however many years ago, I've always been incredibly excited about the prospect and always really hoped my ranking would enable me to come and compete.
"
As it stands, golf is in danger of being removed from the Olympic programme after the 2020 Games in Tokyo. However, if Rio serves up an engaging competition with a victory for a major PGA star, the sport will surely follow the virtuous path of tennis to become par for the course at future Games.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
