2016 Rio Games: Golf's Olympic Odyssey Begins Anew

Four years from now in the summer of 2016, the XXXI Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro will welcome golf back as a medal sport.

Golf was part of two Olympic games before being discontinued. In the 1900 Olympics in Paris both men and women played, while in 1904 in St. Louis the men had an individual and a team tournament.

Once considered not to be truly global in reach, the game now is played on all six populated continents by a growing number of men and women. Giving golf the Olympic treatment will help foster funding for new players and courses in China, South America, and Africa where the game continues to grow rapidly. Any chance that the game can be introduced and understood to a new audience will ultimately make golf a better game.

While the course being used still has not been built and the format being used has not been completely nailed down, we do have a few details as to how the Olympic tournament will work.

There will be two separate tournaments conducted at the Rio Olympics consisting of 60 men and 60 women. We know that they will play the same course but on two different weekends. It looks all but certain that it will look like a regular stop on any pro tour, four rounds of stroke play with medals going to the top three finishers.

How a player qualifies for the Olympics has yet to be decided or if there will even be a cut. We also do not know how many golfers from a certain country will be allowed to play or whether there will be some sort of warm-up tournament in South America beforehand.

The schedule for 2016 has already become quite compact. The All England Tennis and Croquet Club, the people who run Wimbledon, have announced that they are moving their tournament ahead one week on the calendar to give an added break from the end of the French Open and the start of Wimbledon. In turn, that would potentially place the last weekend of tennis against the Open Championship. Because the International Golf Federation assured the International Olympic Committee that there would not be a major held at the same time as the Olympics, the 2016 PGA Championship must be moved to accommodate the games of Rio.

That leaves precious little time to get players adequately adjusted to playing in Brazil. Given the fact that August is probably the tightest part of the calendar with a World Golf Championship and the end of the regular season added in the mix, those competing in Rio are going to be pretty mentally drained.

Despite the headaches and the hassle of playing three important tournaments on three different continents over the course of about six weeks, the added exposure will be worth it—especially for the LPGA stars. We know that for Rio and for wherever the 2020 Games are held that NBC will be there and therefore coverage of the tournament will surely be largely on Golf Channel. Because it is an Olympic event, however, people who normally would not care will watch in droves. For the women’s game, it will bring all sorts of exposure to virtual unknowns like Yani Tseng and Stacy Lewis. To NBC’s target audience, they are as unknown as the gymnasts and track stars that are created by these games.

Yes, more than likely we see Tiger Woods play for his country and there will be some good development in the men’s game, but seeing women play the same course and be successful will be a huge shot in the arm for those trying to promote women’s golf.  The LPGA could not be happier.