Sport’s biggest party is in full swing over in Paris with the Olympics providing captivating drama for a few days already. Now rather than an uninvited guest looking over the fence, golf happily has its own part to play in the Olympics, beginning on Thursday.
The questions are obvious – how and why has golf ended up joining traditional Olympic sports like athletics and swimming as part of the Games? Here at AMERICAN GOLF, let us try to provide a few answers and a bit of colour as to how golf will look in Paris.
History:
Elite level men’s professional golf conjures up images of multi-million dollar pay cheques, private jets and a pampered lifestyle. Things that we do not readily associate with the Olympian values of Baron Pierre de Coubertin. For some, the sight of golfers, fresh from a Major Championship, teeing it up in Olympic colours alongside athletes who have been preparing for four years for this one shot at life-changing glory will never sit right.
Golf was actually staged in the 1900 and 1904 Olympics, but the 1904 edition in St Louis highlighted the problem with 77 players split between the USA and Canada. Remarkably, George Lyon, one of the three Canadians to play, won the individual gold!
From there golf slipped away until a 2009 meeting of the International Olympic Committee marked the return of the sport to Olympic competition for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. Golfing stars like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods were part of the sport’s formal presentation to the IOC by The Royal and Ancient and the United States Golf Association, the game’s two ruling bodies. They successfully argued that the Olympics’ global reach would increase interest and participation in golf outside of its traditional heartlands.
So there it was in Rio eight years ago returning to the Olympic fold. Many top players opted to miss the event, but it produced a fantastic ending as Justin Rose, competing for Great Britain, defeated his great friend and Ryder Cup partner – and reigning Open Champion at the time – Henrik Stenson (Sweden) on the final hole to win the gold medal. The joy on Rose’s face at the gold being draped around his neck was priceless. Nobody needed to tell him how special it was to be an Olympic Champion.
Format:
The Olympic golf tournament follows the example of all four Majors and significant events on the golfing calendar by being a 72-hole strokeplay event. The player with the lowest cumulative score across the four rounds will be awarded the gold medal with silver going to the runner-up and the third-placed player receiving the bronze.
Medals will not be shared. If players’ scores are tied in the leading positions, there will be a play-off to finalise the medals. That happened in Tokyo three years ago when seven players finished in a tie for third. Rather than everyone receive a medal, they played sudden death to decide the bronze medal. The play-off was eventually won by CT Pan of Chinese Taipei, beating Rory McIlroy and two of that year’s Major winners Hideki Matsuyama and Collin Morikawa in the process.
Despite most countries having two players in their team, there is no team format. Only one gold medal is up for grabs, meaning that a very bad start on day one could immediately rule players out of contention and theoretically leave them with little left to play for on the remaining three days. There are discussions about whether to change this ahead of either the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles or the following edition in Australia’s Gold Coast.
The men’s tournament will be played across four days starting on Thursday. The women compete from Wednesday to Saturday next week (6-10 August).
Field:
We have just completed the men’s Major season with The Open at Royal Troon and one of the most notable differences between one of those four events and the Olympics is the size of field.
At Troon, 158 players teed up, which was 98 more than will compete in Paris. For the third Games in a row, only 60 players will compete. What is more, there is a greater balance of nationalities across the field, rather than being dominated by Americans as is the case in the Majors. To increase golf’s global appeal, one of its big pitches to the IOC, was to ensure a wide spread of countries taking part. The 2021 men’s competition in Tokyo showed what was possible with Slovakia (Rory Sabbatini – silver) and Chinese Taipei (CT Pan – bronze) walking away with medals.
As a result, 38 nations will have golfers in France – 32 in the men’s event and 33 in the women’s. The USA will have the most with four men and three women by virtue of being ranked inside the world’s top 15. Most other countries have two competitors.
Who is representing Team GB?
Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpatrick will don Team GB Colours for the men and Georgia Hall and Charley Hull will do so for the women.
Which stars are playing in Paris?
World number one Scottie Scheffler headlines the field. The Masters Champion, for whom that was one of his six tournament victories in 2024, will aim for a magnifique seventh in Paris. But he will expect stiff competition from fellow American Xander Schauffele, fresh from his Open success at Royal Troon just nine days ago. That was his second Major of the year after his US PGA triumph in May, while he is also the defending Olympic Champion, having won gold in Tokyo in 2021.
Rory McIlroy will be back for his second crack at the Olympics and with a quick chance of redemption following his missed cut at The Open. He will be representing Ireland alongside his great friend Shane Lowry, with whom he won the PGA Tour’s Zurich Classic pairs event in New Orleans in April. Lowry, the 2019 Open Champion at Royal Portrush, was Ireland’s flagbearer for the Opening Ceremony along the River Seine last Friday.
There will be plenty of Ryder Cup flavour about the event with some of the European heroes from last October’s win at Marco Simone in Rome donning national colours instead of the blue of the continent. These include rising star Ludvig Aberg (Sweden), Viktor Hovland (Norway), Nicolai Hojgaard (Denmark) and Sepp Straka (Austria).
In the women’s event, world number Nelly Korda will look to defend her Olympic title for the USA. New Zealand’s Lydia Ko has won bronze in 2016 and silver in 2021, so she would love to complete her set. While 2024 Major winners Yuka Saso of Japan and South Korea’s Amy Yang will arrive full of confidence. Like in the men’s event, there is a healthy representation of Europe’s Solheim Cup players on show with eight teeing it up for Sweden, Denmark, Spain, France and Leona Maguire playing for Ireland.
What about LIV?
LIV players are not prevented from competing at the Olympics. However, qualification was based on world rankings and LIV players do not receive any ranking points for their 54-hole events, so they have, by and large, slid down the rankings. Despite winning the US Open in dramatic fashion, Bryson DeChambeau did not climb high enough in the rankings to earn selection for the American team. But seven of the LIV gang have made it to Paris, headed by 2023 Masters winner Jon Rahm, who is playing for Spain.
The venue:
The Paris Organising Committee has not had to look too far at all for the course to stage the Olympic Golf Tournament. Step forward Le Golf National, the host venue for the Open de France each year and in 2018 the first French venue to stage the Ryder Cup. It provided a memorable backdrop as Thomas Bjorn’s European team thrashed the Americans 17.5-10.5.
Le Golf National is widely recognised as one of the hardest tests on the DP World Tour circuit. There are no 28-under winning scores at this place! One notable feature is that there is water on three of the last four holes, including a daunting second shot over a water hazard at the long par-four 18th. Drama is never far away down the stretch and no player will be able to coast to a gold medal around this course with those last few holes to negotiate.