When the decision was made in 2009, it seemed like a great idea to bring golf back to the Olympics.
“Don’t forget, Tiger Woods was the most recognized athlete on the planet at the time,” recalled Paul Goydos, who represented the PGA Tour on the original six-member USA Golf Federation board of directors that was formed to manage the U.S. men’s and women’s Olympic teams.
So it likely wasn’t a coincidence that the week before the International Olympic Committee voted to reinstate golf, Woods had won the FedEx Cup playoffs for the second time in three years, capping a 2009 season in which he won more than $20 million in prize money and was in the midst of a record 281-week stretch atop the Official World Golf Rankings.
At that time, it had to be easy for IOC members to envision a smiling Tiger receiving a gold medal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, while 4 billion people around the world were tuning into the 2016 Summer Games. Even Tiger was talking about such possibilities back then. That, of course, will never happen because lot has happened to Woods since 2009, on and off the course, and the world of golf is evolving as well, meaning there will be different storylines in Rio as golf returns to the Olympics in August after a 112-year hiatus.
One unanticipated development has been that some tour pros don’t seem excited about the prospect of teeing it up during the Summer Olympics. In fact, four players with major championship titles – Adam Scott (Australia), Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel (South Africa) and Vijay Singh (Fiji) – have announced they will bypass the competition, for various reasons, and Australian Marc Leishman also has said he won’t play. There could be others, too, who withdraw before or after the July 11 cutoff date to determine the top 60 eligible competitors.
At least Jordan Spieth, Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler and Dustin Johnson – all projected to make the U.S. team based on their current rankings among the top 15 in the world – all say they’re looking forward to playing for the red white and blue when the men compete Aug. 11-14 on the Gil Hanse-designed Olympic Course. (The women’s competition is Aug. 17-20 on the same course.)
In some respects, though, the lack of excitement among golfers is understandable. As Scott noted, nobody who qualifies for the men’s or women’s golf competition grew up dreaming about winning a gold medal, as many Olympians in track and field, swimming, boxing and gymnastics often talk about as they train.
That’s because there are no golfers old enough to remember the two times the sport was part of the Olympics: 1900 in Paris and 1904 in St. Louis, when both competitions were low-profile sideshows to World’s Fairs. That was so long ago, most golf clubs had hickory shafts and some players were still using gutta perchagolf balls made up of dried tree sap. There were only 22 golfers (10 men and 12 women) who competed in 1900, when Americans Charles Sands shot 82-85 to win the men’s gold and Margaret Abbott shot 47 to win the nine-hole women’s title. In 1904, there were 77 competitors (74 Americans, three Canadians, no women) when St. Louis resident Albert Lambert won gold in front of the home crowd.
Given golf’s lack of Olympic history, you might not judge Scott so harshly — as Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller and others have — for making it clear he’d rather win a major than an Olympic medal and that he’s planning his busy summer schedule accordingly, especially with three majors being contested in a seven-week period that ends two weeks before the Olympics. Singh’s excuse was flimsy, citing the “timing” of the Olympics and the Zika virus scare.
The tournament format also might be a turnoff to some players, because it’s merely another 72-hole stroke-play event, with no team component. As Goydos points out, such a format makes the competition seem like “just another World Golf Championship” – that is, a big event with a limited field and no cut. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a team competition, too? That always stirs the players’ competitive fires and fuels fan emotions, like at the Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup and Solheim Cup.
“To me, in my opinion, winning an Olympic gold medal has to be the most important thing in your sport,” Goydos said. “That’s just not the case in golf.”
Whether it’s the pinnacle achievement or not, Goydos hopes that golf in the Olympics is a success, that it generates unforgettable moments, builds its own history and continues for perpetuity. For now, however, golf is only guaranteed as an Olympic sport through the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
It’s unfortunate that golf didn’t make its Olympic comeback in a country where the sport thrives, such as the U.S., England or Australia, rather than in Brazil, a country that didn’t have a golf course until now. But the IOC didn’t think that would be a problem in 2009, back when someone named Tiger Woods was dominating the golf world.
