SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — What was intended to be a celebration of golf at the Olympics soon became a reminder that the royal and ancient game still had a long way to go before it could truly be recognized.
With Justin Rose and Xander Schauffele competing at last year’s Genesis Invitational, the International Golf Federation felt it would be a good time to promote Olympic golf at Riviera Country Club at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Rose brought home the gold medal she won in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, when golf returned to the Olympics after a 112-year absence. Schauffele brought home the gold medal in Tokyo, and another Olympian from the village showed up to pose for a photo.
The golfers didn’t recognize swimming great Janet Evans until she pulled out of her bag a small stick containing the four gold medals she won in Seoul and Barcelona.
“Just a minute,” Evans said, pulling a silver medal from his bag.
There are great athletes among the Olympic athletes and golfers, but they are not yet the same.
Hall of Famers Nelly Korda and Inbee Park are on the short list of Olympic golf champions. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler joins them on Sunday. All are better known for their non-Olympic accomplishments. At least equally.
The question of whether golf is an Olympic sport and whether golf really matters to players who are used to competing for money and themselves should have been answered by now. Korda said his heart rate was higher on the podium in Tokyo than on the golf course. Schaeffler cried during the national anthem.
The sample size is still small, but in a sport with the most level playing field, the gold medalists were some of the biggest stars. All five were major champions. Four of them were world No. 1s.
But it’s still not the pinnacle of sports.
Schaeffler is an Olympic gold medalist and Masters champion, while Schauffele won his second major of the year at the British Open two weeks ago.
Golf has four major tournaments a year. Most other sports have the Olympics once a year for several years.
That fact was on display again on Monday in beach volleyball against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, where world No. 2 Taryn Kloss and Kristin Nuss were knocked out by Canada.
“It was definitely a little heartbreaking,” Nuss said. “We came here because we wanted to bring gold back to the United States. That’s been our goal for the last four years.”
Four years.
The same goes for swimming and athletics, gymnastics and judo, archery and badminton.
It’s also fair to compare golf to tennis. Tennis also has four Grand Slam tournaments a year. Olympic tennis is close to the fifth. Rafa Nadal skipped Wimbledon due to a hip injury and decided to play in the Olympics at Roland Garros. He’s dominant on clay. It’s hard to imagine any golfer skipping a major tournament at the Olympics.
But tennis returned to the Olympics in 1988 in Seoul, 10 years before Korda was born. Time will tell. Rory McIlroy thinks it could take 50 years for golf to feel like a major Olympic sport. It might not take that long.
Golf moves slowly, though. Golfers who have spent time in other venues have seen the intensity, the heightened emotions, and the disappointment of early eliminations. Victor Perez hit his opening tee shot in golf, and the medals were not decided for nearly 81 hours. In the meantime, 60 players (excluding two who withdrew due to injury) continued to play until the end.
Golf is different.
There was another positive moment for golf at the Summer Olympics, but it didn’t come as a surprise to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.
Bach was in the men’s event at Kasumigaseki Country Club at the last Olympics. He was standing under a tent next to the first tee when Paul Casey, who was playing right next to him and waiting for the group ahead of him to hit their shots on the green, walked over and started talking to the IOC leader.
A few minutes later, Casey was introduced and whisked away. Bach was heard saying, “In all my years of Olympics, this is the first time an athlete has spoken to me during a competition.”
It’s golf.
The downside is that there are only six medals: three for men and three for women. Tennis has singles and doubles, with mixed doubles being introduced at the 2012 London Olympics.
There has been a call for team medals for the past eight years. Why not use the old World Cup format where there is an individual winner with the lowest score and the team winner is determined by adding up the scores of the two players?
It’s not that simple. The IOC doesn’t like awarding two medals in one event, and that’s fair. Why should Schaeffler win two golds in one week (the U.S. would have won the team medal by six strokes over Denmark)? A mixed team is likely at Riviera, and that would add a little flavor.
Meanwhile, golf has grown more and more popular with each Olympic Games.
“Golf is an exciting game. It’s an exciting sport,” Schauffele said. “It’s not a race to the finish line. We play over four days, it’s a longer race.”
But when it got there, it was a sprint: a seven-man playoff for bronze in Tokyo, a dynamic finish at Le Golf National where 12 players were competing for medals, half of them gold, and a golden moment when Scheffler shot a 29 on the back nine.
The tournament has been hailed as one of the most dramatic of the year, and talk of Sunday’s back nine will continue until the next Olympics.
Golf may look different than other Olympic sports, but it is a sport suited for the Olympics.
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
