Golf’s elite more open to Olympics but majors still the summit

The US will have just four players in the field – new Open and US PGA champion Xander Schauffele, world No.1 Scottie Scheffler, two-time major champion Collin Morikawa and 2023 US Open winner Wyndham Clark.

Tue, 23 Jul, 2024 - 06:10

Brendan O'Brien

Eight years later and the regrets at pulling out of golf’s return to the Olympic Games still linger. No, this isn’t another retread of Rory McIlroy’s highly-debated Rio swerve in 2016. Jason Day is another man to have changed his tune since.

Day was world No.1 at the time having won the US PGA the year before, but he was first in line after McIlroy to announce his intention to stay away as the sport was reintegrated to the Olympic fold for the first time in over a century.

Zika, he said. As so many did. Shane Lowry revealed four years later that his wife had been five weeks pregnant at the time of the Games and that was enough for him given the scare stories going around about the virus at the time.

He was in good company. None of the world’s very best were on hand at the Olympic Golf Course at Barra da Tijuca. Day aside, world number two and three, Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth, both had absentee notes. McIlroy was ranked fourth at the time.

Katie Taylor, hardly the controversial type, spoke for a broader Olympic congregation when posting ‘another one bites the dust’ after Day and Lowry served notice of their no-shows and the Queenslander looks back now and wishes he had come to a different decision.

“I do. It's nice to be able to play really well last year and get myself into position and then kind of start off well at the start of the year because that's kind of one of my goals is to get in the Olympic team. I've never done it before.

“I had an opportunity [in 2016] and kind of wish I did end up going in the end. At the end of the day, I was [No.]1 or 2 in the world going into that week, going into the Olympics, and had a legitimate chance obviously with the way I was playing.

“You live and you learn and kind of move on. But, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.”

Australia were represented by Marcus Fraser and Scott Hend in 2016, Fraser finishing in a tie for fifth. In Tokyo three years ago it was Marc Leishman who was another refusenik when it came to Brazil. Ireland had a 44-year old Padraig Harrington and a Seamus Power who was not nearly yet the Seamus Power we came to know through his performances Stateside on the PGA Tour. Justin Rose took the men’s gold, Henrik Stenson the silver and Matt Kuchar bronze.

Golf still isn’t sewn into the fabric of the games. Like tennis and football, it will never rank up there as the pinnacle of the sport’s achievement and there is legitimate reason to query and quibble with its presence because of that.

But there is a gathering realisation that this is something to be embraced. The fact that the US PGA has been brought forward through the summer has left the Olympics with a small but sufficient window in which to attract enough glances from these passers-by.

A whole host of players were asked about their thoughts on the upcoming tournament at Le Golf National during last week’s Open Championship in Royal Troon. Some answered curtly, which was understandable given the job at hand. Others’ faces lit up like schoolkids.

Adrian Meronk, who tied for 51st at the Kasumigaseki Country Club outside Tokyo, reminisced about his childhood when he watched the Games with his sports-mad dad, and how the notion of standing on the podium gave him “goosebumps”.

Thorbjorn Olesen played in the Rio hosting, missed out in Japan, but made the Paris event one of his main goals from a long way out. He can only see golf at the Olympics cementing its place more and more with the players and the fans.

“Since it came on, it's just grown. It's getting bigger and bigger. It's definitely something players are talking about. It can only go one way. It's only every fourth year, so that makes it pretty big, and being able to play for your country is always something special.”

Lowry said much the same just ten minutes after finishing his last round at The Open and whilst he was still trying to absorb his disappointment at missing out on the Claret Jug. He had arrived at the course on Sunday morning with a Team Ireland bag on his shoulder.

There were over 150 golfers in Ayrshire for the year’s last major. Only 60 will tee it up in the men’s Olympic individual event when it starts next Thursday week. Same with the women’s. And it isn’t just the volume that makes this more gettable.

No Bryson DeChambeau, the current US Open champion. No Patrick Cantlay, Brooks Koepka, Tony Finau, Sahith Theegala, Keegan Bradley, Billy Horschel… Adam Scott and Justin Rose, both of them top-ten finishers at Troon, won’t be playing either.

Some of those who will be teeing off will know the course well given Le Golf National has been the venue for the French Open for over 20 years, while a handful – mostly Europeans – played there at the 2018 Ryder Cup too.

Ryan Fox described it as a “brutal” golf course and, while the format will be the same as any regular tour event over four rounds, the New Zealander expects it to feel more like a “shootout” just because of the uniqueness inherent in the Games.

His countryman Daniel Hillier put it that a gold medal would rank at the very top of potential achievements in the game, Meronk said it probably stands at a mezzanine level just below that of the game’s four traditional majors. That’s a man flitting around the edges of the game’s top tier, though.

“It would probably be right under there, just under a major,” said Matt Fitzpatrick, who will play for Team GB. “I was saying out on the golf course to Richard [Mansell] it's not something that golf has put on the calendar at the start of the year that's a must.

“The four majors are number one, and probably you look at the Race to Dubai, FedEx title, that's number two, as well as The Players and the BMW at Wentworth. I wouldn't say it's always been high on a golfer's agenda, but this year it is.”

That sounds about right.

CONNECT WITH US TODAY