Olympics: How LIV Golf might help enhance Males’s Competitors in 2028

You’ve got seen footage of Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, and Wyndham Clark all posing collectively as a part of Staff USA, however are they actually competing collectively on a group?

Probably not.

This 12 months’s Males’s and Ladies’s Olympic Golf Competitors, a 72-hole particular person stroke play competitors, mirrors that of a PGA Tour Signature Occasion. Like these tournaments held at Harbour City, Cromwell, and Quail Hole, Scheffler, Schauffele, Morikawa, and Clark are all competing towards one another. It’s golf in its purest kind this week in Paris—each man for themselves, taking part in their very own ball, placing out on every gap.

However the Olympics ought to additional distinguish itself throughout the golf sphere and take a look at LIV Golf for inspiration.

Together with its 54-hole particular person competitors, LIV Golf employs a group competitors inside that very same event. 13 groups of 4 compete with one another, and by the top of the event, every participant’s rating is tallied. Whichever group has the bottom mixed rating amongst these 4 gamers wins.

So, for example, final week, at LIV Golf’s occasion in the UK, Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII group, which incorporates Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Caleb Surratt, and Kieran Vincent, mixed to attain 26-under-par, three strokes higher than the second-placed group, Rippers GC. Legion XIII consequently took residence the group title, whereas Rahm completed on high of the leaderboard within the particular person competitors.

Think about if the Olympics employed this similar format.

Photograph By Brendan Moran/Sportsfile by way of Getty Pictures

A mixed 72-hole rating for Staff Eire that options Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy? What about Spain with Jon Rahm and David Puig? Sweden’s Ludvig Åberg and Alex Noren would do effectively, as would Nice Britain’s Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpatrick. Certainly, the South Korean contingency of Tom Kim and Byeong Hun An would make some noise. And so, too, would the Individuals, who, underneath this format, could be restricted to 2 gamers as a substitute of their present allotment of 4. Staff USA would haven’t any bother, although, as Scheffler and Schauffele would enter as huge favorites, provided that they mixed to win three of 4 majors this season.

Each shot would rely, and gamers would play for one another, for his or her groups, and for his or her international locations.

Discuss of instituting group play at Riviera has already commenced, and the Worldwide Golf Federation, which oversees Olympic golf, ought to implement it.

Maybe they’d contemplate a mixed-team format, much like the Grant Thornton Invitational, incorporating the very best feminine gamers on the planet from the LPGA. Most followers in all places would welcome that, and it could shed extra gentle on the ladies’s sport. Seeing Nelly Korda group up with Scheffler could be wonderful, and there’s no higher technique to put it than that.

However the Olympics have a unprecedented alternative for 2028. What makes the Ryder Cup—the most important group occasion in golf—so compelling each two years is the eagerness shared among the many members, not for themselves however for his or her nation and one another. They play in codecs devoted to group play.

The Olympics ought to institute the identical for 2028. They need to differentiate themselves from common PGA Tour competitions and look to LIV Golf for solutions.

Jack Milko is a golf employees author for SB Nation’s Taking part in By way of. Be sure you take a look at @_PlayingThrough for extra golf protection. You possibly can observe him on Twitter @jack_milko as effectively.