Sport’s greatest occasion is in full swing over in Paris with the Olympics offering fascinating drama for just a few days already. Now quite than an uninvited visitor wanting over the fence, golf fortunately has its personal half to play within the Olympics, starting on Thursday.
The questions are apparent – how and why has golf ended up becoming a member of conventional Olympic sports activities like athletics and swimming as a part of the Video games? Right here at AMERICAN GOLF, allow us to attempt to present just a few solutions and a little bit of color as to how golf will look in Paris.
Historical past:
Elite degree males’s skilled golf conjures up pictures of multi-million greenback pay cheques, non-public jets and a pampered life-style. Issues that we don’t readily affiliate with the Olympian values of Baron Pierre de Coubertin. For some, the sight of golfers, contemporary from a Main Championship, teeing it up in Olympic colors alongside athletes who’ve been making ready for 4 years for this one shot at life-changing glory won’t ever sit proper.
Golf was really staged within the 1900 and 1904 Olympics, however the 1904 version in St Louis highlighted the issue with 77 gamers cut up between the USA and Canada. Remarkably, George Lyon, one of many three Canadians to play, gained the person gold!
From there golf slipped away till a 2009 assembly of the Worldwide Olympic Committee marked the return of the game to Olympic competitors for the 2016 Video games in Rio de Janeiro. {Golfing} stars like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods had been a part of the game’s formal presentation to the IOC by The Royal and Historic and the US Golf Affiliation, the sport’s two ruling our bodies. They efficiently argued that the Olympics’ international attain would enhance curiosity and participation in golf outdoors of its conventional heartlands.
So there it was in Rio eight years in the past returning to the Olympic fold. Many prime gamers opted to overlook the occasion, but it surely produced a unbelievable ending as Justin Rose, competing for Nice Britain, defeated his nice buddy and Ryder Cup accomplice – and reigning Open Champion on the time – Henrik Stenson (Sweden) on the ultimate gap to win the gold medal. The enjoyment on Rose’s face on the gold being draped round his neck was priceless. No person wanted to inform him how particular it was to be an Olympic Champion.
Format:
The Olympic golf event follows the instance of all 4 Majors and important occasions on {the golfing} calendar by being a 72-hole strokeplay occasion. The participant with the bottom cumulative rating throughout the 4 rounds will likely be awarded the gold medal with silver going to the runner-up and the third-placed participant receiving the bronze.
Medals won’t be shared. If gamers’ scores are tied within the main positions, there will likely be a play-off to finalise the medals. That occurred in Tokyo three years in the past when seven gamers completed in a tie for third. Fairly than everybody obtain a medal, they performed sudden demise to resolve the bronze medal. The play-off was ultimately gained by CT Pan of Chinese language Taipei, beating Rory McIlroy and two of that 12 months’s Main winners Hideki Matsuyama and Collin Morikawa within the course of.
Regardless of most international locations having two gamers of their group, there isn’t any group format. Just one gold medal is up for grabs, that means {that a} very unhealthy begin on day one may instantly rule gamers out of competition and theoretically depart them with little left to play for on the remaining three days. There are discussions about whether or not to alter this forward of both the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles or the next version in Australia’s Gold Coast.
The boys’s event will likely be performed throughout 4 days beginning on Thursday. The ladies compete from Wednesday to Saturday subsequent week (6-10 August).
Discipline:
We have now simply accomplished the boys’s Main season with The Open at Royal Troon and one of the notable variations between a kind of 4 occasions and the Olympics is the dimensions of discipline.
At Troon, 158 gamers teed up, which was 98 greater than will compete in Paris. For the third Video games in a row, solely 60 gamers will compete. What’s extra, there’s a larger stability of nationalities throughout the sector, quite than being dominated by People as is the case within the Majors. To extend golf’s international attraction, one in all its huge pitches to the IOC, was to make sure a large unfold of nations collaborating. The 2021 males’s competitors in Tokyo confirmed what was attainable with Slovakia (Rory Sabbatini – silver) and Chinese language Taipei (CT Pan – bronze) strolling away with medals.
In consequence, 38 nations may have golfers in France – 32 within the males’s occasion and 33 within the girls’s. The USA may have probably the most with 4 males and three girls by advantage of being ranked contained in the world’s prime 15. Most different international locations have two opponents.
Who’s representing Staff GB?
Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpatrick will don Staff GB Colors for the boys and Georgia Corridor and Charley Hull will accomplish that for the ladies.
Which stars are enjoying in Paris?
World primary Scottie Scheffler headlines the sector. The Masters Champion, for whom that was one in all his six event victories in 2024, will goal for a magnifique seventh in Paris. However he’ll anticipate stiff competitors from fellow American Xander Schauffele, contemporary from his Open success at Royal Troon simply 9 days in the past. That was his second Main of the 12 months after his US PGA triumph in Might, whereas he’s additionally the defending Olympic Champion, having gained gold in Tokyo in 2021.
Rory McIlroy will likely be again for his second crack on the Olympics and with a fast likelihood of redemption following his missed minimize at The Open. He will likely be representing Eire alongside his nice buddy Shane Lowry, with whom he gained the PGA Tour’s Zurich Traditional pairs occasion in New Orleans in April. Lowry, the 2019 Open Champion at Royal Portrush, was Eire’s flagbearer for the Opening Ceremony alongside the River Seine final Friday.
There will likely be loads of Ryder Cup flavour concerning the occasion with among the European heroes from final October’s win at Marco Simone in Rome donning nationwide colors as an alternative of the blue of the continent. These embrace rising star Ludvig Aberg (Sweden), Viktor Hovland (Norway), Nicolai Hojgaard (Denmark) and Sepp Straka (Austria).
Within the girls’s occasion, world quantity Nelly Korda will look to defend her Olympic title for the USA. New Zealand’s Lydia Ko has gained bronze in 2016 and silver in 2021, so she would love to finish her set. Whereas 2024 Main winners Yuka Saso of Japan and South Korea’s Amy Yang will arrive stuffed with confidence. Like within the males’s occasion, there’s a wholesome illustration of Europe’s Solheim Cup gamers on present with eight teeing it up for Sweden, Denmark, Spain, France and Leona Maguire enjoying for Eire.
What about LIV?
LIV gamers usually are not prevented from competing on the Olympics. Nonetheless, qualification was based mostly on world rankings and LIV gamers don’t obtain any rating factors for his or her 54-hole occasions, in order that they have, by and enormous, slid down the rankings. Regardless of profitable the US Open in dramatic vogue, Bryson DeChambeau didn’t climb excessive sufficient within the rankings to earn choice for the American group. However seven of the LIV gang have made it to Paris, headed by 2023 Masters winner Jon Rahm, who’s enjoying for Spain.
The venue:
The Paris Organising Committee has not needed to look too far in any respect for the course to stage the Olympic Golf Match. Step ahead Le Golf Nationwide, the host venue for the Open de France annually and in 2018 the primary French venue to stage the Ryder Cup. It supplied a memorable backdrop as Thomas Bjorn’s European group thrashed the People 17.5-10.5.
Le Golf Nationwide is broadly recognised as one of many hardest checks on the DP World Tour circuit. There are not any 28-under profitable scores at this place! One notable function is that there’s water on three of the final 4 holes, together with a frightening second shot over a water hazard on the lengthy par-four 18th. Drama isn’t distant down the stretch and no participant will be capable to coast to a gold medal round this course with these previous few holes to barter.
