2021 men’s Olympic golf: Top 10 power rankings at Kasumigaseki CC
It took an extra year of waiting, but the second edition of golf’s current iteration in the Olympic Games is here.
Like with the women’s event, the men’s event features 60 players from around the globe competing for a medal after 72 holes of stroke play July 29-Aug. 1. There is no 36-hole cut.
The 60 men’s players hail from 34 nations and were determined via Official World Golf Ranking. All nations are capped at two players, though a nation can bring up to four players if they are all inside the top 15 in the OWGR.
The tournament venue is Kasumigaseki Country Club in Saitama, about 20 miles north of Tokyo. Unlike the 2016 Rio Olympics course that was constructed for the tournament, Kasumigaseki CC has been around since 1929.
KCC has hosted an array of national tournaments like the Japan Open, Japan Amateur, etc. Most recently, it hosted the 2010 Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship.
There is an East and West course on the property. The East is in play for the men, measuring 7,466 yards for a par 71 and slope rating of 131. Saitama is right around sea level, so the course should play close to its true yardage.
The three par-5s can top out at 640, 586 and 632 yards and all par-4s can stretch up to or past 200 yards. The par-5s are fairly standard distances, though all are listed on the card at 343 yards or longer with the 18th stretching to 500 yards.
KCC is a parkland style layout with water and bunkers coming in to play throughout the course.
Architect/course designer Tom Fazio was brought in to update the course in prep for the world’s best. He lengthened KCC, as well as conjoined the course’s distinctive two greens per hole into one green per hole. Trees were also removed or moved and bunkers were adjusted to combat the length modern players have.
KCC used to have different grass types for different seasons, but it now features Zoyzia on the tees, fairway and rough and bentgrass greens.
Rain is possible during the practice rounds. The forecast looks like it will gave way to dry tournament days with temperatures in the 70s-90s and light winds.
The field this week is relatively weak as only three players in the top 10 in the world are present. A number of high-profile players like Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, etc., opted out.
World No. 1 Jon Rahm and No. 6 Bryson DeChambeau were late scratches due to positive COVID-19 tests.
Without much course history to go off, I’ve assembled this week’s rankings based heavily on recent form. I’ll even try to play pop psychologist to try to determine which players really want to be here and will be fired up to win a medal under unique and less than desirable Olympic circumstances.
In the case of South Korea’s Sungjae Im and Si-Woo Kim, a medal could exempt them from mandatory military service. In lesser, but still important stakes, some players may be eager to add another line to their resume by succeeding at a new event in the game.
The Olympics do not pay out prize money, though there are financial and other incentives depending on a player’s country.
With that said, this is far from a normal Olympics and Olympics experience. The athlete village does not have the same buzz in a country still heavily in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s a lot to chew on, but it’s time to whittle the 60-player field down to the top 10 who will be in the hunt for the podium: