What Should Be Done To Improve The Olympic Golf Competition

It is supposedly good for expansion of golf to have it in the Olympics, but there are some things that might make it better and more inclusive.

Right now, there are only 60 players in the men’s Olympic golf competition, and they are chosen by world rankings, in part, which most everyone but the ranking people agree are slightly flawed because they are done over a two-year period. The rankings were probably used as a measure because at the time golf was being selected as a new sport, Tiger Woods was playing well and may have been No. 1. The Olympic Committee probably thought that it would mean Woods was a lock to play, driving high ratings for the telecast. The organization, after all, needs money to operate, and money-generating, high-rating names are important for the success of the Olympics.

What’s shocking, though, is that there are at least 209 countries with golf courses out of 245 nations in the world, and yet only 35 countries are represented in the men’s competition. The lowest ranked player, Udayan Mane of India, is participating. Meanwhile, Rafael da Silveira Becker of Brazil, who plays on the Korn Ferry Tour and attended Witchita State, and Luis Fernando Barco of Peru who plays on the PGA Tour LatinoAmerica and attended Purdue, have no pathway to enter.

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There’s nothing wrong with Udayan Mane, but the idea that other countries are shut out doesn’t seem right because golf is more widespread than the 35 countries who are in Olympic golf. More people should have a chance, just like the Jamaican bobsled team

How widespread has golf become? Russia started creating courses back in 1994, and they now have 32 of them. Golf is recognized by the Russian Olympic Committee. There was a Russian Open, which was on the European Tour, from 1993 to 2015. There are no Russian golfers playing in the Olympics.

There are plenty of golf courses in places you would not ever expect. There’s a golf course in Lithuania. There’s a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course in Turkmenistan called Ashgabat Golf Club. There’s even a 9-hole course in Romania called – not making this up– the Transilvania Golf Club. And still only 35 countries are represented in the Olympics.

What might be a better way to select competitors, and what might be more inclusionary, is to combine country exemptions with regional qualifying, more or less like the U.S. Open (which exempts the top 60 in the world) and to have the non-exempt countries compete, like the old World Cup of Golf, for a chance to get into the event.

The World Cup of Golf, which started as the Canada Cup, had qualifiers in many locations around the world, with two-man teams. They played three formats, and there were both team and individual scores, which might or might not be the best way for Olympic golf. Regardless, taking a page from the World Cup qualifying, two-man teams from each country could go to regional locations closest to them around the globe and compete for a spot in the Olympics.

Qualifying could be held regionally in Austral-Asia, in Africa, in Europe, in the Americas. A certain number of qualifiers from each region, with no more than two players per country, could then advance either to a sectional type qualifying or directly to the Olympics.

That way, all golfing countries would be able to participate. It would also generate a list of alternates in the event that someone can’t play for one reason or another in the future.

In addition, to allow for the additional entries, the field for Oympic golf should be expanded to 120 or as many players as daylight would permit for what would surely be slow rounds of golf.

If the IOC or IGF wants to allow any country with players in the top 15 to have as many as four golfers, that’s on them. It seems somewhat unfair to the countries other than the U.S., but not unreasonably so because golf is a game that is unpredictable. If they want to continue with their system of having two players from each country represented in the top 60, let that happen. But for the rest of the world, there should be a way for players outside of that number to qualify.

Should golf continue to be in future Olympic games, the International Golf Federation really needs to take a look at broadening the field to include more countries that play golf.

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