Different, Yet Consistent Olympic Golf Views
/Dottie Pepper is an Olympic dreamer but at ESPN.com she defends players for skipping in light of format, disease and scheduling issues.
Pepper writes:
The return of golf as an Olympic sport was flawed from the start, not only because it is an individual event (players qualify based on nationality but do not play as a team) but also because of the 72-hole, stroke-play format that is all-too-commonplace in today's professional golf world. Using the group-play concept that has proven so successful in soccer, match-play based on world rankings or even a mixed male-female team format would have been an exciting alternative.
What's more, there should have been better cooperation among the organizations involved with the events most impacted by the Olympics, namely the PGA Tour, European Tour and PGA of America. The LPGA has yet to have a player say she won't participate, but I think this is in large part due to golfers' understanding that their organization will benefit from the TV and media exposure much more than the men's tours will.
Gary D'Amato feels the players are using the Zika virus as a "convenient excuse" to get out of the Olympics, but is in line with Pepper in agreeing that format and scheduling make the player view understandable.
For others, though, I suspect the virus has become a convenient excuse.
Some players simply don't want to be bothered with the Olympics. They don't want to travel to Brazil on the heels of two major championships in July (British Open and PGA) and a few weeks before the FedEx Cup playoffs and the Ryder Cup. It's too much golf packed into a couple months. Hardly anyone plays more than two straight weeks these days.
Plus, the Olympic format is unimaginative: 72 holes of stroke play, identical to the weekly PGA Tour grind. Sixty men and 60 women will qualify based on the respective men's and women's world rankings, with a maximum of four players representing any one country.
"The amount of golf the guys are playing, the bottom line is they play in a number of huge events — all the World Golf Championship events, all the majors," Stricker said. "It's a busy time of year. I'm not speaking for everybody, but I think that's what the concern is. There's a lot of golf being played."
So the narratives, as we head to the Olympics, remain...why (is golf in the Games), why (is the format do dull) and why (was the scheduling so bad).
Despite the issues of vision, greed and oversaturation of product that these points raise, there is great news: few are questioning golf's legitimacy as a sport, and instead questioning particulars like format and schedules.
Which speaks to the strength of the sport, but the need for more vision in trying to secure golf as an Olympic sport.