While escaping the heat for a couple of hours, I had the privilege of sitting in a corner in the players’ lounge – the athletes’ area as it was labelled – at Le Golf National in Paris and watched some of the Olympics on the giant TV screen in the facility.
And, to those who still feel that golf doesn’t belong in an Olympics, I would have gladly traded places with you, if it would help you understand that the sport does. Perhaps most importantly, the players who were there will know golf is a worthy inclusion. I will again go as far as to say that the Olympics are the unofficial fifth Major, held every four years.
As a golfer, like Scottie Scheffler, Lydia Ko and even those who won in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, I’d have that Olympic gold medal right next to my Major trophies in my cabinet at home. And if I was a winner of the men’s PGA Championship and only had room for the Wanamaker Trophy or an Olympic gold, I’d choose the latter. As for the women, I’d replace a Chevron or Evian Championship with an Olympic medal.
Our own Major champion Ashleigh Buhai speaks about her experience and that the crowds were bigger than any she’s encountered in her career. Erik van Rooyen was close to tears as he spoke about the privilege of representing South Africa in the Olympics.
I watched as the coach of 2021 Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama relived each shot during the third round of the Paris Olympics. He sat on the edge of his seat in that athletes’ area and, oblivious to others, replayed the shot that the Japanese golfer had hit. To hear the crowds outside and to even see players back on the practice putting green after their rounds showed that they weren’t there to have a holiday.
I heard that some felt the individual format, taking 120 golfers from 38 different countries – 60 men and 60 women – was too loaded in favour of those at the top of the world rankings and that a team competition was required. To those I say, go watch LIV Golf if it’s an extension of a team experience you want.
Then again, you will always find the naysayers. Those will be the people who were most likely to be in Parys and not Paris, those with pre-conceived ideas who simply don’t believe that golf should be in the Olympics. They probably also feel that tennis shouldn’t be an Olympic inclusion, but try telling that to Novak Djokovic or Rafa Nadal.
In her column, Buhai argues that perhaps the crowds weren’t all golf fans, but they were sports fans who wanted to have the Olympic experience, whatever the sport was. That might well be true to an extent as she makes a good point. The crowds everywhere were simply phenomenal, the best I have experienced since going to the Games from 1992.
And in making that point, she made me think. We’re always talking about ‘growing the game’. What better way to grow it than to expose it to sports fans who aren’t regular golf watchers? If there are just a thousand people who had never watched or played golf before who are now converts, then the Olympics has done its job for golf, probably more so than any other recent ‘grow the game’ idea has.
– This column first appeared in the September 2024 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine.
Photo: Andrew Redington/Getty Images
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