Golf at the Olympics

Jawgap

Chivito550 wrote: »

The same was said about tennis in 1988, and now it is considered the 5th major, part of the Golden Slam. It won't ever become the pinnacle of singles tennis but it arguably is the pinnacle now of doubles and mixed doubles. With proper format, golf could become the pinnacle of team golf. Stroke play needs to go for Tokyo.

Indeed, but like basketball, it has a completely different set of traditions, different history etc compared to golf.

Golf may be a success in the Olympics, hopefully it will be - or it may not. But just because a sport reintroduced into the Olympics goes on to be a success, it doesn't mean that all sports will go on to be a success if put into the Games.

Rugby is a case in point - you could never have 'proper' 15-a-side rugby as an Olympic sport, but I reckon 7s will be a huge success.

Putting it back in for Rio was a mistake - it would have been better to have been put in for London.

Joe_ Public

True about tennis. Though I think golf faces a much harder struggle for several reasons. For one thing there's more financial depth in golf, I don't believe the top stars need the Olympic profile as much as tennis. And the tennis calendar isn't quite as loaded as the golf one. The Fed Ex equivalent in tennis only incorporates the very elite stars and only takes up a few days in London. The Ryder Cup equivalent is the Davis/Fed Cups which bear no comparison. It may get there, sure, but I think it will take time and probably some format changes too.

Chivito550

Jawgap wrote: »

Indeed, but like basketball, it has a completely different set of traditions, different history etc compared to golf.

Golf may be a success in the Olympics, hopefully it will be - or it may not. But just because a sport reintroduced into the Olympics goes on to be a success, it doesn't mean that all sports will go on to be a success if put into the Games.

Rugby is a case in point - you could never have 'proper' 15-a-side rugby as an Olympic sport, but I reckon 7s will be a huge success.

Putting it back in for Rio was a mistake - it would have been better to have been put in for London.

Is it golf or rugby 7s you think should have been brought in for London?

Either way, they'd have to have applied for Olympic status 4 years earlier than they did for that to happen.

Rugby 7s will be massive. They've scrapped the 7s World Cup now that they are an Olympic sport.

It wouldn't work for 15s as it is impossible to have a competition in a 16-21 day period. Rugby 15s could do with the exposure though. There's a sport stuck in traditional markets if ever there was one!

Jawgap

Chivito550 wrote: »

Is it golf or rugby 7s you think should have been brought in for London?

Either way, they'd have to have applied for Olympic status 4 years earlier than they did for that to happen.

Rugby 7s will be massive. They've scrapped the 7s World Cup now that they are an Olympic sport.

It wouldn't work for 15s as it is impossible to have a competition in a 16-21 day period. Rugby 15s could do with the exposure though. There's a sport stuck in traditional markets if ever there was one!

Golf (but putting rugby in for London would have made as much sense for that sport as it would have for golf).

As an aside, the efforts to get rugby back in to the Olympics go back to the 1980s - it almost got accepted for 1988.

And as you point out it wouldn't work in it's most recognisable and most competitive format - which proves my point that the Olympics are not, as a matter of course, suitable for every sport!!!!!!! :D:D

Chivito550

Joe_ Public wrote: »

True about tennis. Though I think golf faces a much harder struggle for several reasons. For one thing there's more financial depth in golf, I don't believe the top stars need the Olympic profile as much as tennis. And the tennis calendar isn't quite as loaded as the golf one. The Fed Ex equivalent in tennis only incorporates the very elite stars and only takes up a few days in London. The Ryder Cup equivalent is the Davis/Fed Cups which bear no comparison. It may get there, sure, but I think it will take time and probably some format changes too.

Couldn’t disagree more. Tennis has just as many high profile events as golf. Like golf it has it’s 4 majors (which unlike golf, are spread around the world, rather than having 3 in the same country, and 2 being practically the exact same event in all but name). The end of year championships are determined based on performances throughout the year. On the men’s side there’s the ATP Masters 1000 events which are massive events. These include glamourous events in Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Shanghai, Madrid etc. The women have their big non-Grand Slam and Year End Championship events too which include Indian Wells and Miami too.

I find it a bit uninformed that you think the Ryder Cup has a bigger profile to the Davis Cup. The Ryder Cup is massive in USA, GB and Ireland. It’s not even that big in continental Europe, and the fact the event rarely goes there (1997 and now one coming up soon) is testament to where the main audience is. Outside of this, nobody cares. I lived in Australia during the Miracle of Medinah, and I stayed away from the result in work all day, had the final day of action on record from the middle of the night. I was petrified somebody would spoil it for me, but nobody did, because frankly nobody even knew it was going on. The Ryder Cup is awesome, but it is a restricted competition. The Davis Cup and the Fed Cup are not. Every country in the world is eligible, and judging by the electric atmosphere at the matches, and the reaction of Federer and Murray in the last 2 years when their team’s took the title, you can see just how high a profile the competition has.

Chivito550

Jawgap wrote: »

Golf (but putting rugby in for London would have made as much sense for that sport as it would have for golf).

As an aside, the efforts to get rugby back in to the Olympics go back to the 1980s - it almost got accepted for 1988.

And as you point out it wouldn't work in it's most recognisable and most competitive format - which proves my point that the Olympics are not, as a matter of course, suitable for every sport!!!!!!! :D:D

That's a scheduling issue though. I'm sure rugby union would love to be part of the Olympics in the 15s format. As I said, the sport could do with the exposure. It's a minority sport on a world level. And to gain Olympic status, the sport needs to be played to a certain level in a certain number of countries. I'd guess that 15s would fail in this regard, while 7s is more globalised, with nationals like Portugal and Kenya being competitive.

Jawgap

Chivito550 wrote: »

That's a scheduling issue though. I'm sure rugby union would love to be part of the Olympics in the 15s format. As I said, the sport could do with the exposure. It's a minority sport on a world level. And to gain Olympic status, the sport needs to be played to a certain level in a certain number of countries. I'd guess that 15s would fail in this regard, while 7s is more globalised, with nationals like Portugal and Kenya being competitive.

Well, it's actually a player welfare issue, and the inability of most countries to both field and fund a squad of sufficient size and quality to compete, even under the modified rules that were proposed......


......anyway, we digress.

The point remains, as evidenced by the 15-a-side rugby example, that it's not an automatic given that a sport is a good fit for the Olympics - it remains to be seen if golf is a good fit.

I reckon the quickest way to make it more 'valuable' is to either give it ranking points at least equivalent to a PGA Tour event and/or grant the medalists an exemption from the Majors in the year subsequent to the Olympics - unless they do something like that it's just a curiosity of a tournament in Brazil with nothing of real golfing consequence at stake.

Chivito550

Jawgap wrote: »

Well, it's actually a player welfare issue, and the inability of most countries to both field and fund a squad of sufficient size and quality to compete, even under the modified rules that were proposed......


......anyway, we digress.

The point remains, as evidenced by the 15-a-side rugby example, that it's not an automatic given that a sport is a good fit for the Olympics - it remains to be seen if golf is a good fit.

I reckon the quickest way to make it more 'valuable' is to either give it ranking points at least equivalent to a PGA Tour event and/or grant the medalists an exemption from the Majors in the year subsequent to the Olympics - unless they do something like that it's just a curiosity of a tournament in Brazil with nothing of real golfing consequence at stake.

Do you not think a team event would be better? Something like 8 teams qualify. Teams of 4. Round Robin matchups. Four ball and foresomes. Top 2 teams in each pool go to semi finals, and then final. Obviously the details of making it work would require more thorough work, but that would be the simple crux of it. They'd have to come up with a fair qualification system, but maybe using world rankings of the cumulative score of the top 3 or 4 competitors from each nation would be an idea.

I believe it shouldn't be an individual event. If it must be individual then at least make it match play.

Joe_ Public

Chivito550 wrote: »

Couldn’t disagree more. Tennis has just as many high profile events as golf. Like golf it has it’s 4 majors (which unlike golf, are spread around the world, rather than having 3 in the same country, and 2 being practically the exact same event in all but name). The end of year championships are determined based on performances throughout the year. On the men’s side there’s the ATP Masters 1000 events which are massive events. These include glamourous events in Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Shanghai, Madrid etc. The women have their big non-Grand Slam and Year End Championship events too which include Indian Wells and Miami too.

I find it a bit uninformed that you think the Ryder Cup has a bigger profile to the Davis Cup. The Ryder Cup is massive in USA, GB and Ireland. It’s not even that big in continental Europe, and the fact the event rarely goes there (1997 and now one coming up soon) is testament to where the main audience is. Outside of this, nobody cares. I lived in Australia during the Miracle of Medinah, and I stayed away from the result in work all day, had the final day of action on record from the middle of the night. I was petrified somebody would spoil it for me, but nobody did, because frankly nobody even knew it was going on. The Ryder Cup is awesome, but it is a restricted competition. The Davis Cup and the Fed Cup are not. Every country in the world is eligible, and judging by the electric atmosphere at the matches, and the reaction of Federer and Murray in the last 2 years when their team’s took the title, you can see just how high a profile the competition has.

I don't really mind being uninformed on a message board which is just really a bit of harmless discussion. Because I was really just talking about the attitudes of the athletes themselves which is the basis on which these sports are going to take off as Olympic events. You've taken it on another basis entirely or so it seems to me. The Davis Cup is taken seriously by some players/countries, not so much by others. I saw a story the other day about Murray considering whether he'd play one of GB's upcoming matches, not so full of buzz about it as he was the year they won. Nobody, that I know anyway, talks in such terms about the Ryder Cup, whatever the global audience is which isn't relevant to what I was talkign about.

And yes I realise how big the tennis circuit is and follow it to a certain extent. I was just comparing the year end events which are not the same scale: the year end tennis events comprise just 8 players, played over a week in London whereas the Fed Ex cup starts with 128(or something like that). To my mind it's a bigger complication with regard to the Olympics than the year end tennis masters event. I don't know, that could be an uninformed view, I'm not an expert on any of these sports to be honest.

Chivito550

Chivito550 wrote: »

Do you not think a team event would be better? Something like 8 teams qualify. Teams of 4. Round Robin matchups. Four ball and foresomes. Top 2 teams in each pool go to semi finals, and then final. Obviously the details of making it work would require more thorough work, but that would be the simple crux of it. They'd have to come up with a fair qualification system, but maybe using world rankings of the cumulative score of the top 3 or 4 competitors from each nation would be an idea.

I believe it shouldn't be an individual event. If it must be individual then at least make it match play.

Or if 8 teams is too little with regards growing the sport, then 16 teams with teams of 2. Foreballs and Foresomes the whole way.

Seve OB

Chivito550 wrote: »

Couldn’t disagree more. Tennis has just as many high profile events as golf. Like golf it has it’s 4 majors (which unlike golf, are spread around the world, rather than having 3 in the same country, and 2 being practically the exact same event in all but name). The end of year championships are determined based on performances throughout the year. On the men’s side there’s the ATP Masters 1000 events which are massive events. These include glamourous events in Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Shanghai, Madrid etc. The women have their big non-Grand Slam and Year End Championship events too which include Indian Wells and Miami too.

I find it a bit uninformed that you think the Ryder Cup has a bigger profile to the Davis Cup. The Ryder Cup is massive in USA, GB and Ireland. It’s not even that big in continental Europe, and the fact the event rarely goes there (1997 and now one coming up soon) is testament to where the main audience is. Outside of this, nobody cares. I lived in Australia during the Miracle of Medinah, and I stayed away from the result in work all day, had the final day of action on record from the middle of the night. I was petrified somebody would spoil it for me, but nobody did, because frankly nobody even knew it was going on. The Ryder Cup is awesome, but it is a restricted competition. The Davis Cup and the Fed Cup are not. Every country in the world is eligible, and judging by the electric atmosphere at the matches, and the reaction of Federer and Murray in the last 2 years when their team’s took the title, you can see just how high a profile the competition has.

HAHAHA What a load of crap

Chivito550

Seve OB wrote: »

HAHAHA What a load of crap

Care to contribute to the civilised discussion we are having here in a constructive manner?

Russman

As an aside, are there world ranking points on offer for the golf in the Olympics ?
Surely there should be, when Tiger's end of year get together and also the Nedbank in South Africa have them on offer, with much smaller fields ?

Seve OB

Chivito550 wrote: »

Care to contribute to the civilised discussion we are having here in a constructive manner?

well for a start you are talkin nonsense

look here for example. where is the Davis cup mentioned? scratch that..... and make it easier for you. where is tennis mentioned?

Comparing it to the Ryder cup is ridiculous and to put it on a pedestal above the Ryder cup... you are having a laugh right?


As for tennis having just as much high profile events as golf........... will you get over yourself. Golf has 2 huge bodies which each have a tournament on more or less every weekend of the year. that's about 100 events, and this is only the main tours.

Jawgap

Chivito550 wrote: »

Do you not think a team event would be better? Something like 8 teams qualify. Teams of 4. Round Robin matchups. Four ball and foresomes. Top 2 teams in each pool go to semi finals, and then final. Obviously the details of making it work would require more thorough work, but that would be the simple crux of it. They'd have to come up with a fair qualification system, but maybe using world rankings of the cumulative score of the top 3 or 4 competitors from each nation would be an idea.

I believe it shouldn't be an individual event. If it must be individual then at least make it match play.

No, because a team event is of no consequence in golfing terms. The best team-on-team matches - be it in soccer, rugby or golf - are those that have a 'derby' feel where a history of dramatic incidents, real and imagined sleights, and larger-than-life personalities create a sense of an event. The Ryder Cup wasn't that exciting until Nicklaus picked Jacklin's ball up and it really only was catapulted in the wider public's awareness when Seve got invovled - since then it's built and built driven by the fact that every 2 years the teams clash and the dramas from the last 40 years or so of competition are picked over.

An Olympic event will take place every 4 years, would likely not involve the same players in more than 2 consecutive games and may not even lead to repeats of previous fixtures/matches. All of which means, unless someone wraps their putter around another player's neck on the opening hole it'll take a generation for it to worm it's way into non-golf fans' imagination.

These guys and gals are professional sports people - competing for the love of the game is fine, but if the choice is to go do something that offers some reward relevant to their career, relative to something that offers no reward it should be no surprise they choose the former.

Chivito550

Seve OB wrote: »

well for a start you are talkin nonsense

look here for example. where is the Davis cup mentioned? scratch that..... and make it easier for you. where is tennis mentioned?

Comparing it to the Ryder cup is ridiculous and to put it on a pedestal above the Ryder cup... you are having a laugh right?


As for tennis having just as much high profile events as golf........... will you get over yourself. Golf has 2 huge bodies which each have a tournament on more or less every weekend of the year. that's about 100 events, and this is only the main tours.

LOL. The Ryder Cup is shown (this side of the world at least) on pay TV. It does not have huge TV audiences on a global level, and in most countries in the world it's a non-event. I'd be fairly confident that the actual number of people who viewed GB winning the Davis Cup last year on BBC in the UK was higher than the amount of people in the UK who watched the Ryder Cup on Sky.

That list you linked is utter b0llox. There's tons of sporting events omitted. Wimbledon, Australian Open etc. They have something like 40,000-50,000 spectators per day, over 14 days. That's far higher than the 250,000 quoted for the 2014 Ryder Cup. The World Athletics Championships is not mentioned either. In Beijing last year the average attendance for the 9 evening sessions was about 50,000 and the 6 morning sessions was around 30,000 average, from memory.

And Tennis has 2 massive bodies in the ATP and WTA. Golf is a male dominated sport. The women's side doesn't come close to the profile of tennis on the women's side.

Sorry, but you have the monopoly on the "nonsense".

And just to add, a golf course can facilitate a lot more supporters than a tennis ground. I'm sure the Wimbledon final would have 500,000 spectators if they could fit them all into centre court! If you want to go down the road of the number of people attending a sporting event, then throw in the Tour de France. Half the bleedin country step outside their door to have a look at that!

charlieIRL

Right lads enough is enough, this topic is going around and around in circles and is getting monotonous to be honest. Lets move on

paulos53

I see that Stephanie Meadow is a late qualifier for the Olympics.

The Dutch have decided not to send their 2 women qualifiers so Stephanie gets in as first reserve.

Jawgap

sword1

With the zika outbreak in america the European tour could be very popular

REBELSAFC

sword1 wrote: »

With the zika outbreak in america the European tour could be very popular

Realistically,there is a possibility it wont be long before Zika hits the Mediterranean. It will be interesting though to see the reaction of all the golfers who are living in Florida, many of whom declined to compete in Rio.

The Rape of Lucretia

REBELSAFC wrote: »

Realistically,there is a possibility it wont be long before Zika hits the Mediterranean. It will be interesting though to see the reaction of all the golfers who are living in Florida, many of whom declined to compete in Rio.

You wont here mention of Zika in that scenario. They will continue to play as they do. Zika was just a handy shorthand for "just couldnt be arsed playing in that rotting excrement of a sporting event that is the Olympics" for players who have images and sponsors that impedes them from speaking the truth.

Birdie Num Num

Jawgap wrote: »

These guys and gals are professional sports people - competing for the love of the game is fine, but if the choice is to go do something that offers some reward relevant to their career, relative to something that offers no reward it should be no surprise they choose the former.

I am surprised you even included the word sports in that post. You would think you were describing a bunch of bankers concerned about their bonuses rather than people who have a passion for playing and succeeding in golf. So are golfers really more concerned about picking up the cheque than the Claret jug?

abff

I know there's no prize money at stake, but being Olympic Champion will carry a certain cachet and may increase appearance fees (although this will be somewhat dependent on how high a profile the winner already has and what country he's from).

There are also World Ranking points at stake. Based on World Rankings at the cut off date, I calculate that the strength of field rating (assuming no further withdrawals) will be 291 and winning the tournament will be worth 48 OWGR points to the winner. This is higher than the points available for most European Tour events and quite a few PGA events over the last year.

Jawgap

Birdie Num Num wrote: »

I am surprised you even included the word sports in that post. You would think you were describing a bunch of bankers concerned about their bonuses rather than people who have a passion for playing and succeeding in golf. So are golfers really more concerned about picking up the cheque than the Claret jug?

It's still a sport, you have to go out, perform and win. Plus, if they weren't interested the Claret Jug why take a week from the Tour in the US to play a completely different style of golf for the chance of winning a purse that is 16% less than the PGA?

Surely if they were 'business' people to the core it would make sense to stay Stateside and focus on the PGA rather than take a punt on The Open?

Eight things to know about the Olympic golf course

http://www.pgatour.com/news/2016/08/03/olympic-golf-course-things-to-know.html?cid=TWPGATOUR

Joe_ Public

Matt Kuchar is really psyched up for the Olympics.

Q. You're paired with Bubba and Patrick over the next few days. How much Olympic talk do you think there will be between you three? And even though it is an individual stroke-play event, do you feel like you're sort of all on the same team? Are you rooting for those guys as well as yourself during Olympics week?
MATT KUCHAR: Now, I may be miss-informed or just don't know. You may have to help me. Is there no team format at all? I remember we did Wold Cup a couple years ago and the idea was it was an individual -- this is down in Australia -- it was individual, yet the two scores would be combined.

When they first talked about it, if there were four Americans it was the two highest ranked and they were going to combine the scores for a team event.

There is no combined? No team event whatsoever? Just an individual. We did the same thing at World Cup: 72 hole stroke play. I played with Kevin Streelman. We never played together but we did represent the United States in a team format.

That was my initial impression of what was happening with the Olympics, but I'm incorrect on that.

Q. If Bubba wins you don't get a medal.
MATT KUCHAR: No, I knew -- from my understanding it was supposed the to be Bubba and Rickie. They were the two highest seeded Americans. Their combined score I thought was going to be the team part. There is no combination, no team at all? Okay. (Laughter.)

I certainly was never going to be part of the team, or at least when I became part of the team I knew wasn't in the top two. I knew I wasn't playing for any sort of team medal. I knew I was strictly there as an individual, and I will be going on an individual.

So back to your question of will we be cheering for each other, absolutely. I think that's the nature of the golf. You certainly pull for your friends. When you got teammates you pull for them. It is an individual game. We'll all be shooting for gold. You certainly hope if it's not yourself it's one of your teammates.

Seve OB

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Matt Kuchar is really psyched up for the Olympics.

Q. You're paired with Bubba and Patrick over the next few days. How much Olympic talk do you think there will be between you three? And even though it is an individual stroke-play event, do you feel like you're sort of all on the same team? Are you rooting for those guys as well as yourself during Olympics week?
MATT KUCHAR: Now, I may be miss-informed or just don't know. You may have to help me. Is there no team format at all? I remember we did Wold Cup a couple years ago and the idea was it was an individual -- this is down in Australia -- it was individual, yet the two scores would be combined.

When they first talked about it, if there were four Americans it was the two highest ranked and they were going to combine the scores for a team event.

There is no combined? No team event whatsoever? Just an individual. We did the same thing at World Cup: 72 hole stroke play. I played with Kevin Streelman. We never played together but we did represent the United States in a team format.

That was my initial impression of what was happening with the Olympics, but I'm incorrect on that.

Q. If Bubba wins you don't get a medal.
MATT KUCHAR: No, I knew -- from my understanding it was supposed the to be Bubba and Rickie. They were the two highest seeded Americans. Their combined score I thought was going to be the team part. There is no combination, no team at all? Okay. (Laughter.)

I certainly was never going to be part of the team, or at least when I became part of the team I knew wasn't in the top two. I knew I wasn't playing for any sort of team medal. I knew I was strictly there as an individual, and I will be going on an individual.

So back to your question of will we be cheering for each other, absolutely. I think that's the nature of the golf. You certainly pull for your friends. When you got teammates you pull for them. It is an individual game. We'll all be shooting for gold. You certainly hope if it's not yourself it's one of your teammates.

haha

The Rape of Lucretia

Lets hear it for Kooch. Now there's a guy treating golf in the olympics with the disrespect it deserves. Its well he wasnt asked when did it start or what country it is on in. He genuinely may not have known the answer. Shows how they just dont give a rats ass. Certainly no kudos going to the winner of this fiasco.

Dayor Knight

The Rape of Lucretia wrote: »

Lets hear it for Kooch. Now there's a guy treating golf in the olympics with the disrespect it deserves. Its well he wasnt asked when did it start or what country it is on in. He genuinely may not have known the answer. Shows how they just dont give a rats ass. Certainly no kudos going to the winner of this fiasco.

Yeah, right. An American doesn't know much about something happening outside of the U.S. And that means its doesn't matter? Yeah right. Not much matters so. Except maybe the "World Series" of something or other that happens only in the U.S.A. To be honest, I don't give a "rats ass" whether Kucher gives a rats ass about the Olympics.