OGILVY: Olympic golf misses its opportunity

The Olympic golf course in Rio looks great; the format less so.

EXCLUSIVE BY GOLF AUSTRALIA COLUMNIST GEOFF OGILVY

As we move closer to the northern hemisphere summer of 2016, so the amount of Olympics talk on Tour has been increasing, and there are a few opinions out there, as you can imagine.

For myself, the idea of playing in the Olympics is a lot less exciting than being in the Olympics. The opening ceremony would be pretty special, for example. But four rounds of strokeplay in Rio de Janeiro next year is not something I lie in bed thinking about. So, for me at least, making the Olympic team would be amazing. Competing in the Olympics? Not so much.

I look at it this way. If, 12 months from now, I was sitting down to think back at my year on Tour I know which events I’d most like to have won. The majors would top that list. And there would be a few others in line before I got to the Olympic gold medal, as amazing as that would be to have.

For the purists – those who subscribe to the ‘higher, stronger, faster’ ideal – there are also doubts as to whether or not golf should be an Olympic sport at all. Then there are those who take the view that, if other sports like tennis and baseball are in, why not golf?

There are, of course, many benefits to be had from participation in the Games. Government funding is a lot easier to get if there is the prospect of a gold medal at the end of the investment. So, especially for countries developing in a golf sense, it makes perfect sense to join in every four years.

All of that is fine by me. Like everyone else I want to see golf grow all around the world, not only in the already established nations. But then I look at the event itself and I start to have doubts about how much thought has gone into this whole thing.

Four rounds of strokeplay isn’t exactly the most exciting format they could have come up with, especially as the field is likely to be pretty top-heavy and without a lot of really good players to begin with. The likelihood is that the vast majority of the competitors will get to the final day and have absolutely nothing to play for. It’s not going to be much of a prospect for guys used to playing for millions of dollars every week. It could all fall pretty flat.

In defence of the organisers, we (the players) were told that they pitched 72-hole strokeplay – what is widely seen as golf’s most successful format or version – in order to enhance the original bid, which I suppose makes some sort of sense if you are dealing with people who don’t know too much about the game.

Still, an opportunity has been missed.

IOC president Thomas Bach talks up the return of golf to the Olympic fold.

I’d like to have seen more of a team aspect to the whole thing. As is obvious every two years in the Ryder and Solheim Cups – and yes, even the Presidents Cup – team golf is very appealing, both to players and spectators. It gets everyone excited and seems to trump the fact that there is no prizemoney involved. The Olympics should have tapped into that aspect more than it has.

The possibilities are many. For one thing, there should be some sort of mixed event. I’m really big on that idea. It would be terrific to see an environment where both genders could thrive. It would be a great spectacle. They could play foursomes, greensomes (Canadian foursomes) and aggregate rounds, whatever. There could even be a ‘relay’ event, the players playing nine holes each, or alternate holes – whatever again. There should be some matchplay in there, too. Maybe after strokeplay qualifying the top-16 scorers could go head-to-head for another medal. Other sports like swimming have all kinds of medals on offer; golf could follow that lead to an extent.

A really exciting format would also make all the questioning of golf’s entry go away. If people are looking forward to something, they are a lot less likely to wonder as to its validity. Four rounds of strokeplay slammed alongside all the majors next year is not going to get that job done.

Incidentally, when it comes to the scheduling, I don’t have a problem with the big events accommodating the Olympics every four years. That’s fine with me, even if big sponsors and organisations are not used to being pushed around. This is the Olympics – the biggest sporting event on the planet – so what it wants, it gets.

There is one aspect of golf’s participation that worries me slightly. I fear the day when a golfer is inadvertently and innocently going to fall foul of the Olympic doping regulations. There are so many things on the banned drug list – administered by the World Anti-Doping Agency – the potential for problems is real. I can’t imagine anyone failing deliberately, but if they do they could be banned from golf for a fairly lengthy period. I’m all for banning drug cheats but we have already seen skiers and athletes banned through ignorance rather than malicious intent. It’s a scary prospect.

Plus, in golf, we don’t have testers turning up at player’s homes to ask for samples. And our top players may not like having to tell the Olympics people where they are going to be 24 hours of every day. I’m sure you can get used to that, but golfers are not. Not yet anyway. Which again raises the possibility of someone wandering into his or her local chemist to buy something seemingly innocuous but which may be deemed “performance enhancing”. Mistakes like that could happen.

On the other hand, it is easy to argue that maybe we golfers do need to wake up to what is going on in the outside world and realise that drug-testing is a part of modern sport whether we like it or not. So maybe we shouldn’t be too complacent when we argue that golf doesn’t have a problem.

Bottom line? If we want to play with the big boys, we have to play by their rules.