Golf at the Olympics

Golf has featured at the Olympics in the past so why doesn’t it feature anymore?

It was agreed in 1899 that Golf would first feature in the Olympics at the turn of Victorian times both in 1900 and 1904.

In 1900, at the Paris Olympics, only twenty-two people and four countries featured including nine from France, four from Great Britain, one from Greece and eight from the USA.

In 1904, in St Louis Missouri, seventy-seven golfers featured, all men, three from Canada and seventy-four from the USA. Anyone would have thought that with Canada heavily outnumbered by the USA that it would have been a white wash, but surprisingly a golfer called George Lyon from Canada took the gold that year.

It was then removed from the programme in 1921 and set to be re-instated in 1948 but was never organised.


The Future of Golf at The Olympics

In 2009 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) agreed that it would be a part of the 2016 Olympics in Rio.

It is expected that up to thirty different countries will be represented at the Olympics in Rio in 2016 which makes for a potentially thrilling contest and one of the most highly contested golfing events since its invention in the 15th Century.

The format of the competition will be a 72-hole individual stroke play tournament with the lowest scoring individual taking the gold medal, second the silver and third the bronze.

If there is a tie between any of the highest placed players then it is proposed that a three hold playoff will be played to determine the medal order.

Qualification

Players will be able to qualify for a place on the Olympic team based on world rankings, with a total of sixty places available for players in the men’s event and sixty for the women’s event.

The top 15 world ranked players of each gender will automatically qualify and there will be no limit on how many players from each country can qualify based on world ranking.

For the remaining 45 spots available in each event will be awarded to the highest ranked players in the countries that do not already have two qualified golfers on their team.

This will make for a thrilling contest as we see some of the worlds best potentially take on pro-amateurs from a number of world nations. Golf has become an increasingly popular sport over the last decade and its expected that being at the 2016 Olympics will help raise its profile even further.