News this week that Adam Scott was being given more time to decide if he would be available to represent Australia at the Rio Olympic Games raises the question of how significant the Olympic gold medal will be in the world of golf.
Reports suggest that Scott has been lukewarm in his attitude to the Games. He had previously been openly critical of the significance of golf at the Olympics, saying that the majors hold priority and are the toughest test.
One of the majors, the US PGA, has had to be moved forward from its usual dates to accommodate the Olympic golf competition and many believe that there is not enough time between the PGA and the Games.
World number one Jordan Spieth, however, says that he will be treating the Olympic competition as a “fifth major”.
His enthusiasm for the Olympics must give the Games competition a boost but the fact that there are other players who question its significance doesn’t help the prestige that it might otherwise have.
Golf featured in the 1900 and 1904 Olympic Games but it has been absent since and makes its return in Rio. In the meantime the majors have become legendary fields of battle where the best in the world strive for victory.
Suddenly Olympic gold, the absolute pinnacle of so many sports, is on the calendar as well and only time will tell how well it is received, not only by the players but by the fans. The best parallel to draw with the re-entry of golf into the Olympics is that of tennis in 1988 at Seoul.
Tennis was similarly returning from the wilderness, having last been an Olympic sport in 1924. Steffi Graf gave the sport an Olympic return to remember by winning the gold medal in the same year that she also completed the Grand Slam of the majors. It is still the only ‘Olympic Slam’ in the sport.
It’s interesting to consider 27 years later how significant the tennis gold medal is in comparison with the attention paid to the majors. At the Olympics it is forced to compete with all of the other sporting competitions happening at the same time. Yet the world attention that centres on a major seems to be considerably greater than for the Olympic competition itself.
The Olympics come around only every four years whereas the majors are there every year.
Yes, some big-name tennis players have won gold medals, like Graf and the Williams sisters as well as Andre Agassi and Rafa Nadal, but some of the Olympic winners have not had a similar impact on the majors.
The debate about whether or not tennis should be at the Olympics seems to me to have continued right through those 27 years. Surely golf will be the same.
One competition every four years is going to struggle to hold the attention of four majors in the one year. Given golf’s propensity to throw up different winners at its major events, the Olympic winner might soon be forgotten unless he is also doing great things on the world circuit.
How many golfers will be like Spieth and look on the Olympics as a fifth major and how many will not even bother going, convinced that it is better to concentrate on winning a major tournament?
Time will tell but you just wonder if the golf gold medal will glisten as much for the winner as will a gold for the winners on the athletics track or in the swimming pool, let alone the many other sports where the undoubted pinnacle is Olympic gold.
An “unshakeable” Scottie Scheffler has claimed his second Masters green jacket in three years, carding a four-under-par 68 to finish four shots clear of…
A day after setting a tournament record in the Masters, Tiger Woods has suffered an unwanted milestone at Augusta National. Woods insisted he could…
Tiger Woods is on the prowl for a sixth green jacket after penning another glorious chapter in his storied career with a record-breaking 24th…
Bryson DeChambeau has laid some demons to rest with a stunning back-nine birdie barrage to seize the first-round lead at the weather-hit Masters. The…
A year after being persona non grata at Augusta National, Australian golf legend Greg Norman is back at the Masters, declaring "the boss is…
Australian golf star Min Woo Lee has revealed he will play the Masters with a broken finger after suffering the freak injury in the…
