To whatever extent the Olympics ever truly embodied noble values like sporting excellence and international unity, it has long since been overtaken by more obvious priorities among its constituent parties — commercialism, geopolitics and cheating, to single out just a few. Thus, for cynical sports fans, targets don’t come any softer than IOC luminaries in Lausanne.
Golf fans too have reason for ambivalence. In most sports, an Olympic gold medal is the pinnacle of achievement. In golf — being included for a third consecutive Olympiad — gold represents the sport’s fifth biggest prize, at best, and perhaps only the seventh. Most male competitors place greater value on major championships, and even the Players. Plenty would prefer a FedEx Cup, the game’s most lucrative title. That prioritization won’t change while fields are comprised of professionals rather than amateurs.
Eight years on from Rio, Olympic medals remain an ill-defined currency for golfers. Xander Schauffele is justifiably proud of his Tokyo gold, but it was cited as his peak accomplishment only because he didn’t own the pair of majors he collected this summer. Yet much has changed since the XXXII Games in Japan, and perhaps fans will now better appreciate the rarest thing in our sport: a title that isn’t defined by its monetary value.
Some of the most enthralling action in Paris has featured athletes well-compensated in their sports but for whom a podium finish has genuine meaning. Witness the last stand of Andy Murray and the potential farewell of Rafael Nadal. Presumably, a few golfers are competing grudgingly, not particularly animated by an unpaid week of work during an already long season, but wary of being perceived as disloyal to their flags. Most are embracing the moment though.
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“It makes you feel like you’re part of something bigger than just golf,” said Ludvig Aberg. Nicolai Højgaard confessed to goosebumps from wearing national colors and imagining a medal. Even Rory McIlroy, once a doubter, has become a believer. In 2021, he lost a seven-man playoff for the bronze medal and remarked afterward that he’d never tried so hard to finish third. One man even tried to litigate his place at Le Golf National. Joost Luiten qualified but the Dutch Olympic committee decided not to send him (the same body didn’t prevent a convicted child rapist from competing under its flag). Luiten won his case but his spot had already been given away so he was placed on the alternate list. He didn’t start the men’s event on Thursday.
Anyone who watched Shane Lowry’s glee as Ireland’s flag-bearer understood what the Olympics means to him. After the opening ceremony, he flew to Dublin to attend the All-Ireland Gaelic football final. Lowry is a devoted fan of the sport, and his father was part of the national title-winning team in 1982. This year’s final pitted counties Galway and Armagh, the latter from whence I sprang. Friends and family crossed oceans to attend. I didn’t watch, but driving around the county in recent days one can’t avoid the undiluted passion. Bunting was draped on most buildings. Flags fluttered from most moving cars. Sheep were dyed. As feverish fandom goes, it rivals South American soccer.
Gaelic footballers have one thing in common with Olympians: neither are paid. Many athletes in Paris earn the other 40-odd weeks of the year, but not Irish footballers. Guys become national heroes on the weekend and return to work Monday as teachers and electricians. Their rewards — pride in community, love for the sport, being stood a drink in every pub in the county for eternity — must seem awfully quaint to anyone familiar with the prevailing sentiments in men’s professional golf, where so many conversations are focused on compensation and entitlement.
In one respect — the 72-hole stroke play format — Olympic golf is too similar to the norm. In another, it’s a welcome respite. In Paris, there will be no talk of prize money or FedEx Cup points or any other commoditized metric that can make golf feel less like a passion and more like a product. So many of the things that turn off fans are missing, though Greg Norman is wandering the boulevards taking selfies and blathering about LIV because … well, Greg Norman. (If only the IOC had the humor to award him an honorary silver medal).
Perhaps an Olympic gold won’t ever be the equal of a major championship for most competitors, but the presence of golf in the Games is only a positive. In many nations, a sport having Olympic status impacts government development funding. So if folks want to talk about growing the game — and mean it as more than a convenient platitude — this is a decent place to try, even if the significance won’t be measurable for years. That’s a reality elite female golfers grasped long before their male counterparts. These two weeks in Paris are about what the world’s best golfers can contribute, not about what they will receive.