Current or former Penn State athletes will represent three countries in nine events at the Tokyo Olympics.
Penn State will be represented well at the Tokyo Olympics, which of course have been delayed a year due to the pandemic. From track and field events to the volleyball court and the wrestling mats, Nittany Lions and former Nittany Lions will be competing on the ultimate international level this summer in Tokyo.
This is an attempt to make sure we have listed every single Olympic athlete competing with some form of tie to Penn State. As it stands, Nittany Lions will be representing three different countries in a total of nine individual or team events.
There will be no fans at the Tokyo Olympics, making the Olympic golf competitions some of the only tournaments without galleries.
There will be no fans at the Tokyo Olympics.
The announcement Thursday followed the declaration of a new state of emergency, which takes effect Monday and goes through Aug. 22. The Games begin July 23 and end Aug. 8.
The Olympic golf competitions will be played July 29-Aug. 1 (men) and Aug. 4-7 (women) at Kasumigaseki Country Club. In the U.S., fans have returned in force to professional golf tournaments. Even next week’s British Open at Royal St. George’s in England, will feature up to 32,000 fans, according to the R&A.
“The priority will be to determine safe and secure Games,” Tokyo 2020 president Seiko Hashimoto said at a news conference following a meeting with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, the government of Japan, the International Olympic Committee and International Paralympic Committee.
“We wanted to full stadium so community people could get involved in welcoming the athletes so we could have a full presentation of the power of sports,” she added. “However, now faced with COVID-19 we have no other choice but to hold the Games in a limited way.”
There is still a chance fans could be allowed at events held outside of Tokyo in areas that are not under a state of emergency.
“We will discuss,” Olympic minister Tamayo Marukawa said.
Foreign fans were banned in March, and organizers repeatedly delayed a decision on whether to allow Japanese fans. On June 21, organizers announced there would be a limited number of spectators, with venue capacity capped at 50 percent and a maximum of 10,000 fans.
The restrictions for those in attendance were to be severe, including no cheering or chanting and no sales of alcohol. Organizers also asked fans to go straight home after events, fearing people would gather at bars and restaurants afterward.
But Hashimoto warned then that the Games could still be held without fans if cases continued to rise in Tokyo, and they have.
Tokyo reported 896 new cases on Thursday, up from 673 a week earlier. It’s the 19th straight day that cases have topped the mark set seven days prior. New cases on Wednesday hit 920, the highest total since 1,010 were reported on May 13.
“There are many people who were looking forward to the Games, those people who purchased tickets as well as the local community, and we are very sorry we are unable to deliver on the limited Games,” Hashimoto said. “But we want to have a thorough operation to ensure safe and secure Games.”
The announcement is a blow for Tokyo organizers and will add to the cost of the Games for the Japanese people. Local organizers get the revenue from ticket sales, and Tokyo 2020 had originally budgeted that to be $800 million.
The shortfall will now have to be made up by the Japanese. The official cost of the Games is already $15.4 billion, but it’s believed to be much higher – perhaps twice as much.
The Associated Press and Golfweek’s Julie Williams contributed to this report.
Recent Symetra Tour winner Morgane Metraux chose to play the Amundi Evian Championship close to her childhood home, backing out of the Olympics.
For Morgane Metraux, the biggest goal in 2021 is crystal clear: earn her LPGA card.
The 24-year-old Swiss player currently ranks fourth on the Symetra Tour money list thanks to a maiden victory last month at the Island Resort Championship in Harris, Michigan. That triumph actually earned Metraux an exemption into the Amundi Evian Championship in France, fulfilling a lifelong dream for a player who grew up just across Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland.
It also presented a tough decision as Metraux also qualified for the Olympic Games in Tokyo, which take place Aug. 4-7 at Kasumigaseki Country Club.
“I basically had to make a choice between Evian and Olympics,” said Metraux, who didn’t think she could afford to miss that many weeks on the Symetra Tour to compete in both.
Ultimately, Metraux chose the Evian and backed out of the Olympics, leaving Albane Valenzuela as the lone player representing Switzerland. Ladies European Tour player Tonje Daffinrud of Norway replaced Metraux in the Tokyo field.
“It was honestly tough to say no,” said Metraux. “It feels like I could regret it one day, but at the same time right now it’s what I needed to do.”
Metraux, who played with older sister Kim at Florida State, started attending the Evian – her first professional event – in elementary school with a group of girls shortly after taking up the game. She wasn’t good enough or old enough at the time to even realize who she was watching, she was simply excited to watch women compete.
There’s a hat covered in signatures back home in her room. It has faded a bit since then, but she can still make out the names of Morgan Pressel, Ai Miyazato, Natalie Gulbis and Paula Creamer.
Qualifying for Evian fulfills a lifelong dream, and Metraux plans to head back home after this week’s Symetra stop in French Lick, Indiana, to prepare.
“For me that’s a priority because it’s just an hour away from where I grew up,” she said.
Metraux came from three back with a closing 67 to win on the Symetra Tour the same day former FSU teammate Matilda Castren, who will compete in Tokyo representing Finland, won on the LPGA. Metraux won three times at Florida State; Castren won a school-record seven.
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“I kind of won first because of the time change,” said Metraux, “that was really fun to do the same week. It just gives me that much more confidence that I can do it, too.”
In 2019, Metraux suffered a shoulder injury that kept her away from the game for 10 months. The pain started in mid-February as she was prepping for the Symetra Tour season and lasted until the fall. When she came back, she’d lost distance, too. It took nearly two years, she said, to be completely gone.
In 2020, Metraux competed some on the Ladies European Tour, where sister Kim currently plays.
There are nine events left on the Symetra Tour this season. Metraux will miss two of them to compete in the Evian. In addition to her victory in Michigan, Metraux also finished runner-up at the Casino Del Sol Golf Classic in April. A total of 10 players will earn LPGA cards for the 2022 season.
As Metraux preps for Evian, she also has her sights set on 2024, when the Olympics return in Paris, though she knows that much can change in the span of three years.
“I’m really hoping to make it next time,” she said.
Golfers who turned down their chance to play in the Tokyo Olympics are Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen and Martin Kaymer.
Remember the Zika virus?
That was the virus that had many people, including athletes, concerned about attending the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil. Some athletes even used the Zika virus as a reason – or an excuse – for not attending those Games.
Move forward five years, after a one-year postponement for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of the coronavirus, and there are still athletes who are finding reasons to not participate in the Games. And once again, men’s golf is one of the sports where some top players are bailing out.
Golfers who turned down their chance to play in the Tokyo Olympics later this month are Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Louis Oosthuizen and Martin Kaymer. All four are major championship winners, and all four would have been given pretty good chances to win a medal in Tokyo. But all four found reasons not to accept their invitations to the Olympics. Adam Scott, another major winner, announced weeks ago he would opt out of the Games.
With golf entering its second year back in the Summer Olympics, the idea that five of the bigger names in the game are skipping the Olympics is disappointing. Their absence begs the question that was true five years ago in Brazil: Do the top golfers care about the Olympics, an event that didn’t seem to care about golf for more than a century and which adds an international competition to a year where the calendar is already pretty packed?
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It’s not just golfers skipping the Olympics
To be fair, those five golfers are just five of the 60 original players who qualified for men’s golf in the Olympics. So that’s less than 10 percent of the original field that declined to participate. In other words, 55 of the original 60 golfers, including some of the biggest names in the golf world, will play in Tokyo. And there were no problems in replacing the golfers who declined to play.
As was true in Brazil, the men are the golfers who are backing away from their Olympic chance, not the women who play in a separate four-day competition. In fact the four American women who qualified for the Games will all play, and LPGA social media was flooded with photos of players like Jessica Korda and Danielle Kang draped in an American flag to celebrate their Olympic berths.
And it’s also important to note that the top two U.S. women’s tennis players eligible for the Tokyo Games and the top four U.S. men’s tennis players who earned berths into the Games also declined their invitations. So it is not fair to target just men golfers for a lack of Olympic love.
The reasons for skipping the Olympics this year may have something to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, and certainly the Tokyo events will be different with mostly local residents being allowed to watch the events in person. But the reason stated most by the five players was just how heavy the schedule in the pandemic year has been. When the British Open is played later this month but before the Olympics, golfers will have played six major championships since last August, with the rescheduled Ryder Cup coming in September after the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Garcia said he would love to represent Spain in the Olympics, but wants to focus on the Ryder Cup instead. Johnson, who didn’t play in the 2016 Games, announced two months ago when he was the No. 1 player in the world rankings that he wasn’t going to the Olympics. Oosthuizen didn’t play in the 2016 Games and is saying much the same thing this year, that scheduling issues are keeping the South African star out of the Tokyo event. Scott said he preferred to return to Australia and spend time with his family after a busy summer in the United States.
So you start to see a pretty obvious pattern — that some golfers who didn’t play in 2016 won’t play in 2021, and for some of the same reasons. The Olympics aren’t that important in the eyes of those golfers, or at least not important enough to disrupt their professional schedule.
Olympics golf will be played this month, and six golfers will walk away with medals of gold, silver or bronze, just like players such as Justin Rose and Inbee Park did in 2016. But golf will have to realize that unlike the 100-yard backstroke or the high jump or the balance beam, the Olympics will never be the end all for some golfers.
Larry Bohannan is The Desert Sun golf writer, he can be reached at larry.bohannan@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4633. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter at @larry_Bohannan.
Two Koreans have signaled that they are placing the Tokyo Olympics ahead of the British Open by withdrawing from the year’s final major.
An abundance of opportunities is never a bad thing, but at some point, it all gets to be too much. Two South Korean golfers have signaled that they are placing the Tokyo Olympics ahead of the British Open by withdrawing from the final major of the year to focus on the Games.
Neither Si Woo Kim nor Sungjae Im will tee it up at Royal St. George’s this month for the 149th British Open, with their stated reason for withdrawal being time to focus on preparing for the Olympics.
They will be replaced in the field by by Emiliano Grillo and Keegan Bradley, who are next on the reserve list. Grillo will also head to Tokyo for the Olympics to represent Argentina.
Grillo also competed in the 2016 Olympics and finished T8. Neither Kim nor Im appeared in those games in Rio de Janiero, and both missed the cut at the 2019 British Open.
On the other side of the coin, major champions Sergio Garcia, Martin Kaymer, Louis Oosthuizen and Dustin Johnson have already declined playing spots the Olympics.
Bryson DeChambeau always dreamed of playing in the Olympics. Here’s why it means so much to him.
DETROIT – Bryson DeChambeau always dreamed of playing in the Olympics.
He still remembers attending the 2003 SaveMart Shootout at Willow Bend Golf Course as a 10-year-old, where he watched the likes of Peter Jacobsen, Fred Couples and local boy Nick Watney compete in a 36-hole charity tournament. Couples wasn’t the only famous athlete in attendance. DeChambeau met Olympian Randy Williams, who at age 19 became the youngest gold medalist in the long jump at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich and won a silver in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. DeChambeau later got to wear Williams’ gold medal around his neck at a junior golf tournament he competed in, the Len Ross Memorial Tournament in Fresno, and a dream was born (pictured above).
“It was always cool to say, ‘Wow, he’s an Olympian. What if I could be an Olympian?’ ” DeChambeau said ahead of the Rocket Mortgage Classic on Wednesday. “It’s cool to finally be able to say that.”
After the U.S. Open concluded, DeChambeau, 27, officially qualified as one of four golfers to represent Team U.S.A. in Japan next month based on his World Ranking. (He’s No. 6 overall.) Wearing the stars and stripes always has been a priority for DeChambeau, who has represented his country in the Walker Cup, the men’s World Amateur Team Championship, the Palmer Cup, Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup.
“I have not missed an opportunity,” he said, adding, “Hopefully I can get that gold.”
Hinako Shibuno missed making Japan’s Olympic team after disaster struck on the 17th hole at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.
Hinako Shibuno, the player known as the Smiling Cinderella who won the 2019 AIG Women’s British Open, came into the KPMG Women’s PGA ranked No. 31 in the world, the fourth-highest ranked Japanese player behind Nasa Hataoka (11), Mone Inami (25) and Ayaka Furue (28).
A strong finish at the year’s third major could’ve vaulted Shibuno into that second spot. Countries can send up to two players when ranked outside the top 15.
On the par-3 17th, Shibuno, doing her own yardages due to the language barrier, grossly miscalculated and hit four shots into the water, recording a 10 with a one-putt. She finished with a 76 and broke down in a heap of sobs after the round, knowing that her Olympic chances were somewhere at the bottom of that penalty area.
“I was very devastated,” Shibuno toId Japanese reporters after the round. “I did not realize my miscalculation from the drop area until I got on the green, but I am proud of myself that I could re-focus from 18th until the end.”
Shibuno had to get tested for COVID-19 before every round and on Sunday, only had time for a 30-minute warm-up before heading to the tee.
She came back with a flourish, recording four birdies in the first six holes and was proud to get revenge on the 17th with a par. Shibuno shot 67 on Sunday to finish in 40th place. She remained No. 31 in the Rolex Rankings, four places behind Inami. Furue sits at No. 29.
“When the Olympics had been postponed,” said Shibuno, “my goal changed to playing the LPGA tour rather than the Olympics.
“I am still very disappointed not to play there, but I did my best and I wish Nasa, and Mr. Matsuyama and Hoshino all the best and looking forward to watching them on TV.”
Shibuno turned down the LPGA exemption that came with winning a major in 2019. After the KPMG, she headed back to Japan for three tournaments on the JLPGA and will then travel to Scotland for the AIG Women’s British Open.
In November, she’ll head to Alabama to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail for LPGA Q-Series in an effort to earn her card for a second time.
The field has been finalized for the Tokyo Olympics women’s golf competition.
Team USA will match South Korea for the first time by sending four players to the 2021 Olympics, with Jessica Korda taking the fourth and final spot, joining newly-minted No. 1 Nelly Korda, Lexi Thompson and Danielle Kang.
Inbee Park, the 2016 gold medal winner, will return for South Korea along with Jin Young Ko, Sei Young Kim and Hyo-Joo Kim.
The stars will be out in force in Aug. 4-7 for the Summer Games at Kasumigaseki Country Club.
“I’ve achieved a lot in golf,” said Park, “won a lot of majors, won a lot of tournaments, but winning the gold medal was something really different. I wish a lot of the players think the same and treat Olympics the same. I think it’s definitely something that you should experience.”
Some players, like Shanshan Feng and Hannah Green, won’t play again until the Olympics, heading back to their native countries, China and Australia, respectively, to quarantine and prepare.
“It’s interesting to see how the men and women have changed their schedule for it,” said Green who, like Feng, will miss the LPGA’s next major. “It’s a tournament that I am prioritizing.”
While Germany’s Sophia Popov is fulfilling an Olympic dream that her mother and brother, both high-level swimmers, never realized, the Korda sisters follow in the footsteps of their mother, Regina, who competed in the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul in tennis.
“It’s a great experience, great feeling,” said Regina. “It’s just special.”
The Rolex Rankings were used to determine the field of 60. The top 15 players in the world were eligible, with a maximum of four from each country. After that, a maximum of two players were eligible from each nation.
South Korea’s So Yeon Ryu was the highest-ranked player, at No. 16, who was ineligible to compete.
Nelly Korda, 22, officially ascended to the No. 1 spot in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings on Monday.
Nelly Korda, all of 22 years old, officially ascended to the No. 1 spot in the Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings on Monday.
She took over the top spot after winning her first major Sunday at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, but the rankings didn’t update until Monday.
Korda is just the third American to climb to No. 1 since the rankings were introduced in 2006.
“Reaching World No. 1 has always been a goal of mine, and I can’t believe that I’ve actually done it. The other players who have been No. 1 are incredible, and I’m honored to join that list,” Korda said in a statement released by the LPGA.
Stacy Lewis was the last American to be No. 1, doing so for four weeks in 2013 and 21 weeks in 2014. Cristie Kerr was No. 1 for five weeks in 2010.
Korda was No. 3 before her win at the KPMG. She moved ahead of Jin Young Ko and Inbee Park, ending Ko’s run of 100 weeks atop the rankings.
Numbers game
Korda has three wins and eight top-10s this season. She leads the LPGA with 200 birdies. She also leads with 25 rounds in the 60s. She’s tied for first with the most eagles in 2021 with nine – she had two in Sunday’s final round at the KPMG.
Ko’s streak of 100 consecutive weeks at No. 1 was the third-longest. Lorena Ochoa was No. 1 for 158 weeks (April 23, 2007 to May 2, 2010), and Yani Tseng had a stretch of 109 weeks (Feb. 14, 2011 to March 17, 2013).
Annika Sorenstam was the first No. 1 in 2006 and held the top spot for 61 weeks before Ochoa had her run.
Korda is also an Olympian. The LPGA confirmed Sunday that Nelly and her sister, Jessica, will represent the United States in the Summer Games on Aug. 4-7 at Kasumigaseki Country Club in Japan. The sisters will join Lexi Thompson and Danielle Kang on the American squad. Thompson was also on the 2016 team in Rio. The official Olympic qualifiers for each country will be released Tuesday.
Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols contributed to this article.
Get your commemorative USA Basketball bobblehead series as you gear up for the Olympics and build your team now.
As we gear up for the Olympics, many fans will be looking forward to watching USA Basketball and all-star studded team. If you’re looking for some commemorative USA Olympic Basketball pieces, we have you covered with the USA Basketball bobblehead series.
You can start building your USA Olympic team now with the following collections: 2000 Sydney, 1996 Atlanta, ad 1960 Rome. The following collections will be launching soon: 2012 London, 2008 Beijing, 2016 Rio, and 1992 Spain.
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