Brazil’s Adilson Da Silva, left, walks along the second tee on the Olympic golf course during a practice round for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 5, 2016.
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Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Golf’s global leaders are working behind the scenes to secure the sport’s place in the Olympic lineup beyond 2020 despite 12 of the world’s top 20 players controversially skipping Rio.
“We are absolutely delighted to be here in Rio and to be returning to the Olympic Games after a very long absence of 112 years”, said Peter Dawson, head of the International Golf Federation (IGF).
The four-day men’s individual stroke play starts Thursday, golf’s first Olympic appearance since Canada’s George Lyon won gold at the 1904 Games in St. Louis. Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world and there are only a handful of public courses in a nation the size of Western Europe.
The IGF did not stop there.
The opening trio, teeing off at 7.30am local time (1130 GMT), will be completed by South Korea’s Byeong Hun An. His mother, who is Chinese, and father each won medals in table tennis at the Seoul Games in 1988.
“Olympic inclusion is the biggest opportunity to grow the game that we have”.
Ireland’s 2007 and 2008 Open victor Padraig Harrington, one of the players who presented successfully to the International Olympic Committee in 2009, is due to tee off in the second group at 7.41am in a field of 60 players.
Sergio Garcia of Spain is playing with Patrick Reed of the United States and Emiliano Grillo of Argentina.
Other groups of note include two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson partnering two-time major victor Martin Kaymer at 9:14 am while Rickie Fowler is out with Justin Rose in the penultimate group at 10.58 am.
American Rickie Fowler will tee off with Britain’s 2013 US Open victor Justin Rose, while world number four and newly crowned British Open champion Henrik Stenson of Sweden – the top-ranked player in the field – heads Thursday’s final group.
Dawson acknowledged that the withdrawal of the world’s top four players – Australia’s Jason Day, Americans Dustin Johnson and Jordan Speith and Ireland’s Rory McIlroy – was “certainly not helpful” to the sport’s ambitions of remaining in the Olympic programme beyond the Tokyo 2020 Games, but added: “We are concentrating on the players who are here who will always be able to say they are Olympians”. The 60-man field has no more than two per nation except for up to four players if they were in the top 15 when selections were made last month.
“They understand the reasons of players who have stayed away but they will weigh that in the balance of other things we bring to the Olympic Movement”.
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“What would make these two weeks a success would be exciting Olympic competition, very high quality golf watched by a large amount of fans both on the course but particularly around the world”, Dawson said.
