“Look, it’s massive for golf being in the Olympics”. Lyon, at least, boasts something of a career in golf, having made it as far as the finals of the US Amateur, and the semifinals of the British Amateur. The Americans have won 41 consecutive Olympic contests while the African nation is looking for its first victory.
Advertisement
I was in the Olympic Stadium when Greg Joy cleared the high jump bar on his way to a silver medal, bringing the crowd to its feet.
“He desperately would like to win the gold, ” Stenson’s long-time coach, Pete Cowen, said.
FILE- In this August 3, 2016 file photo United States goalkeeper Hope Solo holds the ball during a women’s Olympic football tournament match against New Zealand at the Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Such was the raw, glorious nature of the beast back then.
Golf remains a niche sport here, played largely by the rich. Obviously the Olympics are special because they are the Olympics.
Johnson cited the Zika virus and his plans for more children.
Jessica Marksbury, digital editor, GOLF.com: I’m jumping on that bandwagon, Cam and Joe!
“It’s a big deal to get here”, he said. When you got teammates you pull for them.
I watched heats for the 10,000-meters and saw Haiti’s Charles Olemus finish dead last in 42:00, a full 14 minutes behind the victor and eight-and-a-half minutes behind the next-to-last finisher. Very happy and honored for such a thing. What a shameful, shameful attitude.
USA golf stars believe the game is on the right trajectory to continue beyond Tokyo 2020. But he had a great supporting cast too. Let’s see it a couple times and get a generation to say: I saw Rickie Fowler win a gold medal, I want one.
The Olympic golf effort will leave behind a golf course that is, by most accounts, a testament to Hanse’s design brilliance, if not the dogged efforts of those who carved a layout out of a caiman-infested swamp. We asked. Here’s what golfers said. An example is medal-less Equatorial Guinea, a Central African country with several official languages that has sent delegations to every Summer Olympic Games since 1984.
“I’m sure he would have been very proud to see me walk out”, Rose told BBC Sport.
“I played Hazeltine on (Aug. 1)”, Jacobsen said. He said he grew up cheering for Olympians from other sports, but never thought he’d one day be able to compete for a gold medal of his own. Many have also argued the validity of health concerns.
The men’s event runs from August 11-14 with a field of 60 competing over 72 holes and the top three claiming the medals.
But such arguments all rather pale in comparison to the opportunity to contribute to what could have been. The chance to wave your country’s flag in a spine-chilling opening ceremony.
Fowler isn’t waiting for golf to start to make good on his word.
Instead, the tournament, which gets under way on Thursday, will be the square peg in the round hole so many feared, with largely journeymen pros acting as custodians of our game. They look forward to it like all the sports. Lydia Ko of New Zealand, already the best female player in the world at age 19, will be the favorite to win gold.
Advertisement
Three-time major champion Ireland’s Pádraig Harrington and Italy’s Matteo Manassero, both of whom formed part of the International Golf Federation’s delegation that presented golf’s case for inclusion in the Games at the 2009 IOC Session in Copenhagen, will play together in the second group out. And this is the best we could come up with? But the hope is that the game’s return at these Olympics could spark a boom, not unlike the way a swashbuckling young American named Arnold Palmer convinced his countrymen to pick up a club and give golf a go in the 1960s. Perhaps that is for the best.
