I’ll be honest, I wasn’t one bit excited about golf’s return to the Olympics in 2016. When I think of the Games, I think of people jumping the length of my garden for sport. Sprinters outrunning the wind. Javelin throwers launching a spear the length of a football field and powder-fingered weightlifters bursting at the seams to shift a ton weight over their heads. Now we have 3-on-3 basketball, breakdancing and skateboarding. It seems everyone gets an invite to the Olympics, even golf.
From the zika farce in Rio to the Covid snore-fest in 2021, golf hasn’t exactly shone in its best light aboard the great Olympic stage. Which made the sight of Shane Lowry carrying the flag for Ireland during this year’s opening ceremony all the more cringeworthy. There’s no denying Lowry’s national pride but he swerved the Games in 2016 and, in my opinion, there were far more deserving athletes that could’ve been awarded flag-bearing honours. Athletes who place the Olympics at the pinnacle of their sporting endeavours. Something golfers can pay lip service to until they’re put on a polygraph and asked what means more, a medal or a Major?
However, that’s not to say the Olympic Golf isn’t bridging the gap to the sport’s most-revered prizes, particularly after Paris threw up a final round leaderboard the scriptwriters could only dream. In 2024, there was no denying the want ripping through the game’s best players eager to strike gold.
The quest proved too much for Jon Rahm who may be bored playing for millions on LIV but choked chasing medals for his beloved Spain. When Rory McIlroy made five birdies in a row on his back nine, I was picturing him singing along to Amhrán na bhFiann as a tri-colour teased one half of golf Twitter. And when his hopes took a nosedive, it soon became clear that the game’s best player would beat all with a final round worthy of any title; a teary Scottie Scheffler swept up in The Star-Spangled Banner after nailing the sport of golf to the Olympic map.
On Sunday, a glut of golf’s finest came close to medalling but unlike the regular schedule where redemption day tends to lurk just around the corner, these players now have four years to wait. And only if their form can meet the qualifying standard in the interim. Such is golf, some may never get the chance again, which makes golf at the Olympics all the more intriguing in the long run.
We live in an age of instant gratification where tv shows are dumped by the series and binged in a night. Patience is paper thin. Ads are skipped. Content scrolled past to avoid the measliest interruption to our intake of shite. But golfers harbouring hopes of striking gold don’t have the luxury of a skip button. They can’t fast-forward to LA or rewind to Paris to play it all again.
Instead, four years of patience is mandatory service for a chance to join Major winners Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele and Scottie Scheffler in the all-exclusive Gold Club. Ok, it’s not the most exclusive club in golf. You’d have to pry that title from the Grand Slam contingent’s masterful hands but make no mistake, Gold class is in high demand and with no money on the line, only medals and honour, it might just prove the antidote to golf’s incessant greed.