Can Olympic Golf Survive Fear, Rumor and Self-Interest?

Gerina Piller played her heart out at the 71st US Women’s Open, knowing that if she finished inside the top 10 she would qualify for the United States Olympic golf team. Piller finished T8 and wasted no time accepting a spot on the Olympic team spot:

“Representing my country at the world’s greatest athletic event would be an honor and privilege unlike any other, so I am excited to announce that I will be going to Rio. I look forward to playing alongside Stacy Lewis and Lexi Thompson as we try to bring glory to American golf and grow interest in women’s golf worldwide.”

Piller’s acceptance came only hours after Jordan Spieth joined Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Adam Scott, Louis Oosthuizen, and Shane Lowry on the sidelines. The men are citing Zika fears. Perhaps it’s Zika, but perhaps Zika is only a smoke screen.

Before I take a closer look at factors in play that may be limiting the involvement of the game’s top men in the XXXI Olympiad, let’s put this situation into a broader perspective. Allow me to turn back the clock and revisit golf’s 2009 bid to the International Olympic Committee.

Golf has waited a long time to return to the Olympic venue – 112 years, to be exact. Convincing the International Olympic Committee that the sport was ready to return to the Olympic Games was a Herculean task led by now retired R&A Secretary Peter Dawson, PGA TOUR Executive Vice President Ty Votaw and PGA European Tour Executive George O’Grady.

Dawson, Votaw, and O’Grady accomplished in 2009 what Augusta National’s Billy Payne could not when he proposed to add golf to the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games that were held in Atlanta.  Their vision and energy united global representatives of the sport into a single body, the International Golf Federation. Buttressed by endorsements and assurances of support from a number of the game’s more prominent players – among them Padraig Harrington, Suzann Pettersen, and Michelle Wie – the IGF presented the sport’s successful Olympic bid to the IOC in Denmark in October 2009.

Peter Dawson’s closing remarks to the IOC were both compelling and convincing:

. . . our values are your values, and we believe that together we can move the world forward, by sharing these ideals with young people everywhere . . . We stand ready to play our full part in the Olympic Movement. We are one sport speaking with one voice, with one objective, to return golf to to the Olympic program.

Time has passed since that passionate 2009 appeal. A golf course worthy of Olympic competition has been built – not without rancor – in a country far more enamored of soccer than of golf. Rio is struggling to complete final preparations for the Games. There are uncertainties – Brazil is in political turmoil – and there are rumors – of crime, of pollution, of Zika.

Yet The Economist has described Rio as an “Olympic oasis,” a city apart from Brazil’s national chaos. Completion of Olympic Park and the various venues is on track. Open water sailing competitions will take place beyond the areas of pollution.

So far as Zika is concerned, mosquito control efforts have been put in place and are succeeding, and because August is a dry month in Brazil mosquito activity is naturally minimized. While pregnant women and their sexual partners should seek medical advice before traveling to Rio for the Olympics, for the mass of athletes and fans, “the virus should not be a worry.”

Just to add a measure of protection, the Republic of Korea has infused their Olympic uniforms with mosquito repellant. Perhaps the Koreans could share their technique with United States, Australian, English, and South African Olympic committees.

What, then, is driving men like Jordan Spieth to step back from the opportunity to play a week of Olympic golf? Stacy Lewis has not minced words.

“Those guys play for so much money, and I think you kind of get lost in that at times,” she said. “You can’t blame them for being that way. They’re basically bred to be that way, with the amount of money that they play for.”

Men’s Olympic stroke play is scheduled for August 11-14, and the top-ranked men are thinking ahead to their preparation for the $10 million FedEx Cup purse. 

Among the men who have withdrawn only Adam Scott, notably the first to withdraw, cited scheduling concerns as his reason. The others have hidden behind a mosquito.

Rory McIlroy may, indeed, have gotten into to golf to win tournaments, not to grow the game, but the game deserves better from those who have derived such enormous gain from it.

Cover Photo via Flickr