You're Reading: The Possibility of Team Olympic Golf
The Olympics Games Tokyo 2020 wrapped up last Sunday. Both the men’s and women’s golf competitions proved successful ventures for team USA: Xander Schauffele claimed his gold medal on day 9 of the games, and six days later, Nelly Korda stood atop the podium, both taking a bite of their prize. In fact, their two gold medals were ultimately critical in vaulting team U.S.A. to the top of the gold medal count – just one ahead of China.
However, the tournaments are relatively indistinct from regular PGA or LPGA tour events. The Olympics’ 72-hole, individual, stroke-play format is what golf fans are accustomed to watching each week on tour. Nelly Korda was truly excited to don the Red, White, and Blue and represent her country: “I’m wearing USA across my chest, I think that’s really cool, a huge honor.” But, having been questioned multiple times throughout the week, she also admitted that her preparation and mindset for playing in the tournament was no different than for a major or any other tournament on the LPGA tour.
So, should the Olympic Games present an environment that forces players to approach the competition differently? To answer this, we need to ask ourselves three questions: what would the new environment/format be?, is it feasible?, and, finally, would it be an improvement?
The current individual format has golfers in a position where they are playing both for the team of the United States and for themselves. This is not unique to the Olympics; athletes in swimming, track and field, fencing, boxing, diving, etc., all have chances to win a medal as individuals, although there may also be team events in their respective disciplines. Nevertheless, to increase the aspect of playing for a team, the golf competitions best bet would be to adopt a team format.
Furthermore, the ideal team size would be two players so that two countries could always go out in foursomes. Still, to ensure that the world’s top players can attend, countries with a significant number of top players could bring multiple two-man teams. For example, the United States men held spots 2 through 6 in the Official World Golf Ranking prior to the Olympic Competition. Therefore, similar to how the U.S. was unique in sending four men to the Tokyo golf competition due to its having four players all within the top 15, the U.S. would be able to send two two-man teams.
"A team I’m always for … it would be fun ... I think it would be really hard to perfect."
— Justin Thomas on Olympic Team Format for Golf
As far as how the teams would compete, the system could mimic that of the WGC Dell Technologies Match Play. In this format, the top 64 players in the world are invited to compete. The players then participate in three rounds of group play in which the 64 players are grouped into 16 groups of 4 – the four golfers play a match each against the other three in the group. At the end of group play, the golfer who won the most matches of their three advances (ties are decided by sudden death). This results in 16 players heading into the weekend. In four more rounds, these 16 are broken into match play brackets and compete in elimination rounds until only one remains.
Substitute the above format with teams instead of individual golfers. The teams would compete based on better ball for each hole while still maintaining match play.
To perfectly conform with the WGC Match Play, the Olympic field must include 64 teams or 128 players. At first glance, there are a couple of challenges with this figure. Compared with the 60 players that are invited now, 128 would complicate the ability for enough countries to establish two-man teams, especially if countries like the United States were limited to a maximum number of two teams. In Tokyo, 12 countries were only represented by a single golfer: the Philippines, Poland, the Czech Republic, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Slovakia, Colombia, Taiwan, Paraguay, Venezuela, Malaysia, and Zimbabwe.
Rory Sabbatini, for instance, won the silver medal for Slovakia as the 204th ranked player in the world. His closest fellow countryman in terms of world rankings is Petr Valasek who was ranked 848th. In theory, a team format would greatly decrease the chances for Sabbatini or Slovakia to make the Olympic golf podium. Put it this way, Slovakia’s top team would have a combined ranking of 1052 whereas the top U.S. team of Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas would have combined for 7. Greater disparities would arise as forty more teams are assembled.
In one sense, this reduces variability and better ensures that the most dominate countries rise to the top. On the other hand, the international competitive nature of the games would be lost.
Second, the dangerously hot temperatures at the Tokyo Games were mitigated by the fact that tee times could be set early in the morning before the heat of the day. This tactic would be less effective with the addition of 68 players to the field.
Both issues could be alleviated by halving the field size to just 32 teams and just 64 players. This would necessitate the group play to consist of 32 / 4 = 8 groups; only eight teams would advance to the weekend so one less elimination round would be required. In this case, though, only 32 countries, 31 if the U.S. sends two teams, would be represented as opposed to 35.
The excitement of match play combined with team play is hard to beat. The format would provide thrilling match ups with face offs between the U.S., Irish, British, Australian, Spanish, and South Korean teams.
However, the practicality of realizing this format is lacking. In addition to the above issues, if a country’s top player cannot or decides not to compete, the situation for countries with less-prolific golfers becomes bleaker. Even for Spain, which currently claims the World No. 1 in Jon Rahm and World No. 51 in Sergio Garcia, if either of its top players does not participate in the games, a top-contending team suddenly falls out of the conversation. At these games, both Rahm and Garcia were not included in the tournament field, forcing the country to resort to Adri Arnaus and Jorge Campillo, ranked 163rd and 205th, respectively.
Justin Thomas expressed this dilemma in his press conference ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “A team I’m always for … it would be fun,” said Thomas, but he also admitted that “I think it would be really hard to perfect.”
Perhaps we should instead recognize the beauty of the current Olympic format: a system that celebrates three positions, not just one. A system in which Matt Kuchar won a bronze medal in 2016 and had “Pride busting out of my chest.” And a system in which we were able to witness a riveting 7-man playoff for bronze with the likes of Matsuyama, McIlroy, Morikawa, and Casey. Let’s face it, playoffs like this are virtually non-existent on the PGA Tour where the eventual winner usually breaks away from the pack. In the history of the PGA Tour, the largest playoff has consisted of six golfers, happening only thrice. In contrast, ties in the second and third positions are rather common place. At the Palmetto Championship at Congaree back in June, six players finished T-2, but since only first place matters, the tie was just that.
During the Olympic coverage, NBC’s Justin Leonard observed how you only really see playoffs of this size at USGA qualifiers.
The success of these last Olympic games for golf (especially for team USA, of course) coupled with the challenges of crafting a team-oriented competition suggest that the current system is just fine and that not to team is the best way to go.
