It's very rare that I venture into the Sport Forum but I thought there might have some discussion of this. I'm certainly pleased that rugby has become an Olympic sport.
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Meh. Golf shouldn't be in, for the same reason tennis or football shouldn't be in - the Olympics should be the absolute pinnacle of the sport. No golfer will think winning the Olympic gold is better than winning the Open or the Masters.
Rugby 7s, well I guess it will be regarded as more important than winning the annual prize. Fair enough. 7s is good fun to watch too. I'm amazed rugby got so many votes though (81 out of a poss 90) as I didn't think many countries outside the usual Test nations would care. -
Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
I'm struggling to decide which of these statements is more ridiculous:
The Republic of Ireland's three-time major winner Padraig Harrington told a news conference in Copenhagen that the Olympics would soon surpass the majors in importance.
"I do believe in time the Olympic gold will become the most important event in golf and I don't believe it will take that long," he said.
Bernard Lapasset, president of the International Rugby Board, said the Olympics would be "the pinnacle of our sport".Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
The IRB has scrapped the Sevens World Cup though haven't they? That surely moved the balance in their favour.
The thing I was most shocked by was that Count Jacques Rogge played for the Belgian National Rugby Team.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Has everyone in Rugbyland not spotted the below the dotted line bit of this, that in order to enter at the Olympics there will have to be a "Team GB"? None of this England, Wales, Scotland and (God forbid) "Ireland" nonsense?Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Given the British Lions, I suspect that may not be a dealbreaker, Rogin.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
I imagine Harrington's quip was tongue in cheek.
NI rugby players will presumably have a choice of playing either for either Ireland or Britain. Ditto the golfers- although I hear McIlroy has already chosen the latter.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Rugby Sevens will be an asset to the Olympics even if it might cause some wailing and gnashing of teeth among how to select a "GB" team. Still not sure about golf - if only for the way they've proposed it should go.
A 72-hole strokeplay tournament featuring the world's top 15 plus invited other players from other countries is totally wrong for this. At best, this will make the Olympics little more than another WGC event - the field will be very similar (if a little smaller) to the WGC-CA invitational championships that's already played every year.
You could have - by 2016 - as many as 10 golfers from the US, for example, in the field. No Olympic individual event should have 10 competitors from a single country, even if it is the USA.
And to make the Olympics a "unique" event, they really could have bitten the bullet and made it over 18-hole matchplay. Or even 18-hole strokeplay, but with a matchplay format. That remains the format of golf that the vast majority of (amateur) golfers worldwide play, but the pros play it just once or twice a season.
Making the Olympic golf a 72-hole strokeplay event, where Tiger Woods could be 6 shots clear of Jim Furyk and the rest of the field after 3 rounds, will make golf look as boring at the Olympics as most non-golf fans find it when it's on telly normally.
I'd have preferred them to start, as a demonstration sport, with a team event - 3 man teams from each country, playing matchplay like in the old Dunhill Cup. Maybe that would have limited the number of countries with a realistic medal chance to 8 or 10, but the same's true of the relay events in athletics. And it would have been more exciting that what they're talking about, for no better reason than it would have been a unique event in the golfing calendar, even for the pros.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
The choice of Golf was based entirely on it's ability to draw high-profile sponsorship to the games. Sports such as Squash would have benefited so much more from inclusion into the Olympics. The inclusion of Golf, like Tennis will add nothing to the games profile that it does not already carry.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
The other thing golf could really have done, instead of simply throwing the doors open to the top professionals, is making it at the very least a hybrid event mainly for amateurs.
The last seven or eight US and British Amateur (Open) championships have been won, at amateur level, by golfers from Italy, Spain, Holland, Finland, France, Korea and Ireland, as well as the US and "GB".
Surely a better idea for the Olympic ideal than inviting the pros in?
Maybe something like the football, where the teams are 75% "amateur" (well at least junior pros) and a handful of senior pros as well?Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
I daresay Olympic golf is just for men.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
If the proposed womens event is on the same basis as the men's, the only competitors will all be Korean, if you extrapolate the way their world rankings have gone recently.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Nah, isn't it the top fifteen, no matter where they're from, followed by 45 more allocated on a no-more-than-two-per-country basis? That would mean no more than fifteen Koreans, and at least 23 other nations.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
It's the top 15 plus 2 from every other country that's got at least one player already in the top 100, I heard.
So okay, they won't all be Korean (I was being flippant).
Shame though that the Olympic event won't be an all-inclusive one. The Canada Cup (which became the World Cup) used to be like that, with complete amateurs from places like Colombia and Italy teeing up and shooting 90s alongside Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. But without those amateurs, would there be a Camillo Villegas, or a Matteo Mannessero, nowadays? Isn't that what the Olympics is meant to be about?Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Sean of the Shed wrote:
Rugby sevens has always been a magnet for high end sponsors as well.The choice of Golf was based entirely on it's ability to draw high-profile sponsorship to the games.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Harry Truscott wrote:
But Rugby has limited appeal in all but a few nations, at least the profile afforded it by the Olympics might help broaden this. Golf in comparison is way off the scale. There isn't many sportsmen in the world who have the global appeal and ability to attract sponsorship that Tiger Woods does.Sean of the Shed wrote:
Rugby sevens has always been a magnet for high end sponsors as well.The choice of Golf was based entirely on it's ability to draw high-profile sponsorship to the games.
I'd venture as far as to say that there are a lot of countries where the vast majority of the population couldn't name a single Rugby player, but have all heard of Tiger, and many other golfers beside him.
To put it bluntly the only benefit that Golf will get from the Olympics is another stream of sponsorship and income.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
New Zealand's highest paid "sportsman", for some years, hasn't been any sort of Rugby player, but Steve Williams, Tiger Woods' caddie, who reputedly earns over £2m a year just for carrying his clubs about and high-fiving him when he makes a putt.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
As observed by Patrick Collins, a sport with several high end male-only clubs isn't very Olympic in spirit.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Sounds very ancient Greek to me...Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Sean of the Shed wrote: 'There isn't many sportsmen in the world who have the global appeal and ability to attract sponsorship that Tiger Woods does.'
Quite agree but would Tiger want to play somewhere that would disrupt preparations for a major. I don't know when the Rio games are scheduled for but the USPGA is normally around August 20th.
If golf is in it should be as crazy golf.
Was against Rugby being in but the 7s has more appeal as an Olympic sport than 15s would. It is played in all the continents at least and should help to grow the game.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
I think the Greeks were more gay friendly.
Here's an extract from Patrick's article that tells you a lot about golf- thoughtfully pasted by me to save you clicking on the Mail's site:
Collins' articles obviously bemuse the readers of the Mail- when there are any at all. The only chap apart from me who's commented on this has said "get back to your lapdancing club, you professional writer and leave amateurs alone".One of the leaders of golf’s successful bid was Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A. He is a bluff cove, a man for whom the Olympic arena might not seem a natural home.
And yet, he has learned the language. ‘Our sport is closely aligned to the values and ethos of Olympism,’ he told the IOC. ‘Your beliefs in sportsmanship, honour, integrity, excellence and fair play are also close to our hearts.’
He then claims: ‘We are an inclusive sport.’ Which is absolutely true, unless you happen to be a woman. For here, the bluff cove is skating on perilously thin ice. ‘I’m aware that golf has a reputation for having men-only clubs,’ he says. ‘But the number of single-sex clubs is currently less than half of one per cent and that number is falling rapidly.’ It is a piece of disingenuous twaddle.
You see, that negligible figure includes Open Championship venues such as Muirfield, Royal St George’s and Troon. It includes Prestwick, the site of the first Open. And, incredibly, it includes the Royal & Ancient itself, the club which administers the game for the entire world bar America and Mexico, and the club of which Dawson is chief executive.
For an ‘inclusive’ sport, it is a shameful record of sexist bigotry. Of course, the United States is studded with men-only golf clubs, most notably Augusta National, the home of the Masters. Around 20 years ago, the embattled rednecks finally abandoned their efforts to keep out black members. They now take their stand against the admission of women.
Dawson has always been remarkably relaxed about all this. ‘It’s hardly life-threatening, is it?’ he once told an interviewer. ‘It is a game, after all. People play it and have fun.’ He added: ‘This is not to be complacent, but there’s no particular pressure from inside of golf about this, but the media clearly have it on their agenda.’
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Dangerous ground, this.
Are all sports meant to be "open to all" for inclusion in this kind of thing?
Netball would be fucked for a start, and would surely have have to be kicked out of the Commonwealth Games as a result (there isn't a men's Netball gold medal).
I'm not sure Synchronised Swimming, nor Rhythmic Gymnastics, have yet had men's gold medals awarded at the Olympics, either.Comment
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Golf and Rugby to be Olympic Sports
Isn't having rugby 7's like having 5-a-side football? I mean, it's fun and all that, but it's not a proper game really.
As for golf, as Rogin said, make it a team of 2 or 3 from each country playing matchplay.Comment
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