Olympic Inclusion ‘Opens the Door’ – Lorne Rubenstein

Lorne Rubenstein wrote a nice piece a while back on golf’s inclusion in the 2016 Olympics. I touched upon this subject of course, here, but have wanted to share this Rubenstein article, excerpted from the Globe and Mail.

You can find the article online here, and also included below.


Olympic inclusion 'opens the door'

LORNE RUBENSTEIN

Published on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 12:00AM EDT
Last updated on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 2:59AM EDT

rube@sympatico.ca

Ryo in Rio. Can't you just see this as a headline when golf returns to the Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro?

Japan's Ryo Ishikawa is 18, he's playing for the International team this week in the Presidents Cup, and he's likely to qualify for the golf competition.

Okay, great. We got the cute headline out of the way. And yes, it's potentially helpful to the game's growth that golf will return to the Olympics for the first time since 1904, when Canada's George S. Lyon won the gold medal in St. Louis. Sure, only Canada and the United States competed, but a gold medal is a gold medal. Men and women will compete in Rio. But does golf's admission to the Olympics mean that it's suddenly become a truly global game?

Well, it's actually always been a global game. The International Olympic Committee's imprimatur wasn't required to confirm golf as an international sport. It's been played around the world for many, many years. The game as we know it began in Scotland centuries ago. Or was it the Netherlands? There's evidence for that as well. It's been played in India and Australia and Canada and the United States and China and South America and Eastern Europe and France and Italy and Israel and elsewhere.

People who know something about the history of golf must shake their heads when competitions come along that supposedly put an official stamp on golf's international nature.

When the Presidents Cup came along in 1994, it was said it was needed because more players from outside the United States, Britain and Europe were winning tournaments.

But South Africans Bobby Locke and Gary Player had won majors long before then. Argentina's Roberto de Vicenzo had won the 1967 Open Championship. Australia's Peter Thomson had won five Opens. Bob Charles of New Zealand had won the Open.

Meanwhile, the first official Ryder Cup was played in 1927. Amateur golf has long had the Walker Cup for men and the Curtis Cup for women. Canadian industrialist John Jay Hopkins founded the annual World Cup in 1953, for teams of two professionals representing countries around the world.

It was first called the Canada Cup. Hopkins founded it to promote what he called "international goodwill through golf."

Golf has long spanned the globe, then. The IOC didn't recognize that, while there was criticism of the game as an elite sport even up until the member countries voted to include it in Rio. Meanwhile, the organizing bodies of the game, meaning the United States Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews and smaller groups, including the Royal Canadian Golf Association, didn't do enough to disavow critics of that belief.

Golf should have been included in the Olympics years ago. It isn't an elite sport, except that it's reported as such and few publications or television networks pay any attention to its amateur side, or even any professional tours beyond the PGA and Europe. There's a false impression golf is all about the Masters, the other three majors, and the Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup, and maybe even the Presidents Cup, although it doesn't make much, if any, of an impact in Europe.

But golf is about all the people who play it far from the elite private clubs. It's about the golfers slogging it out in the rain yesterday at Toronto's municipal Don Valley course and whacking the ball around the Kildonan Park course on the banks of the Red River in Winnipeg, and all the public courses across the country.

Golf in the Olympics could provide kids playing these courses, and yes, private courses as well, the dream of representing their countries. Boys and girls and young men and women who know something about the Olympic Games because of their profile might now focus on golf.

That could also happen in Asia, of course, where golf is still relatively young. But the game is going to have to be made far more accessible, which means less expensive, than it is now. Millions may well take up the game in China. They'll need courses that are affordable.

In the end, there's no point in being a curmudgeon about golf getting into the Olympics.
Mike Weir said at the Presidents Cup yesterday, it's "awesome news." He said its inclusion "opens the door for so many kids around the world and in Canada who may be playing junior golf today and competing for a gold medal in seven years."

Fair enough. It's indeed long past time that golf should have been in the Olympics. But at least the game is in. Now we'll see just how many doors it opens around the world, or whether it will do nothing more than provide another stroke-play competition for Woods, Lorena Ochoa and their fellow tour pros.