In reply to: Should golf be finished as Olympic sport? posted by SixShutouts66
I think golf should be an olympic sport because it's a truly international sport that doesn't rely on judging....
+1
But I think a team event would make it more country relevant. THere are so many choices for making the Olympics unique and fun but instead they just set it up like a PGA Championship. There's plenty of invite only golf tournaments already.
A team event could exist alongside or in addition to an individual event easily.
They also could consider only inviting amateurs
They also could only invite x number from y number of countries and no one else...you want in you have to qualify based on your national olympic committee's standards and not based on your world ranking
They didn't do any of that...which I think was the real mistake...golf = good...same golf we got 2 weeks before = bad
That's why it's not a team event.
Especially if each country was limited to 3 or 4 players. A few in particular that come to mind for future are Australia, South Africa, Great Britain, Sweden, Spain. There are a LOT of great international players in golf and there's no reason why a team event couldn't be easily integrated into what they had this year.
Men's Basketball
Women's Basketball
Women's Gymnastics
Probably some others that we don't dominate like Table Tennis
The fact that the USA would probably win a team gold medal in golf is no reason not to have the event. There's several team events that are more one-sided.
I remember I had those teams on my NHL99 video game
My point was that American golfers haven't exactly excelled in team match play formats as of late.
The European teams may not be as strong when they're divided up by country, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that the US would dominate a team format.
matches became so one-sided that the format was changed.
Depending on the size of the team (I'd advocate for fewer than the big team events in golf) several countries could field top talent and battle it out for 1 medal each.
If 3 Americans win the only 3 medals being awarded that won't go over well.
The fact that the US could only have 4 players automatically makes the field weaker.
Why not run it like a college event? Have 5 players from each country and have them play a 54-hole stroke play qualifier. You can give out medals to the top-3 individuals in stroke play and then have the top 4 or 8 teams make match play and give out team gold.
It'd be a ton of fun.