Home Again - Playing Hurt Edition

Employee No. 2 and I are safely home from our wonderful Scotland adventure, though only under the loosest of definitions of safely.  The delay in the resumption of normal blogging is that we've both been ill.  Theresa caught what we first thought was food poisoning, and traveled home during its onset, which is truly no fun.  We came to the conclusion that it wasn't food poisoning when it hit me Sunday morning, though I seem to be recovering at a quicker pace than the bride.

I have some final day photos for a trip notebook dump, but don't have anywhere near the energy for that today.  Just thought I'd cover a couple of golf items, and try to get back into ordinary course of business.

Olympic Fever - If only my immunity to Olympic Fever extended to the gastrointestinal realm, but folks are understandably happy for a certain Kiwi.  Prone as I found myself, I did catch a bit of the final round, the part where Lydia's collar got a bit tight.  Shall we see what folks thought, beginning with the Tour Confidential roundtable?

1. Lydia Ko claimed gold at the women’s Olympic Golf competition, finishing 10 under to beat Esther Henseleit (eight under, silver) and Xiyu Lin (seven under, bronze) at Le Golf National outside of Paris. What did Ko do better than everyone else, and could her Olympic success (a gold, silver and bronze) now be higher up on her resume than her two major titles?

Ryan Barath:: As much as the women’s majors are a very big deal, I think when you consider the time between all three of her Olympic medals, especially the gold she just earned in Paris, I believe when all is said and done in her career, this could be considered her crowning achievement.

Zephyr Melton:: It might not be higher than her major wins, but it very well might equal them. Majors come around five times a year for the ladies — the Olympics only happen once every four years. Securing all three spots on the podium in three Olympic starts its a wildly impressive accomplishment.

Dylan Dethier: She rode a red-hot putter all week, gaining more than eight shots on the rest of the field. Can we call that destiny? As I understand it nobody else in golf history has more than one Olympic medal. Ko has all three of ‘em. That’s incredible. That’s historic. Golf still counts majors more than golds, but in the eyes of the rest of the sporting world those medals are worth far more.

Then obviously the rest of the world has been into the wacky 'shrooms...  I agree this is a feel good win and those three medals over seven years is a notable achievement, but there's one gnawing problem.  The field in Olympic golf is so thin as to render the competition irrelevant.  Lydia plays for a country that guarantees her a spot in the filed, then she only needs to beat a handful of actual top-level players.  Sorry to be a downer, but that's the reality of what Peter Dawson has given us.

And this about the young lady:

2. With the win, the 27-year-old Ko became the 35th player to join the LPGA Hall of Fame and also the youngest to qualify for it under the current criteria. Has her consistency — winning at 15, two majors, 20 LPGA titles — received as much praise as it deserves when so many other young stars haven’t found the same sustained success?

Barath: Within the game I have a very hard time thinking of another LPGA or even PGA Tour

player that is as well-loved and respected as Lydia. Her career has spanned over a decade and a half and in the modern women’s game that’s almost unheard of. Part of what I think has prevented her from reaching the general popularity and recognition as others that have been less successful is that there is no standout part of her game that fans can point to like being overly long off the tee — she’s just a top-to-bottom solid player.

Melton: Lydia’s career seems like one that will be remembered more fondly as time passes. She became a victim of her own success after such a dynamic start to her career, and when she couldn’t maintain that pace it almost seemed like a disappointment. But with her spot in the LPGA HOF locked up and her legacy secure, we’ll look back on her career as one of the greatest of the modern generation.

Dethier: It’s crazy to say because she’s just 27 but Ko’s journey has had several chapters. Early on she got plenty of praise and credit; in down times she received her fair share — maybe more — of criticism and second-guessing. Hall of Fame qualification has loomed over this era and there’s no more dramatic way to get over the line with Olympic gold. The up-and-down ride has made this latest chapter feel that much more satisfying from the outside and, Ko admits, for her, too.

Aren't there a lot of interesting threads in that question and answers?  I think, as noted above, that we learn a lot about these folks by the reactions of their fellow players, and we see them genuinely happy for her success.

But her career arc is interesting, and in many ways more admirable than her popularity.  I think Dylan citing here age is a bit of a red herring, because the women tend to rise earlier but their careers don't have the length of the men, a big part of which is attributable to life intruding.  But she's really a bit of an under-achiever to be honest, that early burst of brilliance leading two a mere two majors (and, to be honest, one was a gift from Ariya and the other was a made-up major), is a bit of a disappointment.  

I always worried about Lydia's longevity because she was such a short hitter, it's hard to compete routinely hitting longer clubs into greens.  But it's her reaction to those down periods that I think will be her legacy, and the work that allowed her to remain competitive for so long.  I don't know that she qualifies as a legend, but I do know that I'm happy for her success, and I'm not a cheap date in that regard.

Now for the inevitable over-reaching conclusions, though bear in mind that there's more from Dylan Derthier coming:

3. With the men’s and women’s Olympic Golf competitions now complete, what was your main takeaway or learning from the events?

Barath: On the women’s side I think the Olympics is now considered bigger than a major, especially considering the global broadcast that brings in so many casual fans. As for Olympic golf on the men’s side, I believe this year has helped to solidify this as a big event for the best men’s players in the world.

Melton: Olympic golf is FUN. Playing for medals makes for a much more exciting finish and watching players rep their countries is a treat. I’m all in on golf in the Olympics.

Dethier: I’m biased because I’m an Olympics sicko and I’ve always been a massive proponent of golf in the games. But I think what I hadn’t realized until this week is that 72-hole stroke play actually IS the right format for the individual competition. I’d been a proponent of something more creative, but nah — the original way still delivers. I’m still dying for an outside-the-box team competition, but incredible crowds on a wild golf course with talent and storylines in contention? This was awesome.

I agree that the laying for medals is interesting, though I think what's intriguing is the silver and bronze versions thereof.  What I mean is that what makes Olympic golf different, is the value, i.e. the medal, that is assigned to second and third places.  

Dylan's comments are a bit odd, as the general reaction to Olympic golf suffers, in your humble blogger's opinion, fails because it doesn't address the need to make it a credible competition, meaning a deep field.

Dylan spends a lot of time on the Olympics in his Monday Finish column, which amusingly is framed by a non-golfer's travails:

After watching roughly 230 hours of Summer Olympics coverage these last two weeks, there’s one athlete I can’t stop thinking about: sprinter Akani Simbine.

Simbine is from South Africa and he runs the 100-meter dash, one of the Games’ marquee events. This was hardly his first time at the track; at the 2016 Games he finished fifth in the 100, missing the podium by 0.02 seconds, and when he made it back to the final in Tokyo in 2021 he finished fourth there, 0.04 seconds off the podium. He fell into a depression post-Olympics, he said in one interview, locking himself in his house for a week and ultimately stepping away from the sport for a while. But he worked his way to a positive new mindset, battled his way back into form, qualified for a third Olympics and made his way into the final. Again.

And then, last week, he finished fourth. Again.

This time Simbine’s margin was even more excruciating. Not only had he finished just 0.01 seconds out of the medals; his time of 9.82 was less than four hundredths from gold.

I'll alert the media that sports are cruel.  What?  I see, Dylan is media but apparently didn't get the memo...

So what does this have to do with golf?

For one thing, golfers should feel lucky. Every year we talk about the scarcity of the majors. Golfers’ careers are defined by performances in majors, specifically victories in majors, and because there are only four per year (five, for the LPGA) every chance to win one is incredibly precious. Golf is a game of inches, the difference between winning and losing can be a lip-in vs. a lip-out, you need luck on your side, etc. You’ve heard the cliches. But there’s a world of difference between four four-day majors per year and one 10-second “major” every four years, which is how most of the world views the Olympics 100-meter race.

So while it’s still not yet clear where Olympic Gold fits in golf’s hierarchy, there’s a scarcity to the accomplishment that just doesn’t exist elsewhere in the sport. It might have seemed silly after the 2016 Games to suggest that gold could be bigger than a major, but that’s a far less crazy suggestion now; some athletes would certainly make the trade. It’s certainly more unique: We gave out 31 men’s major championships between the 2016 and 2024 Olympics, after all, but only one gold medal.

That middle 'graph is troubling, because it so misrepresents life as it really exists.  He's correct up to point about the once every four years, although he ignores the annual world championships that exist in most Olympic sports.  But it's that 10 second analogy, along with the lip-outs, that's so misguided.

What Dylan ignores is that the best track athlete in the world will win x percent of his or her competitions, whereas the best golfer in the world will win y percent of the time.  Now, dear reader, solve for x and y....  Of course there are upsets and luck, but x is exponentially higher than y, which makes golf an awkward fit in the Olympics.  Of course, they've increased the best player's chances of winning, by the expedient of excluding so many of the best players in the world, but that renders the underlying competition an exhibition.

But here's where it gets really interesting, though Dylan doesn't seem to understand the implications:

For another thing, golf should feel lucky. Because the game’s tendency towards randomness is where where golf in the Olympics could have gotten weird. Without the assistance of some high-level pharmaceuticals, the 350th-ranked high jumper will never come from nowhere to win Olympic gold, nor will someone running a 10.1-second 100 meters suddenly run 9.7. In many Olympic sports there are upsets but there aren’t usually random flukes. But in golf? The 100th-ranked player wins all the time! So while they would be deserving champions, a gold medalist like Esther Henseleit (No. 54 in the world before her silver this weekend) or Rory Sabbatini (No. 161 before his silver in Tokyo) would feel a bit random as golf’s global representatives for the next four years.

Instead, something special has happened since the sport’s Olympic reintroduction — a golf miracle, if you will. The perfect players have won.

In 2016 the men’s gold medalist was Justin Rose, a respected major champion who’d emphasized the Games’ importance and showed up enthusiastically even as many other top-ranked players bailed. On the women’s side gold went to Inbee Park, a seven-time major champion and the best player of her generation.

In 2021 the golds went to Xander Schauffele and Nelly Korda, which proved a sign of things to come; each was already among the best players in the world at the time and each is even better now.

Things got even better this year; Paris and Le Golf National brought out the best from the best. On the men’s side there was World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler rallying to a Sunday 9-under 62 to chase down Jon Rahm and the rest of the field to win by one. And then this weekend there was Lydia Ko, already the only person in history with multiple golfing medals, needing gold to complete her set of three and needing a win to cement her place in the LPGA’s Hall of Fame. A red-hot putter carried her into the lead and an all-around game kept her there; her perfect wedge at the last sealed the deal, she finished with birdie and walked off the course and into history.

But riddle me this Batman.  Why was the 161st ranked player in the world in a 60-player field, when the fifth-ranked American (who would have been in the top ten in the world) excluded?  In a sport whose genetic profile includes what Dylan calls "randomness"?  

I remain open to the concept of Olympic golf, but please wake me when they make it a legitimate completion.  

I had intended to get to Koochgate today, but the fact is that I'm already worn down.  So let's keep that for another day, and we'll catch up later in the week.