In which we do our utmost to stoke your Olympic fever.... Or something.
Dateline: Kasumigaseki Country Club - I keep waiting for the woke mafia to train their sights on the Olympic Golf venue, whose membership policies compare favorably to those of The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, c1955.
Golf.com offers up its Ultimate Guide to the men's competition, though I'll ultimately be the one deciding its ultimateness, though the start isn't promising:
The players
While the list of those not playing is notable (more on that later), so, too, is the roster of those who are. In all, 60 players will be teeing it up, and their selection was based on the Olympic Golf Ranking, which was based on the Official World Golf Ranking. The top 15 ranked players qualified (unless their country already had four), and, from there, the field was completed by ranking (though a country could have no more than two players qualify through this route, and if a country qualified two players from the top 15, they could have no more on their team).
Unless their country already had four? Isn't that quite the problem? here's the current top twenty in the OWGR (they used an earlier version of this to set the field):
The numbers to know
60
The number of players in the field. There is no cut in the 72-hole event. Should players be tied after the 72 holes, they will play a three-hole playoff, and if it remains tied after that, they will go to sudden death.
13
The hour time difference between Tokyo and the Eastern time zone. The tournament runs Thursday through Sunday — but the Golf Channel broadcasts will start at 6:30 p.m. ET the days before.
0
Returning number of medalists. In 2016, Justin Rose won the gold medal, Henrik Stenson the silver and Matt Kuchar bronze. Before that, men’s golf hadn’t been played in the Olympics since 1904.
The number of players in the field is a red herring, because the number they don't share is the number of elite players in the field, which is well into double-digits.
Sean Zak is one of the few golf writers actually on site in Tokyo, and he offers nine early observations from the venue:
1. What’s the course like?
That’s a tough question. One that Tommy and I tried to answer together. I asked him for his best Tour comp, and he looked genuinely unsure, taking a solid minute to answer. It’s not quite like Quail Hollow, because “Quail is much more demanding off the tee.” It plays a bit like Harbour Town in that it’s not driver everywhere, “but not so tricked up.” The routing of the holes and even the tall, leaning pine and cypress trees make it feel a bit like Riviera, but we both knew this isn’t Riv. It has deep bunkers that make every miss intriguing, and just one water hazard that comes into play, on the 18th.
Fleetwood’s caddie, Finnis, thought it has a Spyglass Hill vibe to it. I can certainly see that. The heat and the zoysia grass certainly remind me of Bellerive, the 2018 PGA Championship host outside St. Louis.
How’s that for a lengthy, non-definitive answer?
Yes, that Tommy, who's been rocking a visor since his arrival in Tokyo:
Bellerive? You're not making this sound any better...
3. Rahm’s Covid test is the talk of the town
And shouldn’t it be? Man, this virus is confusing. Rahm apparently failed his third of three tests required before tripping to Japan, then took three more tests and each turned up positive as well. All of this a full seven weeks since his incident at the Memorial. When Adri Arnaus, the other Spanish golfer in the field, arrived on the range Monday, he was immediately peppered for the details from New Zealand’s Ryan Fox and Zimbabwe’s Scott Vincent. Everyone is confused, Arnaus included. “We think it’s from the last time he got Covid,” he said. Either way, Jorge Campillo will arrive to represent Spain later this week.
Of course it's from the last time, unless it's from the vaccine. The sensitivity on the test remains ridiculously high, so this will keep happening. Meanwhile, we're almost through our second full golf season with Covid and there remains zero evidence that a single transmission has taken place on a golf course.
Store this away if you plan to watch:
5. My favorite holes: 6 and 14
No. 6 is a tasty little par-4 that probably isn’t a driver hole. Probably. If that’s the club, it had better be a cut shot. (If Rory bombs driver over everything, I may have to quit the biz.) There’s a fairway bunker in the 305-yard landing zone along the left side. Beyond that, the green is guarded by three tall pines that only get in the way when you’ve missed your tee shot to the left. Hopefully tournament organizers stick a hole over there at some point this week. The club choices will be fun to watch. You could see everything from a cut driver down to a laid up 6-iron.
No. 14 is a 625-yard beast, with a long, deep fairway bunker along the left side. The fairway slopes to the right, so it’s either a 3-wood short of the trouble or a driver that goes absolutely straight. Fleetwood mashed 3-wood to a good spot, but then hit his layup through the fairway, which meanders left to right and right to left two separate times. Arnaus blew a drive into trouble left and then another one into more trouble right. Is 3-wood the play? Driver might be the play, and you take your punishment once you find it. “That bunker is actually not a bad spot,” Finnis said. A true three-shotter for the pros is always fun.
But, just as we've reacquainted ourselves with the energy of fans on site:
6. It’s quiet out here!
PGA Tour players have definitely gotten used to playing in front of fans. But we are a long way from the scenes of Kiawah Island and Royal St. George’s. With no fans in attendance and about a 90-minute commute from the Olympic Village, there’s not much for sound-makers out at Kasumigaseki.
You’ve got Paul Casey rolling some putts by his lonesome. The German pair of Maximillian Kiefer and Hurly Long silently striping it alongside each other. The loudest action thus far comes wherever the Japanese players are playing. The local press follow their stars Hideki Matsuyama and Nasa Hataoka avidly in the States, and are understandably out in full force this week.
Winning a medal in front of no fans will be weird. And tough in its own way. Walking up the 18th on Sunday, Arnaus turned to me and asked, “Are we really not going to have fans?” as though he just hadn’t believed all the reports thus far. When I told him yes, no spectators, you could see the disappointment wash over him. No one wanted it to be this way, and the empty grandstands are a reminder of that.
Time to revive that meme that Collin Morikawa can't win in front of spectators?
That's the home team above.
If we haven't turned you off yet, perhaps this will help:
8. Mother Nature is Olympics-bound
It’s hot. It’s going to be hot. It’s going to feel like summertime in Memphis, another 35-degrees-latitude city, where all these Tour pros will head next week. The feels-like temperature at the course reached 97 degrees each of the last two days. And the only reason it’ll cool down is because Tropical Storm Nepartak is on the way.
It was news to me that Tropical Storms ascend to ‘Typhoon’ status in the Eastern Hemisphere, not hurricanes. Thankfully, the course seems like it’ll be on the edge of the storm’s path, which just means plenty of rain and some wind, at least during the men’s competition. The 7,600-yard course will play a bit softer, then, and longer.
Admit it, that Bellerive analogy is making way more sense, not that that's a good thing.
Geoff takes on the hot mess that is Olympic Golf in his newsletter:
As in the past with various efforts to propose a better Olympic format, these exercises in futilityare stifled by an International Golf Federation refusing to address the weaknesses of the current Olympic golf format. It could be stubborness or worrying too much about the PGA Tour’s needs. Or maybe some have been on the job too long. It doesn’t help that their new President, Annika Sorenstam, is off playing the U.S. Senior Women’s Open this week.
If the Olympics were meant to grow the game, as we’ve been told ad nauseum, then we all know team golf with a match play component would show the world just how thrilling the sport can be. Instead, we have the WGC Kasumigaseki this week. Even if there had been fans and a better field, it still lacks the potential for drama until the last nine holes.
I fully expect that next week's WGC in Memphis will have a much stronger field than Tokyo. As Geoff explains, the limitations for the competition format may surprise:
The IOC is concerned about bed space. Keeping the number at 60 addresses this. However, as we already know from Rio, most top professional golfers will not stay in the Olympic Village. In Paris they’ll stay closer to the course near Versailles. In Los Angeles a few might want to experience UCLA dorm living but most would rather stay in the guest house of a $25 million mansion around the corner from Riviera. You know, staying with a host family.
Apparently the IOC is still unclear as to why the players need caddies... But they have golf's best interest at heart, right?
Rather than excerpt in full, Geoff proposes a tweaked version of the NCAA's format, which has been a home run:
I would take the above and tweak it for Olympic golf like this:
- Continue the current qualification system for individuals. Two max per country unless ranked inside the world top 15. That’s when you a country can send four.
- Prior to the Games, determine the eight best teams of five players based on the official world rankings. This adds competition and drama prior to the Games for countries to qualify as a team. All five players get in the Games and can compete for individual Gold.
- At the Games, play 54 holes and cut to the top teams plus the top nine individuals not on an advancing team. Determine the individual medalists, give out medals, and move to team match play the next day.
Now here is where I’d tweak the NCAA concept.
- Instead of the top eight teams going to three days of knock-out match play, only have six or four teams advance. That cuts a day and makes the stroke play meaningful to ensure players grind to the very end.
- Assuming six of eight teams qualify for match play. Then the top two seeds get to sit out the morning of a 36-hole first day. But if that’s too grueling, then a four-team semis and finals commences, with the losing semi-finalists playing for the Bronze.
- This means six days maximum of competition for twenty players. Four days for most who come to the games. Check out for them is noon Monday!
The buried lede is a consolation match that would actually matter.... well, sort of.
The team match play runs the risk of making this compelling, and Lord knows we can't have that.
Lastly, Daniel Rappaport does a deep dive on the only issue that might prove compelling, the high stakes under which the South Koreans will labor:
Golfing pressure comes in two forms. The first is opportunity pressure. This occurs when a player is at the doorstep of an accomplishment, perhaps a life-changing one. A chance to beat Pop forthe first time. A 15-footer to win a PGA Tour event. These are good nerves. Any competitive golfer worth a damn relishes these situations. They’re what you practice for.The second type of pressure, a bit darker in nature, mostly plagues those brave souls who play this game for a living. No sane person dreams of avoidance pressure. These are the putts you absolutely, positively need to make, for a miss brings real-life consequences. Having to make birdie to keep your Tour card for another season. Needing a back-nine push to get to the final stage of Q-School and avoid another year of Monday’s and mini-tours.
But here's the key bit:
This week, both Im and Kim will be reunited with avoidance pressure of the highest order. Inanticipation of perhaps the most important tournament of their lives, both men took the extraordinary step of skipping the Open Championship to devote their entire focus to the Olympics. Can you blame them? A medal would exempt them from mandatory military service. A fourth-place finish or worse—well, they’d prefer not to think about that.
Serious stakes for the young men in question but, as I noted yesterday, the only real drama inherent in Olympic Golf comes at the cost of weakening the field for the game's oldest professional event.
Rio On My Mind - Apparently reports of the demise of Gil Hanse's Rio golf course have been over-stated:
After much sweating, headache and even a little fear for lives, the Rio Olympic golf course was completed in time for the games. The Gil Hanse-Amy Alcott design was a massive collaboration between multiple parties, including the PGA Tour and International Golf Federation. Yours truly even paid a visit to share ideas, a documentary crew captured the process and the course was kind of a huge hit.
So while most of Rio’s other Olympic venues languish—and lazy stories like this Business Insider claim of its abandonment have circulated, only to then report in 2020 it wasn’t busy, the Rio course is appears to be thriving in ways that seem unimaginable five years since Justin Rose took gold over Henrik Stenson.
Most amazing of all? It may center around how stunning the conditioning looks. To say this course looks lean (in a great way) might be underselling it. Long feared as a place that would be overwatered and too lush for the Sandbelt-style golf envisioned by the design team to show the world a more sustainable game, the Rio course is delivering. Look at this close up from the Google Earth shot 19 months ago:
Now that is a beautiful shade of green!
But if you want proof that the course has become a lively place to be on a daily basis, give their Instagram account a follow. They had a concert in the progressive clubhouse last week! And you can follow along to see what the operators are doing to promote the game. No, the purveyors aren’t growing the game in the favelas, but they are keeping the place public, thriving and conducting outreach programs to juniors.
While some smaller events have been played there it’s a little surprising another big event like the Latin America Amateur Championship hasn’t been played there.
That's actually good news, given the predictions that there wouldn't be sufficient funds to maintain it. Of course, as Geoff hints, all those predictions that golf would boom in the favelas were silly, and I'm still waiting for the identification of the first new golfer created by the sport's inclusion in the Games. And, yes, I'll keep waiting for that...
As for this, I don't think it has the desired result:
Remember Rio? A brief recap of the 2016 Olympic golf competition
As golf gets ready to tee off for the Olympic Games, we decided to take a minute and remember the sport’s triumphant return to the 2016 Games in Brazil. Here’s what you might have forgotten about.
It was a nice moment, mostly because Rose et. al. so embraced it. But I feel compelled to note that those three haven't done much since that date (and, just because I had to Google it, Stenson's Troon showdown with Phil was a month prior to Rio). Just about the only subsequent accomplishment I can cite from these three is their advancement of the caddie compensation issue.
That's Gonna Leave a Mark - Dylan Dethier's Monday Finish feature typically has some goodies for us, but the most notable bit to me was this bit of harshness:
At the 3M, the group at T2 included professional runner-up Louis Oosthuizen. There’s an instinct to treat second-place finishes as failures for famous non-winners like Oosthuizen or Tony Finau,but in this case that would be the wrong way to look at it. Oosthuizen’s final-round 66 was the second-low of the day and included three birdies in his final four holes. Runner-up was an achievement.
“I was happy to play this week. I sort of didn’t really want to just think about last week, about not playing great on that Sunday and immediately quickly go back into tournament mode and then play this tournament,” he said. “We had a good time here this week and I’m just trying to see if I can go one better than all these seconds and thirds.”
Professional runner up? Geez, and you guys think I can be harsh....
Though Dylan seems far more interested in the Olympics, even proposing this constructive suggestion:
This is the best Olympic idea I’ve heard thus far. Especially if one of the options comes up “golf.”
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