The history of golf is rooted in the soil on the eastern shores of a small university town in Scotland. The future, well, that could cover a much more expansive terrain.Golf is becoming more global than ever, as the game marches towards its debut in the 2016 Summer Olympics in 2016 in Brazil.
Between the PGA Tour, European Tour and LPGA Tour, there were tournaments played on six different continents – with Antarctica the lone holdout – in 2010, and 18 different countries were featured in the winner’s circle.
Ty Votaw, the Executive Director of the International Golf Federation’s Olympic Golf Committee, and a big reason why golf is now part of the Olympics, says the Games will be a launching point for even more global expansion.
“Clearly the benefit that golf will have in being part of the Olympic Games between now and 2016 is that it will allow governments of countries around the world – where golf is just developing – and national Olympic committees of those countries to provide greater attention, greater resources, and greater manpower behind the development of golf in their countries,” says Votaw, also the Executive Vice President of Communications and International Affairs for the PGA Tour and former commissioner of the LPGA Tour.
“The only way that happens generally is if the sport is an Olympic sport and golf had gone lacking in those areas of attention – resources, manpower, and dollars – because it had not been an Olympic sport since 1904.”
For many years the United States had a monopoly on the game, at least, if major championships are the currency by which golf wealth is measured. From 1960 until 2000, American-born players won 233 of the 302 (77 percent) major championships that were contested on the men’s and women’s tours. In the decade since, they’ve won 32 of 80 (40 percent).
Steven Schlossman is an American history professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the co-author of Chasing Greatness, a book that details the 1973 U.S. Open where Johnny Miller famously fired a final round 63 to win the title.
For the book, he did extensive research about Oakmont Country Club and five of the U.S. Open Championships (three men’s and two women’s) that have been played there. He says that while the winning numbers are certainly relevant statistically, he also points to the international participation rates in those tournaments – an American national championship, mind you – as a further illustration of the continuing evolution of the game.
On the men’s side, the number of players born outside of the U.S. that made the cut increased from six percent in 1973, to 20 per cent in 1994 and finally to 48 percent in 2007.
It should also be noted that players from three different continents (Miller in 1973, Ernie Els in 1994 and Angel Cabrera in 2007) won those tournaments.
On the women’s side, the increase is similar but much more pronounced, increasing from 14 percent in 1992 to 62 percent in 2010. While only a small sample size, this shift does underscore the fortuitous timing of the ongoing global golf advancement, with the 2016 games just five years away.
“Every tournament, if you look at first, second, third and you see what countries are represented and who [would get] a medal if those were the Olympic Games, gives us a lot of interesting momentum heading to the Olympic Games as we experience that between now and 2016,” says Votaw.
As much as it’s important for the growth of golf, the opportunity to tee it up in the Olympics will become equally important for the players themselves.
“It’s huge for golf to be in the Olympics,” says PGA player Ian Poulter. “It would be an honour and privilege to represent my country and win the gold medal.”
Votaw takes it one step further, and says that for golfers to be able to have close contact with some of the greatest athletes in the world can only be a good experience.
“You’d have to compare it to tennis where Roger Federer stayed in the Olympic village and was just another great athlete,” he says. “He wasn’t Roger Federer – who was the no.1 player at the time in the tennis world. He was just another great athlete in an Olympic village filled with a bunch of great athletes.
“That mix, that exposure and that interaction between elite athletes from around the world, and seeing golfers as their equals as Olympic athletes, is going to be a wonderful experience for our players, both men and women.”
Of course, there are still some issues that need to be ironed out between now and then. Votaw says that while the game is on a trail to global prosperity, there are still areas in the world that need to mature in the short term, in order to have a truly global Olympic competition.
“[If] you look at the top 500 in the world rankings on the men’s side, I think only 14 players come from countries in South America, and eight of those come from Argentina,” he says. “So there’s some work to do to develop golfers in South America, such that there can be some representation from that part of the world at the Olympic Games in 2016.”
Votaw adds that it’s a similar scenario for women’s golf, but the more dominant South American country is Brazil, rather than Argentina.
Still, there is a foundation there with players like Camilo Villegas, Jhonattan Vegas and Angel Cabrera.
Even if the future of South American golf is looking bright, there is an area on the opposite side of the planet that most agree is the next frontier of the game – Asia.
“In the long-term I think we will see more and more Asian- born players coming to compete on the PGA Tour, much like we see on today’s LPGA Tour,” says Tom Abbott, an analyst for the Golf Channel. “The South Korean influence on the LPGA has been strong but because of mandatory military service, the men haven’t had the same opportunities. In places like India and China, the situation is different, so I would expect to see an impact from those two countries.”
One of the greatest things about the game of golf is that it doesn’t discriminate and it doesn’t know any other languages. The rules of the game are the same no matter what your native tongue is, whether you’re a touring professional or a weekend hacker.
So when gold medals are hung around the necks of the Olympic champions it will be a momentous occasion.
“There’s no greater accomplishment for a sportsman,” says Votaw. “There may be major championships in men’s and women’s golf, there are major championships in tennis for men and women – but you only get one chance every four years to win a gold medal.”
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