Here Rick Bevan provides the lowdown of everything you need to know about this year’s Paris showdown.
Venue: Le Golf National, (near) Paris
Dates: August 1-10, 2024
Format: 72-hole strokeplay
Qualification for the Olympic golf competition is based on the Official World Golf Ranking, with 60 men and 60 women taking part.
The top 15 players in the OWGR are eligible to make the trip to Paris but each country is only permitted a maximum of four male and four female representatives. After that, players ranked from 16th onwards will be eligible up to a maximum of two men and two women per country – as long as that country does not already have at least two players in the top 15 – until the 60 spots are filled.
Each of the five continents of the Olympic Movement will be guaranteed at least one player in each of the women’s and men’s events respectively. If they’ve not automatically qualified, the continental places will be allocated to the highest-ranked player (s) on the Olympic Golf Rankings from the continent(s) without representation.
Having been forced to miss the 2020 Olympic Games due to contracting Covid the week before the competition began, US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau will again miss out on representing Team USA. The American superstar was one of the highest profile defectors to LIV Golf and, due to the breakaway tour’s events not qualifying for World Ranking points, he is set to watch from the side lines again, despite his Major triumph at Pinehurst No.2 in June. “Hopefully one day the game of golf will get figured out and come back together and I’ll be able to play,” said DeChambeau. “I’m playing great golf, I’m excited but ultimately I’m frustrated and disappointed. I made the choices I have made and there’s consequences to that, I respect it. But hopefully sooner rather than later we figure that out.”
Meanwhile Dutch stars including six-time DP World Tour winner Joost Luiten, Driel and Dewi Weber, are also set to miss out, despite being eligible! A furious Luiten said: “The Dutch Olympic Committee will not send me even though I have qualified by the international golf federation’s criteria and the Olympic criteria. NOCNSF have their own criteria (good chance to finish top eight) and they don’t think I have a chance to finish in the top eight of the Olympics (60 men field) even though over my 18 year professional career I have finished inside of the top 10 almost 20% of the time and those were 156 man fields.”
The Dutch federation are instead only taking Solheim Cup star Anne van Dam for the women’s competition.
The field for the Paris Games is the strongest in Olympic history and despite DeChambeau’s absence, Team USA look very strong. They’re the only nation with the maximum four representatives in the men’s contest with World No.1 Scottie Scheffler, defending Olympic champion Xander Schauffele, Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa flying the stars and stripes, custodians of six Majors between them.
World No.2 Rory McIlroy will be out to make amends for his US Open meltdown. The four-time Major champion was involved in an epic seven-man play-off for the bronze medal in Tokyo, eventually coming up short and taking fourth place.
“I’ve been saying all day I never tried so hard in my life to finish third,” he said at the time. “It’s disappointing going away from here without any hardware. It makes me even more determined to go to Paris and try to pick one [a medal] up.”
Spain’s Jon Rahm had to withdraw from the Tokyo Games after testing positive for Covid and was also forced to pull out of last month’s US Open due to a foot infection. After a meagre return at the Masters and missing the cut at the PGA Championship, the LIV Golf star will be eager to prove his defection to the breakaway Tour has not diminished his ability to compete for golf’s biggest prizes.
Great Britain’s Tommy Fleetwood was one of Europe’s star performers over Le Golf National’s Albatros course during that 2028 Ryder Cup triumph, forming a deadly partnership with Italy’s Francesco Molinari as the pair, dubbed ‘Moliwood’ became the first duo to win all four of their matches together. Fleetwood also tasted success there in 2017, winning the Open de France, so its most certainly a track that suits his eye.
The Englishman, who finished 16th at Tokyo 2020, is joined by fellow countryman Matt Fitzpatrick. The 2022 US Open Champion has had a relatively quiet season to date but he’s proven many times he’s the man for the big occasion and his laser-like accuracy from tee to green should prove well suited to the tricky Albatros course.
Scandinavia is strongly represented with Masters runner-up, World No. 5 Ludvig Aberg one of the hottest prospects in the field. The 24 year old Swede has enjoyed a meteoric rise since turning professional in June 2023, winning titles on the DP World Tour and the PGA TOUR and making an eye-catching Ryder Cup debut. He and Viktor Hovland won both their matches together at Marco Simone and administered a crushing record 9&7 defeat on World No.1 Scottie Scheffler and five-time Major champion Brooks Koepka in the foursomes. Norway’s Hovland – the reigning FedExCup champion and current World No.7 – will join his Ryder Cup team mate in Paris hoping to ignite his 2024 season after a career defining year in 2023.
Aberg’s fellow Swede Alex Noren, like Fleetwood, won the Open de France at Le Golf National at 2018 and was part of Thomas Bjorn’s winning European Ryder Cup team there later the same year, where he sparked the celebrations on the 18th green after sinking a long birdie putt to beat Bryson DeChambeau in the final match on Sunday. He too will fancy his chances in Paris while Danish pair Nicolai Hojgaard, winner of the 2023 DP World Tour Championship and Thorbjorn Olesen, 2024 Ras Al Khaimah Championship victor, add more star quality to the Scandinavian contingent.
French duo Matthieu Pavon and Victor Perez will be buoyed by home support while 2021 Masters champion Matsuyama Hideki of Japan represents Asia’s leading light in the competition.
There have only been three women’s individual golf tournaments at the Olympics and the USA have won two of them. The Americans again look strong but the women’s field is well balanced with no country having more than three representatives.
Two-time Olympian and Tokyo 2020 gold medallist Nelly Korda headlines the field and the World No.1 is joined on a strong Team USA by World No.2 Lilia Vu and rising star, World No.9, Rose Zhang.
South Korea will also field a tantalisingly strong three-women team in Paris comprising of Jin-young Ko, Amy Yang and Hyo-joo Kim – winners of four Majors between them.
2023 Women’s PGA Championship winner Ruoning Yin will be joined Xiyu Lin for China rwhile Great Britain’s quest for medals will be led by Charley Hull and Georgia Hall and French representation comes in the form of World No.6 Celine Boutier and Perrine Delacour.
Golf made a return to the Olympics, after a 112-year hiatus, at the Rio Games in 2016 with Justin Rose scooping men’s gold and Inbee Park taking top honours in the women’s competition. It first appeared as an Olympic sport in the second edition of the modern Games, in Paris, 1900 where American Charles Sands won the men’s competition by one stroke over Great Britain’s Walter Rutherford. Margaret Abbott won the women’s event but died in 1955 unaware of the fact that the tournament she had won was part of the Olympics!
Golf returned for the next edition of the Games in St Louis in 1904 with Canada’s George Lyon taking gold in the men’s category. He’d only been playing for eight years and, having previously competed in tennis, baseball and cricket, he swung his club more like a cricketer than a golfer.
The sport was supposed to return to the roster for the London Games in 1908 but a dispute between the English and Scottish players about the format saw the British golfers boycott the event, leaving 1904 champion Lyons as the only entrant. According to the rules he was entitled to claim gold but he declined.
Two golf tournaments were planned for the 1920 Games in Antwerp but they were cancelled due to lack of entries and the sport continued to be absent from the Olympics until it’s triumphant return in Rio.
With the Covid pandemic delaying the Tokyo 2020 Games a year, America’s Xander Schauffele took gold in at Kasumigaseki Country Club in the men’s competition in 2021 while Nelly Korda made it USA double by taking top spot in the women’s tournament.
