Golf Becomes an Olympic Sport
After an absence of more than a century, golf is set to return as an Olympic sport in 2016 along with rugby sevens following their approval by the International Olympic Committee membership during the IOC’s 121st Session.
Golf was last an Olympic sport at the 1904 Games in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, when the United States and Canada were the only two competing countries but now with 60 million people playing the sport in more than 120 countries is going to be open to all countries to enter in.
The IGF has recommended an Olympic field of 60 players for each of the men’s golf and women’s golf competition, using the Official World Golf Rankings as a method of determining eligibility. The top-15 world-ranked players would be eligible for the Olympics, regardless of the number of players from a given country.
Current world rankings from both the men’s and women’s games show that at least 30 countries would be represented in both the men’s and women’s competitions, from all continents, under this proposal.
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