How would you set the Olympics format for golf

I'll let you find the problem with that solution.

Have the best golfers from every country compete to win a gold medal

No caddies?  At first I thought thtat sounded pretty good but on second thought, that would only make it a NCAA championship.

I think it will basically become a typical, match play style fifth major contested every four years on a brand new course that no one has ever seen or played before.

i'm not entirely sure what the format should be.  however, i think it'd be interesting if the USOC had golf trials open to amateurs and pros, and selected a team based solely on merit from that competition.  maybe have local and regional qualifiers to get into the olympic trials for amateurs, and perhaps let the top 50 americans in the owgr get a pass into the olympic trials.

Unfortunately it won't, likely to be max 4 players per country by my counting 56 of the current top 100 will be out. Hardly a fifth major.

What the **** does golf need with that cesspool of brainless nationalism, pomp and circumstance?

Golf is a near second to tennis in merit based international professional competition.

+1

.... and very nicely put. My own interest in the Olympics is in sports that still have an "amateur" flavor to them, e.g. rowing, badminton, fencing, volleyball .....  The sporting world doesn't need another venue for top tennis players or golfers, especially when coupled with hyper-nationalism.  GMAB.

I do hope you're not serious... Whatever you think of the Olympics, tennis is all individual. Golf only has the Ryder cup and President's cup to show real international play. If the Euro tour fell off the face of the earth and every non-American player disappeared, golf on TV would hardly change here. World/Euro cup Soccer and the Olympics are the two venues for an athlete to become an immortal hero.

The Olympic golf format should be 4 rounds of stroke play with a halfway cut. Sudden death playoffs would be held to break ties in the medal winners, when two or more players tie for gold or any other medal. Only one of each medal would be awarded. No OWGR should be considered, it ought to be hand picked players by the team's captain. That way younger blood and exciting players get picked who might actually be interested in playing for their country. Plus with a lot of younger players, it will be a better experience playing against their peers instead of veterans pushing 40. Whether to allow caddies is a tough one, but I'd say it's an advantage to the richest players and it might be best to make the players carry.

Most importantly, keeping the field young will allow the players to be chosen without regards to ticket sales and ratings. It would enable a player perhaps without any major wins to put in a great performance and win fans, as well as grow the sport. I wouldn't be opposed to keeping the field down to amateurs and college players only. It would mean that most players would only get one or two chances at a medal if they want to go pro later, and will also make an incentive for attending college. It'd be nice to have one tournament, even every four years, that allows golf to hold a competition without money being involved. Money will probably still be involved, but it'd be nice.

Google Davis Cup, Federation Cup, Hopman Cup

International to me means players of any country get in according to performance. I guess you're interpreting it as competition explicitly between nations which the above competitions do.

The Davis cup is awarded yearly but the participation is so great that a country starting from nothing would have to win for two years just to get in the championship group.

I'm a competitive table tennis player. The olympic field is absurd. They allow 2 Chinese players in the 64 draw when based on performance it would be more like 32. Even in the world championships chinese are limited to 7 players and average about 6 in the quarters. That's because its a bogus olympic affiliated national association political mess instead of a single international professional(ATP) individual performance oriented organization.

At Wimbledon if the 128 draw for womens singles includes 35 Russians then that's the way it is.

Exactly.  In no way will the event be a "fifth Major", not even close.

The Chinese are aware that they're dominant in table tennis. They don't want their players to be worried about beating one another; as long as a Chinese player wins, they can withhold most of their players to weaken the field. There's over a billion of them and it's a major sport in that country, so it stands to reason they have depth. If they remove the paddles and net and involve large quantities of beer, perhaps America stands a chance.

In golf, America holds a lot of the depth and host the highest level of competition. Australia, Britain, Ireland, and Japan all have a strong field but there's a lot of players who don't get represented on tour as well. Of course the larger countries may dominate, but that's how it is.

The main gripe I have is the OWGR. It shouldn't be used in the olympic selection because it's poorly set up and doesn't really reflect the competition accurately. I'd rather just let the countries hand pick their players based on attitude, work ethic, and potential to win/talent. For example, Bubba Watson is a talented player, but he's totally isolated from the rest of the world and would make absolutely the worst ambassador to the game. Someone like Stricker would be better, but he's old and more of a grinder and should be passed over for someone younger. Someone like Woods will probably be involved regardless for at least the first Games, since he's popular worldwide and legitimizes the whole thing. A Dustin Johnson or Mahan or Rickie Fowler would be great to see providing they're in good form; popular young men with exciting games that don't get into too much trouble (though DJ might fail drug testing). They wouldn't make the cut based on current OWGR, they're ranked 7th, 9th and 11th on the rankings among Americans. Tiger doesn't need to win a medal to prove anything, but none of the aforementioned 3 have won a major yet. What better chance to break into the top tier of players than competing in the Olympics? They'd play a great tournament dueling the likes of Luke and Rory, Colsaerts, etc.

Once again your POV is apparently so completely opposite mine that you take the opposite from my example that I meant to imply.

I care NOTHING about the effect on the country of China.

I feel bad for the individual who is number 3 in the world but not allowed to play this allegedly great event.

I despise the non-credibility of a supposed pinnacle of sport where at least half of the world top 20 are prohibited from showing up.

They're not prohibited from showing up by the Olympic committee. They either choose not to compete or their country tells them not to. And it's not like there are no preliminaries.

Should the Dream Team in the early 90s have been entered in along with 5 other American teams full of NBA players? The sport had practically no interest in the rest of the world, and even the best teams besides the US would have had one or two NBA caliber players. Almost any collection of decent players from the NBA would have beaten those weak fields. They didn't have to break up the stars evenly into teams, either. They could have sent teams of elite college level and starters from the NBA and still beaten the international teams. They could have taken the top 4 or 5 NBA teams straight from their normal lineups and still won all the games by 10+. There were at least 100 players that would be considered world class that all played for the US but we only sent the all stars. The US realistically could have swept the medals and taken one or two more top 8 spots. Would that have grown the game? I think it would make people want to ban the sport from the olympics because the US were the only ones who play well.

China is quite possibly showing some class for a change by only sending their best. Again, they have over a billion people. They could have their own Olympics if they wanted to.

Either I'm misunderstanding or you're very poorly informed.

Olympic Rules allow 2 table tennis players per country per singles event.

Olympic Rules allow one basketball team of about 12 players per country

Olympic Rules allow one wrestler per weight class per country.

etc,etc

Those are maximums.

Depending on the sport you may have to meet a qualifying performance standard or world rank or get through play in competition.

Olympic Committees in each country only decide who gets to make up their assigned quota into qualifying or straight in to the games depending on each sports rules.

Same tournament for both individual & team competition -

Four-person teams, 72 holes stroke play. Lowest 3 scores get Gold/Silver/Bronze.

For the team portion, throw out the worst of the four scores. Lowest aggregate team score for the 3 remaining players wins the Gold.

An alternative would be two-person teams like the World Cup, both scores count.

Don't like the idea of match play. If it's to determine the 'best' golfer it should be stroke play over multiple days, not someone who gets hot or catches an opponent on an off day. In other words, to 'get the Gold' you should have to beat everyone, not 5 or 6 opponents.

I think IGF recommended 60 player fields for mens and womens with a 72 hole stroke play tournament. The players would be determined by OWGR with top 15 automatically in and using the OWGR each country would get 2 players excluding countries that have 2 or more players in the top 15. This is obviously not written in stone and I'm sure some revisions will be added to help some countries but this is the tentative plan.

I do not like the IGF's proposed format; I think an individual stroke-play event defeats the purpose of golf being an Olympic sport in the first place. The Olympic golf tournament must include at team element to have any relevance, or else it is merely a quadrennial WGC event.

MY PROPOSAL

I propose the Olympic Golf Tournament as an event of six rounds over the course of five days, with medals to be awarded for both team and individual competitions. Nations will field teams of two golfers. The qualification criteria for the Olympic tournament should be as follows:

• Nations with citizens who are ranked in the top 100 of the Official World Golf Ranking (men) or Rolex Rankings (women) at the end of the year prior to the Olympiad may field ONE team;
• Nations with multiple citizens who are ranked in the top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking (men) or Rolex Rankings (women) at the end of the year prior to the Olympiad may field TWO teams;
• Five continental qualifying tournaments (North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia/Pacific) will be held in the spring before the Olympiad, open to golfers from nations not exempt above; the nation of the medalist, and the nation of the low golfer representing a nation other than the medalist's, may field ONE team;
• The host nation may field TWO teams.
• The method used to select the members of a nation's team is left to the discretion of each nation's Olympic committee.

The theoretical 2012 Olympic Men's Golf Tournament, then, would have fielded 72 players on 36 teams representing the following nations: Great Britain (x2) , Ireland (x2?) , Germany, United States (x2) , Australia (x2) , South Afr ica (x2) , Sout h Korea (x2) , Spain (x2) , Sweden (x2) , Denmark (x2) , It a ly, Japan, Fiji, Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, France, (2 x each continent) . The women's tournament would have fielded 62 players on 31 teams representing the following nations: Great Britain (x2) , Chinese Taipei, United States (x2) , China, Japan (x2) , Norway, Spain, Australia, Sweden (x2) , Germany, Netherlands, Italy, France, Thailand, South Africa, Paraguay, Ireland, (2 x each continent) .

THE FORMAT

The Olympic Golf Tournament will be staged according to the following schedule:

• Wednesday and Thursday: two rounds of four-ball (best ball) team modified Stableford , concurrent with individual stroke play (i.e. all players must hole out on every hole). After 36 holes of play, a cut will determine the top 15 team scores (plus ties) for the team competition, and the top 30 individual scores (plus ties) for the individual competition.
• Friday: the third round of the team competition; 18 holes of foursomes (alternate shot) team modified Stableford.
• Saturday morning: the third round of the individual competition; 18 holes of stroke play.
• Saturday afternoon: the final round of the team competition; 18 holes of foursomes (alternate shot) team modified Stableford.
• Sunday: the final round of the individual competition; 18 holes of stroke play.

The men's and women's tournaments will be held on opposite weekends. One tournament will end on day 9 of the Olympiad, while the other will end on day 16.