Team Australia would have made for a fascinating squad at the 2024 Olympics.
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Through the last three years of rancor in pro golf, one line in particular struck me unlike any other. It came from Rory McIlroy on a chilly morning at TPC Sawgrass in 2024.
“To me, like this is the problem with a members’ organization,” McIlroy said. “Things are created for the members. Then once those things are created, you’ve got to go sell those things to fans, sponsors, media. To me, that seems a little backwards.
“I think what needs to happen is you need to create things for the fans, for the sponsors, for the media, and then you have to go sell that to the players, tell them to get on board with that, because if they get on board and we’re all part of the business now, if the business does better, we do better. That seems pretty simple to me.”
Okay, that’s a lot more than just one line. But it is one distinct, clear point of view. That the entity of professional golf should create competition with fans, sponsors and media in mind, and then get the players on board.
Though he was speaking about the PGA Tour when he said it 13 months ago, he might as well have been talking about the Olympics, and pro golf’s prioritization of it over the years. It takes time for people to change their minds and for new things to catch hold, and golf at the Olympics has learned that the hard way. It was a struggle to get the best players in the world to accept the minor risk of Zika virus at the 2016 games in Brazil, and some skipped the second modern Olympic event, which was held during Covid lockdown in Japan, televised in the middle of the night in America.
The Olympics has never felt like the pinnacle of the sport to the players — in contrast to some classic Olympic sports for which the Games are the pinnacle — but it has been wildly entertaining for fans and media. It gives us new elements of legacy to care about — like the Golden Slam — and new ways of promoting the sport we care about. It has been a slowly building wave, particularly for male golfers, that crested in 2024 on the outskirts of Paris.
Golf fans showed up in the tens of thousands to Le Golf National, making Jason Day as nervous as he’s ever been on the 1st tee. Tom Kim ended his week in tears fighting for a medal on behalf of Korea. McIlroy himself admitted his shortsightedness in dismissing golf at the Olympics when it first came around. Which is a convenient segue to the news of last week: As if they were using McIlroy’s words as a decree, the International Golf Federation announced we’ll all be getting MORE golf at the Olympics. In 2028, at the famed Riviera Country Club, we’ll see the first mixed doubles Olympic Golf competition, a format fans have been begging for.
Like clockwork, every four years a debate has surrounded the IGF’s staging of a classic tournament. Why isn’t there a doubles golf competition? Why can’t we get Nelly Korda to pair up with Scottie Scheffler?
The IGF knows the complications. Scheduling is chief among them. The Olympics weeks have contorted the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour schedules every four years — wedging an extra week of commitment into early August, one of the busiest months on the pro golf calendar. For the men, last year meant sticking around after the Open Championship in Europe before jetting back for the FedEx Cup playoffs. For the women, it meant leaving Europe from the Evian, to go back to the States for a few weeks, only to head back to Europe for nearly the entirety of August. (Lydia Ko made the most of it, winning the Olympics and the Women’s Open.)
That scheduling difficulty is made easier by the next Olympics being set in Los Angeles, not far from where most of these pros live. But future Olympiads will be Australia in 2032 and parts unknown in 2036 (aka, far from home). If mixed doubles is part of the future, it will require some serious commitment beyond what the modern player is used to.
“I’m a big advocate of don’t knock on it until you try it,” Xander Schauffele said in Paris. “My only issue with it would be sort of the run of events; it being two weeks in a row. If you take it for what we have now, we are playing this tournament, we have one week off and then we have three weeks in a row for our playoffs. It would be sticky to do two tournaments in a row and because of that, you may lose some guys.”
When presented with the idea of a 36-hole day, to get move things as quickly as possible, Schauffele was blunt.
“It’s still more golf. Even if we were to play — it would be one day in between maybe and then I start 36 holes, and then you get back with four days to go, three weeks of playoffs in a row is a lot.”
It sure would be. Which is why Schauffele’s opinion will not a unique one. Luckily, every player who has won a medal has been overcome with so much emotion that a very easy argument exists: Whatever, man. It’ll be worth it.
Clear winners here? The fans. Golf fans are presented with 72-hole stroke play tournaments almost every week of the calendar year. The men’s tour no longer has a match-play tournament. The two-player team events — on both sides — net out to mostly hit-and-giggle romps. The PGA and LPGA Tours have combined to field a December mixed event — known as the Grant Thornton Invitational — but it offers way more corporate influence than substance. So yes, the golf viewing experience is largely homogenous. Which is why this news has a certain zest to it. Some of the best golfers in the world are going to play six straight days of competition, all in pursuit of something special (two somethings, now), and we get to benefit from watching something new, filled with passion and the intrigue of a mixed event with everybody chasing a spot on the podium.
The men will play their 72-hold event first, followed by one team round of alternate shot and another team round of fourballs, after which the women will compete in their individual competition. The qualifiers for mixed doubles will exclusively be those already qualified for the singles comp. If they can find a counterpart from their home country, they’ll have a team, with the entrants limited to one team per country.
Last year’s teams would have included:
-Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda
-Tom Kim and Jin Young Ko
-Carl Yuan and Ruoning Yin
-Matthieu Pavon and Celine Boutier
-Jason Day and Hannah Green
-Tommy Fleetwood and Charley Hull
-Hideki Matsuyama and Yuka Saso
-Kiradech Aphibarnrat and Jeeno Thitikul
-Rory McIlroy and Leona Maguire
-Nick Taylor and Brooke Henderson
-Ryan Fox and Lydia Ko
-Ludvig Aberg and Maja Stark
-Jon Rahm and Carlota Ciganda
-Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Ashleigh Buhai
-Carlos Ortiz and Gaby Lopez
The intrigue would stretch into the pre-Olympics. Who would Viktor Hovland pair with? (Celine Borge was Norway’s top finisher in 2024.) We might get a pair of siblings as teammates. (Think Min Woo and Minjee Lee.) Rory McIlroy will be going for the Golden Slam, but does it count if he leans on Leona Maguire to claim gold? New questions. Good questions. And all coming to golf fans at last.
