Admittedly, I may be a dinosaur. I still use persimmon woods from time to time. I like my Ben Hogan Apex irons, and haven’t found anything better. I prefer playing older classic courses to modern gems, and truly enjoyed watching The Presidents’ Cup being contested at an old muni. I’d rather pay a kid to caddie than ride a cart, and walking the golf course, not riding, should be the rule rather than the exception. I despise the use of GPS and other electronic intrusions into what should remain a simple, uncomplicated game: just hit the ball!
With these biases, I’m not exactly thrilled about golf being in the Olympics, either. Unless, of course, I receive a handsome offer to relocate and train the team from Costa Rica.
For starters, one would think that Olympic gold ought to be the very highest level of achievement for an athlete. But which top professional would trade victory at the Masters’ for an Olympic medal in golf? With four majors, international team competitions such as Ryder Cup, Walker Cup, Presidents’ Cup, and Solheim Cup, plus the Players’ Championship trying to attain major status, golf as an Olympic event isn’t likely to leap-frog the pack. Internationally, the game appears to be doing just fine, as evidenced by what we see on the major tours. Granted, a Tibetan may have an entirely different viewpoint, and pray for the Dali Lama to face Tiger in the finals. But will Bill Murray caddie? If so, I’ll watch.
“Good for the game” and “growth of the game” can also mean a lot of things. Good for who? What kind of growth? With governments around the world backing Olympic golf, will Spain, China, or Japan pay TaylorMade an unimaginable sum to take golf technology to the next level, giving its athletes an advantage through innovation and science? If so, the next generation of equipment available to the consumer will give you sticker shock, but if Tiger plays it, you’ll buy it. Of course, you won’t have anything left for a lesson, so you’ll soon be looking for another driver, the one Michelle Wie just won a PGA tour event with. The manufacturers do well, but how does this give the common person access to the game, which needs to happen if golf is to be healthy at its grass roots level?
Building expensive new facilities for government backed Olympic training programs will hardly cause affordable facilities to spring up worldwide in non-capitalistic economies, either.
I want golf to grow. I want more and more people to be attracted to the game, its traditions, its culture, its values. I want them to have good equipment that’s been fitted to them, have access to quality instruction, and have good golf courses that are affordable for the whole family to play. Growth for growth’s sake isn’t necessarily healthy.
