10 things to know about the men’s Olympic Golf competition
A view of the Albatros course at Le Golf National outside of Paris, which will host the men's and women's competitions.
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If you are looking for a PGA Tour event this week, you won’t find it. The Tour is off — and so is LIV Golf — as some of the top men’s golfers in the world will tee it up at the 2024 Paris Olympics. (The women get underway next week.) Here’s what you need to know.
The history
This is the third-straight year the Olympic Games have featured golf, which was actually an Olympic sport back in 1900 and 1904. Then the sport waited 112 short years before reappearing in 2016.
The format
Easy. Sixty players qualified for the Olympics, and it’s four rounds of stroke play. The tournament starts on Thursday and ends on Sunday.
The qualifying
The top 15 players in the Official World Golf Ranking automatically qualify for the Games, although that group is limited to four per country (which is why U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau, for example, is not in the field). After that, the top two golfers from each country are selected until the field reaches 60.
The past winners
At the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Justin Rose (Great Britain) won gold, Henrik Stenson (Sweden) took silver and Matt Kuchar (USA) was the bronze medalist. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — which were actually held in 2021 — Xander Schauffele (USA) won gold, Rory Sabbatini (Slovakia) took silver and C.T. Pan (Chinese Taipei) won bronze.
The American players
Scottie Scheffler, Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark make up the four American men’s players. Scheffler is the betting favorite, closely followed by Schauffele, who won gold at the last Olympics and won the Open Championship two weeks ago.
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The other stars
Jon Rahm (Spain), Rory McIlroy (Ireland), Viktor Hovland (Norway) and Hideki Mastsuyama (Japan) are a few of the other big-name players who qualified. You can see the complete field here. McIlroy was one of several pros who skipped golf’s return to the Olympics in 2016 due to concerns over the Zika virus, but he returned in Tokyo and was one of the seven players who competed in a playoff for the bronze medal, which was eventually won by C.T. Pan.
Is Tiger Woods playing?
No.
The LIV players
Seven LIV golfers are in the field, a list headlined by Rahm, who picked up his first LIV victory on Sunday, and Joaquin Niemann (Chile).
The course
If the Albatros course at Le Golf National outside of Paris looks familiar, that’s because it should. It’s long-hosted the DP World Tour’s Open de France, and in 2018 it was the venue for the Ryder Cup, when the Europeans beat the Americans 17.5 to 10.5.
How you can watch it
If you are in the States — wake up early! The action starts at 3 a.m. ET on Thursday through Sunday on Golf Channel. The final round will also replay at 2 p.m. ET on Sunday on USA Network. It can also all be streamed on Peacock.
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