Golf's Olympic Bid Moves Ahead

Filed in archive Golf News on December 18, 2008

The well organized bid to make golf an Olympic sport is pushing ahead.

In a teleconference today, Ty Votaw, executive director of the International Golf Federation's Olympic Golf Committee and Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A and co-secretary of the IGF, announced that two big names had joined them in pushing golf with the IOC.

Jack Nicklaus and newly retired Annika Sorenstam were present during the teleconference to voice their support for the plan.

They have been appointed Global Ambassadors in the bid. Just exactly how they will help convince the IOC is another matter but what's important is that two of the game's most pre-eminent players are publicly supporting the cause.

That kind of thing matters to the IOC. And the timing couldn't be better for the International Golf Federation.

As the IOC struggles to keep the Olympic Games not only attractive but financially viable during a terrible period in global economic history, it must find sports that have as wide an attraction as possible while minimizing the costs of putting those sports on (infrastructure spending, for example to create new stadiums or rowing basins or the like).

Now, the IGF is positioning golf for the 2016 Games, the earliest point in time that there will be room.

Here are the other sports competing for that spot on the IOC's roster: baseball, karate, softball, squash, rugby sevens, and something called roller sports.

Ask yourself this question: other than golf, which of the above sports has the worldwide appeal that golf does? They don't play baseball in South America, karate has no mass appeal, softball is very limited (in fact, women's softball was absent from the Beijing Olympics) while baseball is not popular in Europe. Squash, rugby sevens and roller sports, again, have limited geographic appeal.

Only golf touches all continents. And every nation has players who enjoy at least regional popularity and profile.