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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
Most of the world’s best golfers spent the past four months playing in the four most famous tournaments in the world — the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and The Open.
In August, many of them will compete in the FedEx Cup playoffs on the PGA Tour, which awards a $25 million bonus to the winner.
So where does an Olympic gold medal rank against a coveted green jacket that comes with winning the Masters or a Claret Jug that goes to the golfer who finishes first at the Open Championship? Especially in a sport where money seems to be the only thing that matters?
This year’s Olympic men’s golf tournament, which begins Thursday at Le Golf National outside Paris, is only the fifth time golf has been included in the Summer Games. Golf was officially recognized as a sport in 1900 and 1904 but wasn’t part of the Olympics again until 2016.
“I’ve been asked this question a lot: Where would an Olympic medal sit in sort of the hierarchy of my career achievements?” Ireland’s Rory McIlroy said. “And it’s something I probably won’t be able to answer until when everything is said and done.
“I don’t know if anything will be able to sit alongside the majors. We have our four events a year that are the gold standard. But I think this is going to be, in time, going to be right up there amongst that.”
It’s quite an about-face for McIlroy, who qualified for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He skipped the tournament over concerns about the Zika virus, and later said he resented the Olympics because it would cause him to decide whether to represent Ireland or Great Britain.
When asked whether he would watch the Rio Olympics, McIlroy famously said, “Probably events like track and field, swimming, diving, the stuff that matters.”
“I don’t feel like I’ve let the game down at all,” McIlroy said at the 2016 Open Championship. “I didn’t get into golf to try to grow the game. I got into golf to win championships and win majors.”
McIlroy competed in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and fell short in a seven-man playoff for the bronze medal, which was won by C.T. Pan of Chinese Taipei. At the time, McIlroy said, “I’ve been saying all day I never tried so hard in my life to finish third. It makes me even more determined going to Paris and trying to pick one up. It’s disappointing going away from here without any hardware.”
After a forgettable majors season, in which McIlroy collapsed over the final four holes at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2 and missed the cut at The Open at Royal Troon Golf Club in Scotland, the Olympics might mean even more to him now. He has a chance to add a coveted trophy — even if he didn’t always recognize it as such.
“It would be the achievement — certainly of the year,” McIlroy said. “I think for me, it’s well documented that I haven’t won one of the big four in 10 years. It would probably be one of, if not the biggest, in my career for the last 10 years.”
Xander Schauffele, who got his first two major wins at the PGA Championship and the Open Championship this season, is one of only two men’s golfers in the past 120 years to capture a gold medal at the Olympics. He won gold at the COVID-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, five years after England’s Justin Rose finished first in the golf tournament in Rio.
Even Schauffele admits that claiming a gold medal doesn’t carry the same weight as winning a major — at least not yet.
“It is a good question, but it’s tricky,” Schauffele said. “Golf was in the Olympics and then it was out of the Olympics. So I think a lot of the kids were watching Tiger [Woods], or if you’re a little bit older, you’re watching Jack [Nicklaus] or Arnie [Palmer], the older legends of the game. You’re watching them win majors.
“The majors are sort of what I grew up watching. They are two very different things to me. I think the gold medal, it’s been marinating nicely. Maybe in 30, 40 years, it’s something that’s really going to be special as it gets more traction and it kind of gets back into the eyes or into the normalcy of being in the Olympics.”
The 60-man field for the Olympic tournament includes the top seven golfers in the Official World Golf Ranking, but only 11 of the top 20 because of qualification standards.
Each country was permitted a maximum of four golfers, but each country’s team can include no more than two golfers who aren’t ranked in the top 15 of the OWGR. The field is strong but not as elite as it could be.
“You watch other sports, that’s the way it is,” Ireland’s Shane Lowry said. “If you don’t run the time and don’t qualify, you’re not in. You watch the American [track and field] nationals, it’s the biggest race of the year, the Jamaican nationals in the sprint. If they run a bad race, even though they might be one of the best in the world, they are not here competing.”
World No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler, Schauffele, Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa are representing the U.S. Seven others were included in the top 20 of the OWGR, most notably U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, who competes in the LIV Golf League.
“I know we are not used to that in golf — that the biggest events have the best fields,” Lowry said. “But you know, there [are] a few players maybe that would make it better, but it’s still the Olympics and we’ve all qualified to play for our country and we’re all here to win a medal.”
Scheffler, who has won six times on the PGA Tour this season, including a second victory at the Masters in April, is once again the favorite to win in Paris. Although Scheffler says he tries to put equal emphasis on every tournament he plays, he knows winning a gold medal for the U.S. would be different.
“It would be very special,” Scheffler said. “It’s not very often you get to compete in the Olympics, so to be able to have a medal for the rest of your life would be very special.”