High
Hurdles
are golf's
values facing
the high
jump in the
olympics?
The Olympic Games, that quadrennial extravaganza
of commercial opportunism
masquerading under the name
of sport, is steering towards us
under billowing sail and looms
just over the horizon. London is
all geared up to go next summer
with fanfares ready to blow and
the chink of largesse already
sounding in the organizers’ ears.
However, when hostilities get
underway in 2012, you’ll pardon
me if I give the “
we-can-do-it-with-even-less-taste-than-you-did-last-time” opening
ceremony, and all that follows it,
a wide body swerve.
It is not, as you will probably already have gathered, my
favorite sporting occasion; it
hasn’t been since the organizers of the modern Olympic
Games threw the values of
the founding fathers of the
movement to the four winds,
sacrificing them on the alter of
professionalism, commercial
greed and political posturing.
Long since gone are the ethics
of the first Olympians, when the
honor was in taking part and
not in winning at any cost; when
fair play was a laudable quality
expected as much as admired;
when to be chosen to compete
for one’s country was a singular
honor for any athlete in any
sport and when the prospect of
professionals taking part was
viewed with derision.
Today, the Olympic movement
has been tainted by scandal and
political corruption, drug abuse
and cheating and when the dust
settles after the 2012 Olympiad,
I am prepared to bet my favorite
hybrid that it won’t have passed
without pictures of disgraced
athletes sent home for a predi-
lection to “cough lozenges” they
were unaware contained banned
substances, or some other
misdemeanor calculated to give
them what they call “an edge.”
Personally, I am happy to
turn my back on the whole
distasteful brouhaha and accept
that that is the way things are
in today’s cynically commer-
cial sporting world, but I have
to take issue when golf gets
dragged into the mire.
be part of the modern Olympic
movement that stands in many
people’s view as at best a
sporting sham and at worst the
very antithesis of everything
that golf stands for?
Well, we are going to have to,
like it or not. Next year’s London
Olympics will be the last from
which golf will escape. In 2016,
the royal and ancient game will
be back as an Olympic sport for
the first time in 112 years and
only the second time ever. It’s
going to be right there when the
medals for synchronized diving,
beach volleyball, fencing and
bike pedaling are handed out in
Rio de janeiro. The International
Golf Federation (IGF) has been
at great pains over a long time
now to make sure of that.
Not that I recall that we
amateur golfers, whose
commitment to that particular
code is the single major factor
in our game’s reputation for
honesty and integrity, were ever
consulted on the matter. The
movement to drag golf back into
the Olympics has been highly
orchestrated behind the full
backing of the USGA and the
Royal & Ancient Golf Club in
St Andrews. Indeed, the major
figures leading the IGF charge
In 2016, the royal
and ancient game
will be back as an
Olympic sport for
the first time in 112
years and only the
second time ever.
It’s going to be
right there when
the medals for
synchronized diving,
beach volleyball,
fencing and bike
pedaling are handed
out in Rio de Janeiro.
owe high-level allegiance to
both organizations.
This in itself marks a
significant about face, certainly
for the R & A. With more than
a tinge of irony it was at Royal
St George’s, venue for this
year’s Open Championship,
that the R & A came out
vociferously against golf as an
Olympic sport the last time it
was suggested back in 1908
declaring, “golf is not suitable
for the Olympics.”
MALCOLM CAMPBELL By
Do we as golfers who care passionately for our game,
and for centuries have jealously
guarded the traditions and
ethics that have allowed golf
to survive as the “clean” game,
the game of self-regulation and
of higher ideal, really want to
And to compound the irony even further, it was prob-
ably a lot “more suitable” back
in 1908 than it is today; at least
back then the Olympic move-
ment was strictly amateur and
actually embodied the same
values that golf still does today.
