This year’s Men’s and Women’s Olympic Golf Competition, a 72-hole individual stroke play competition, mirrors that of a PGA Tour Signature Event. Like those tournaments held at Harbour Town, Cromwell, and Quail Hollow, Scheffler, Schauffele, Morikawa, and Clark are all competing against each other. It’s golf in its purest form this week in Paris—every man for themselves, playing their own ball, putting out on each hole.
But the Olympics should further distinguish itself within the golf sphere and look at LIV Golf for inspiration.
Along with its 54-hole individual competition, LIV Golf employs a team competition within that same tournament. Thirteen teams of four compete with each other, and by the end of the tournament, each player’s score is tallied. Whichever team has the lowest combined score among these four players wins.
So, for instance, last week, at LIV Golf’s event in the United Kingdom, Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII team, which includes Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Caleb Surratt, and Kieran Vincent, combined to score 26-under-par, three strokes better than the second-placed team, Rippers GC. Legion XIII consequently took home the team title, while Rahm finished on top of the leaderboard in the individual competition.
Imagine if the Olympics employed this same format.