You have seen pictures of Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, and Wyndham Clark all posing together as part of Team USA, but are they really competing together on a team?
Not really.
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.
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A combined 72-hole score for Team Ireland that features Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy? What about Spain with Jon Rahm and David Puig? Sweden’s Ludvig Åberg and Alex Noren would do well, as would Great Britain’s Tommy Fleetwood and Matt Fitzpatrick. Surely, the South Korean contingency of Tom Kim and Byeong Hun An would make some noise. And so, too, would the Americans, who, under this format, would be limited to two players instead of their current allotment of four. Team USA would have no trouble, though, as Scheffler and Schauffele would enter as big favorites, given that they combined to win three of four majors this season.
Every shot would count, and players would play for each other, for their teams, and for their countries.
Talk of instituting team play at Riviera has already commenced, and the International Golf Federation, which oversees Olympic golf, should implement it.
Perhaps they would consider a mixed-team format, similar to the Grant Thornton Invitational, incorporating the best female players in the world from the LPGA. Most fans everywhere would welcome that, and it would shed more light on the women’s game. Seeing Nelly Korda team up with Scheffler would be amazing, and there is no better way to put it than that.
But the Olympics have an extraordinary opportunity for 2028. What makes the Ryder Cup—the biggest team event in golf—so compelling every two years is the passion shared among the participants, not for themselves but for their country and each other. They play in formats dedicated to team play.
The Olympics should institute the same for 2028. They should differentiate themselves from regular PGA Tour competitions and look to LIV Golf for answers.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
