#AskAlan: Olympic Golf Edition

PARIS—Please allow me a moment to shake the baguette crumbs from my beard and pick the Pont l’Évêque from my molars… yes, the Games are upon us! I know many fans remain ambivalent about golf in the Olympics but I’ve been an evangelist ever since Rio, which is as much fun as I’ve had on the beat. More importantly, it was palpable how much the Olympic experience meant to the golfers, who skew toward nerdy, skinny loners; to suddenly be embraced by their national teams and welcomed by real jocks meant a ton to these awkward, polo-wearing dweebs. 

We are slowly making progress on the Olympic experiment: Rio was compromised by a stodgy reluctance to embrace change with the Zika virus serving as a convenient excuse for many players to bail; Tokyo had a better field but no energy because of Covid; with Paris, the best players are enthusiastically on board and Le National is a pedigreed course but the Olympics’ myopic clinging to the Official World Golf Ranking has meant the banishment of the biggest needle-mover in the sport, Bryson DeChambeau, to say nothing of Brooks Koepka, Cam Smith and sundry others (Tiger Woods is the needle emeritus but no longer relevant as a competitor). The L.A. Games in 2028 will finally be when Olympic golf takes full flight, played on a crispy Riviera with all the best players being showcased since the tour wars will have been solved by then. At least that’s the dream! OK, on to your questions…

What’s better, a gold medal or green jacket? @connorscott28

The easy answer is winning the Masters, which confers everlasting glory and puts you in the most exclusive club in the sport. Every single player from a country with any kind of golf tradition would pick the green jacket. But I still remember something Venezuela’s Jhonny Vegas told me in Rio: “In my country, almost no one has heard of the Masters or British Open. But every single one of them knows what the gold medal is.” So if we could poll the 60 golfers here in Paris there might be one or two outliers who choose Olympic glory because that is a richer currency in their homeland. 

Would a gold medal for Scottie push him past Xander for player of the year? @ricksterps

There are three things left to play for this golf season: the gold medal, the FedEx Cup and the Race to Dubai (I happen to enjoy LIV’s season-ending team extravaganza but that won’t factor into the POY conversation). Right now Xander is my player of the year, but if Scottie scoops up Olympic gold and/or the FedEx Cup it becomes a very tough call. The PGA Tour hands out its own POY that is voted on by the players. They’re good company men and put way too much weight on the FedEx Cup, so they will definitely vote Scottie if he wins the Cup. The award that really matters is the one conferred by the wisest, noblest, purest folks in the game: the golf writers. We have righted many wrongs. I’ll tell you how I cast my vote when the time comes.

Man, if Rahm’s like that after winning a LIV tournament, imagine what he does after winning a 4-man charity scramble at the local muni & wins golf shop credit. @derekedwards827

Two plus years into the LIV era and the same jokes are still flying. But I wouldn’t discount Rahm’s emotion so lightly. He’s all-in on LIV and has already been low-key recruiting Tour players to join his team next year. He’s also going to play four Euro Tour events this fall so as to retain his membership there. There has been a lot going on for Rahm this year, including his wife Kelly dealing with a challenging pregnancy. Rahm is a man of immense pride and the tears he shed after his victory at LIV UK were reflective of how much he still cares, despite what snarky Twitters folks think.

#AskAlan Nothing has made me feel as old as K.J. Choi winning a senior major. Is the purpose of the senior tour to make 50-somethings fans feel ancient? @david_troyan

Yeah, I feel this in my bones. I started covering golf in 1994 and it has been disorienting as all the young hotshots from that era have matriculated to the senior tour. I like to think they’re old and I’m not… but the math says otherwise.

Could a second Trump presidency significantly impact professional golf? @ItsGabeFisher

Ooooh good one. In my book “LIV and Let Die” I detail Trump’s longstanding affinity for the Saudis and his close ties to crown prince MBS. One of the snags in the PIF-PGA Tour Enterprises negotiations is the fear of congressional scrutiny and an anti-trust challenge from the Department of Justice. If Trump wins, that largely goes away. I mention in the book that in the early days of the LIV-Tour jousting, a French golf official and close friend of Yasir Al-Rumayyan’s tried to broker a golf summit that the French President Emmanuel Macron had agreed to oversee; it fell apart because of Jay Monahan’s unresponsiveness. It’s easy to imagine that on day one of another presidency Trump would summon Yasir and Jay to the Oval Office to try to solve golf’s cold war. If he does, he might match Obama’s Nobel Prize.

Should Turnberry be back on the Open rota as it’s probably the best course (excluding Old Course) in Scotland? @Cfc123Cfcw1

Of course it should but the tweedy gents at the R&A have made it clear that they won’t let Turnberry’s owner, Donald Trump, overshadow the Open. It’s pretty dark that a governing body is waiting for a former President to die to return a great championship to a storied venue but that’s where we are.

What happens with AK (Anthony Kim) next year? And what are your thoughts on his first season back? @HighFades

Based strictly on merit, he certainly hasn’t warranted another year on LIV: AK is currently 56th out of 56 players in the season standings, with his best finish in eight tournaments being 46th. His swing has looked tighter lately but the results are not coming; he has two more tournaments to show a glimmer of progress. But of course his signing was about buzz as much as golf. That hasn’t really paid off, either. The initial burst of interest quickly faded as it became clear how much his game (understandably) had faded after a decade on the sidelines. AK’s admirable tale of beating addiction and playing for his daughter has been undercut by his churlish tweets and unwanted political views. All of that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if LIV brings him back. It might be a tough look to discard him after only ten tournaments. Another bare-bones contract is a small investment for LIV with potentially a big upside if next year he can find some of the old magic. AK certainly needs LIV to believe in him because based on his poor play it’s hard to imagine him getting many sponsor’s exemptions on other tours.

Who’s the biggest golf underachiever of all time? Based on pure talent/swing: DL3? Kite? Weiskopf? Couples? Duval? @BradOuden

You could throw Shark in there, too, though it’s not fair given his success in everything but the majors. To me, this is easy: Freddy.

With the success of YouTube golf, will the PGA Tour start to embrace this, or continue to be a czar over all media rights? @MichaelSFuchs

Worse yet, they will try to have the best of both worlds and stage-manage a cheesy event like the recently announced Creators Classic (I’m sure they wanted to call it the Creators Cup but there would have been too many Paige Spiranac jokes). What has made YouTube golf so popular is its low-key, organic vibe but the Creators Classic is the antithesis of that, played at East Lake during the week of the Tour Championship and featuring ShotLink, ShotTracer and other whiz-bang tech. The best way forward for the Tour is to give the YouTubers access to its players and pro-ams and stay out of the way as they do their thing.

#AskAlan, Given that the R&A has officially adopted an anthem for the Women’s Open, what would your walk-up music be? @laz_versalles

Well, given my geographical roots and demographic profile it obviously has to be old-school West Coast hip-hop. Whilst trying to improve my swing tempo I like to channel Nate Dogg’s voice for my self-talk so I’m gonna go with his classic song “I Got Love.”

Top Photo Caption: Scottie Scheffler prepares for the Olympics alongside caddie Ted Scott. (GETTY IMAGES/Kevin C. Cox)

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