Since when has golf been an Olympic sport and why?

Victor Perez, Matthias Schmid and CT Pan got the 2024 Paris men’s individual golf event underway on Thursday’s morning. The competition follows a 72-hole individual stroke play format and unlike other major tournaments, there is no halfway cut so all 60 competitors will play all four rounds.

The are two golf events at this edition of the games with the women’s tournament teeing off next week. And there are also some big names to keep an eye out for - Scottie Scheffler (No. 1 OWGR), Xander Schauffele (No. 2), Wyndham Clark (No. 5), and Collin Morikawa (No. 6) will be representing the United States, who will face stiff competition from Rory McIlroy, Shane Lowry, Jon Rahm and David Puig who secured their spots after making the US Open cut, along with Hideki Matsuyama, Ludvig Åberg, Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland.

The women’ event also features all of the top 15 players in the world ranking right now, such as Tokyo 2020 gold medalist and world No.1 Nelly Korda, Lilia Vu (No.2), Rose Zhang (No.9), South Korean pair Jin Young Ko and Amy Yang; China’s Ruoning Yin along with Australia’s Hannah Green and New Zealand’s Lydia Ko.

Golf’s 112-year wait for its Olympic return

In some ways, golf is only a relatively new event in the Olympic program. The sport made its return to the Games at Rio 2016 after a 112-year absence. At the start of the 20th century, the 1900 Games in Paris included golf as one of its 19 different sports. Both men and women’s competitions were held with Charles Sands representing the USA picking up the gold medal ahead of two British players. In the women’s shorter competition, notable that it was the first time women had been included in the Olympics, it was also gold for the USA courtesy of Margaret Abbott.

Four years later, in 1904, small flags were carefully placed in 18 chosen holes in St. Louis, Missouri, but this time it was only men that were included in the event schedule. Canada’s George Lyon finished in front of Chandler Egan and Burt McKinne (both from the US) to win individual gold, however, all three medals in the team competition were won by the USA.

The first of two golf medal events at Paris 2024 gets underway on Tuesday at Le Golf National in Guyancourt the capital’s south-west suburb. The men’s event begins at 3 a.m ET on Thursday 1 August, with Round 1 of the women’s event to tee off at the same time on Wednesday 7 August.