Olympics add length to golf’s global reach

Can you say “Tiger Woods” in Portuguese? Mandarin? Hindi?

Because by the time the next truly great golfer comes along, chances are he’ll be coming from Brazil, China and India rather than the United States or Britain. That’s what Friday’s vote by the International Olympic Committee really means. In the same way the British owned the 19th century and Americans most of the last one, placing golf on the Olympic menu — the IOC voted to add rugby to the 2016 games as well — virtually guarantees one or more of this century’s emerging powers will dominate it.

“Golf cannot compare with football because here it is a religion” Rachid Orra, president of the Brazilian Golf Confederation, said over the telephone from Rio de Janeiro, site of the 2016 Summer Games.

“We have a lot of work to do, but also a good opportunity to make golf jump among the people. Can we find a Tiger Woods of our own? Ha!” he added chuckling softly. “At least we have seven years to look.”

True believers such as Orra argue the Olympics will give golf legitimacy as a sport that it’s lacked outside the English-speaking world — and restore its democratic roots in the process

“In China, for example, it’s licensed as entertainment and taxed the same as, say, a karaoke bar,” said John Strawn, president of Hills/Forest, a golf course architecture and design firm that has completed projects in 20 countries and has another 10 on the drawing board. “Once it’s treated as a sport, and becomes part of the sports establishment, they’ll build facilities and work at identifying talented young golfers and training them.

“Now, when you travel across China, you see basketball courts and soccer fields everywhere. Once golf becomes an Olympic sport, countries like China and India will use the Tiger Woods model — stressing things like his fitness and dedication — and change the perception that it’s a nonathletic hobby for rich people.

“And that might be the best thing about it,” Strawn said. “When you go back to golf’s beginnings in Scotland, it was very much a game of the people.”

Yet cynics flip that same argument on its head. They say markets in the West have largely matured and that adding golf to the Olympics was little more than a slick move by the game’s most powerful interests to find new customers for everything from tees, balls and clubs to higher TV rights packages.

If so, golf’s governing bodies in those emerging nations sound happy to play along. Brazil, the most populous country in Latin America, has about 200 million people and, according to the golf confederation, only 25,000 golfers playing on 110 courses. The United States, by comparison, has around 300 million people and 27 million golfers playing on 8,000 courses.

“We’re never going to see another explosion of golf in the U.S., but in places where the middle class is growing, who knows what the growth rate might be,” said Strawn, the president of Hills/Forrest. “Just imagine at some point if the participation rates in China ever approached the 10 percent or so that they are in the U.S.”

“Even half of that,” he concluded, “is a very deep pool.”

Truth is, you don’t have to look any further than the current golf season to see the golf globe already spinning faster and faster. Rosters loaded with international stars face off against U.S. squads in the President’s Cup and Ryder Cup in alternating years. At the Accenture Match Play, which draws the top 64 ranked players in the world each spring and is the first of four designated “world” events, 20 different nations were represented.

“We are excited about the progress that’s being made,” PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said. “It’s just a long, difficult process. If this was basketball and we could hang a hoop up, with the caliber of players, starting with Tiger right on down to Lorena Ochoa, to create enthusiasm it would be very easy, but it’s not. You need real estate, you need space, you need money, you need resources.”

And apparently golf has decided the best place to start looking is somewhere inside those five Olympic rings.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org