Steve Elling of CBS Sports is the leader in the clubhouse for the best article of the year with this scathing appraisal of why we all don’t need to see golf in the Olympics. Here’s some great quotes:
“Ah, remember the days when sports and nations trying to curry favor with the IOC did things the old-fashioned way? “Back then, IOC members would have received a new set of Titleists with $250,000 stuffed inside the bag, free rounds at Augusta National, lessons with Leadbetter and Harmon and free college scholarships for their kids, and everything would have been fine.
Wink, wink — sign it in ink. Back in the day, a hooker wasn’t a player who hit the ball from right to left, it was what you sent to the IOC hotel when you wanted something. Gold might have been the metal of choice for the athletes, but greenbacks were the true coin of the IOC realm.
Which, as is nearly always the case as it relates to sports these days, remains what is driving the bus in golf’s hurried attempt to join the Olympic movement.”
Looks like Steve Elling can smell the stale coffee both the Olympics and Finchem/Bivens have been selling us. he continues:
“The unified front in golf relates purely to self-interest, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But consider what pushed the game’s top officials into adopting the position the Olympics are an attractive notion, after decades of indifference about inclusion.
To summarize in two words: greed and failure.
We’re connecting some big and far-flung dots here, no question, but in the West, the current golf model needs a lot more airplane glue. Beginning in the 1990s, golf no longer was viewed largely as a noble recreational pursuit or break-even proposition, but as a money-making business opportunity for developers and dollar-chasers. There were fewer municipal courses in the pipeline, since posh tracks built as a means of hyping residential developments and resorts had become all the rage.
Costs for players skied as daily fee courses commanded triple-digit payouts. Courses became too hard to play in under five hours. The cost of a new driver, needed to handle the 7,000-yard tracks being built, rose to $400. A legion of folks was priced out of the game because of time and money. For every new customer, another one quit.
The number of rounds played each year in the U.S. stagnated. Now, alarmingly, it has begun to drop in some parts of the country. Worse, more courses have closed over the past three years than have opened. People bought homes in golf communities in good faith, only to see the developer-owner of the courses bolt when the land was sold.
The economic model of the game in the States pulled a hammy chasing after money.”
Here’s my article from last year which makes additional arguments against golf shacking up with one of the most drug-addled organizations in sports. The Olympics, MLB, and the Tour de Fraud…err…France: nice company.
