The phone rang a couple of Tuesdays ago and the vaguely familiar voice on the other end of the line was that of PGA Tour Vice President Ty Votaw.
Since the tour brass calls to chat with the same frequency as Phil Mickelson makes 18 pars in a round, my mind began to race. What on earth is this about?
Had my season credential been revoked for going over the limit of brownies consumed in the media center?
Was Votaw calling to get my picks for Ponte Vedra's FedEx Cup office pool?
Naw, Votaw wanted to talk Olympics.
It seemed a single word in my Page Fore column that morning had caught his eye. The word: vehemently.
I wrote of the possibility of golf returning to the Olympics: “Personally, I'm vehemently against it if it involves professionals, because top-level golf is already oversaturated with big events.”
“Any time I see the word vehemently, it gets my attention,” Votaw said with a small chuckle.
Votaw sought to change – or at least, soften – my outlook, because the Olympics are personal business for him. In fact, no one in golf has more juice in golf's Olympic movement than Votaw, the former commissioner of the LPGA Tour.
He has been tabbed as the executive director of the International Golf Federation's Olympic Committee. That goes along with his tour title of executive vice president of international affairs and communications.
Just days after our conversation, Votaw headed off to the Summer Olympics in Beijing to engage in strategic meetings with the International Olympic Committee. He was joined by Peter Dawson, the CEO of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club in Scotland. The two men were representing seven organizations that are pushing to get golf into the Olympics for 2016: PGA Tour, R&A, European Tour, U.S. Golf Association, PGA of America, LPGA and Augusta National Golf Club.
Those are some of the most powerful bodies in sports, not just golf, and they figure to be extremely persuasive when going up against some of the other Olympic hopefuls, like karate, rugby and things that involve roller blades.
I would be shocked if golf doesn't earn a bid.
Golf hasn't been a part of the Olympics since they were playing with niblicks and mashies. The year was 1904 in St. Louis, and 23 of the 24 male competitors were American. The holdout was a Canadian, and guess who won? O Canada!
One hundred and four years later, golf is, inarguably, a game of many nations. The concern, Votaw contends, is that fledgling golf countries need valuable seed money.
Enter the Olympics.
“The best and most compelling way to grow the game on a global basis is to make it an Olympic sport,” Votaw said.
Other countries don't follow America's free-market model for sports. If a sport is in the Olympics, the government funds it, nurtures it, creates institutes to train kids from the time they are toddlers. No Olympics? You might as well be milking cows.
Get golf into the Olympics, Votaw says, and watch it grow in places such as Tunisia, Egypt, China and Russia.
I get that, and who doesn't want to see the great game grow? But can't they accomplish the same thing by giving highly talented amateurs a once-in-a-lifetime chance?
No deal, Votaw says. The IOC wants pros. Baseball, which just became extinct in the Olympics, is painfully aware of that.
Besides, Votaw argues, basketball doesn't get so huge in China (and the NBA doesn't sell millions of jerseys) if the Dream Team pros don't start dunking their hearts out with the '92 Games.
People like me need to get over it, I guess. The Olympics stopped exalting amateurs a long, long time ago.
Yet the pros are still my biggest problem with the idea. Honestly, I just can't get excited about Anthony Kim or Paula Creamer winning Olympic gold eight years from now. There are too many other measurements of greatness in the sport.
It's the same reason I couldn't care less about tennis in the Olympics.
A selfish American view, Votaw counters, and I'm certainly guilty of that. He's seeing a much larger picture. If the young and talented Martin Kaymer wins golf gold for Germany, his legacy is set. Same for Lorena Ochoa in Mexico.
Michael Phelps aside, other countries value the achievements of their Olympians far more than we do.
The golf proposal, according to Votaw, might go something like this: For men and women, 50 to 60 pro golfers would be chosen for individual stroke-play competition. They would be picked from the top 300 in the official world rankings, with one country getting no more than three participants. If that scenario were played out today, nearly 30 countries would be represented for each gender. A very respectable number.
So, if you're the 290th-ranked golfer in the world, but you're the only one from France, you're in. If you're the fourth-best American and ranked 25th, you're out.
Nothing wrong with that. The more nations the better. In fact, if a guy from Tajikistan hones a really killer game for '16, I want that dude to smoke everybody and win the gold.
TV is going to be a big issue for golf, because some of the best Olympic sports transpire in the matter of seconds, not four hours. How do you capture the tension? Don't know, but that's Votaw's problem to work out.
So, bottom line: I'm starting to warm up to golf in the Olympics. What the heck. Grow the game. Who's it going to hurt, other than the people in those sports who get beat out?
Just don't twist my arm to love it. That's not going to happen. In the Olympics, I'd rather watch trampoline (breathtaking), gymnastics (high drama) or women's beach volleyball (do you have to ask?).
And the next time I even consider using the word “vehemently,” somebody smack me.
Tod Leonard: (619) 293-1858; tod.leonard@uniontrib.com
