Olympics Golf 2024: Know Your Way Around The Course

One thing that makes the Summer Olympic Games such a public favourite event is the diversity of the sports presented at the tournament. And while the Olympics have always been about multiple sports coming together for one event, in Ancient Greece the number of sports the athletes competed in was, of course, much lower.

Ancient Greek athletes had to show athletic prowess and defeat their opponents in only six sports: chariot racing, running, boxing, wrestling, pankration, which was a very violent combination of boxing and wrestling, and a three-section event where they had to perform a long jump as well as throw javelin and discus.

After the Olympic Games were revived in the modern times, they started with nine sports: athletics, cycling, fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting, and wrestling. But they didn’t stop there and kept expanding their programme, as new sports kept gaining popularity while others lost relevance. 

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games included 32 sports with 48 disciplines – coming a long way from the nine that were presented at the 1896 Athens Olympics. Some of the entries on the current programme are pretty well-known to be Olympic sports, others might not be as obvious if you are not a fan. The full list at the 36th edition of the Summer Olympics was as follows:

• Artistic swimming
• Diving
• Marathon swimming
• Swimming
• Water polo
• Archery
• Athletics
• Badminton
• Basketball (basketball & 3×3 basketball)
• Boxing 
• Breaking
• Canoeing (slalom & sprint)
• Cycling (BMX freestyle, BMX racing, mountain biking, road, track)
• Equestrian (dressage, eventing, jumping)
• Fencing
• Field hockey
• Football
• Golf
• Gymnastics (artistic, rhythmic, trampoline)
• Handball
• Judo
• Modern pentathlon
• Rowing
• Rugby sevens
• Sailing
• Shooting
• Skateboarding
• Sport climbing
• Surfing
• Table tennis
• Taekwondo
• Tennis
• Triathlon
• Volleyball (volleyball & beach volleyball)
• Weightlifting
• Wrestling (freestyle & Greco-Roman)

Golf: Elite Pastime or Olympic Sport?

The main goal of golf is to hit the ball with various clubs and get it into the designated holes in as few strokes as possible. What sets it apart from other similar games is that golf doesn’t have a standardized playing ground. In fact, the ability to exhibit your scoring skills on terrains of various structure and difficulty is one of the core competencies for a good golf player. 

While the rules of the game are pretty extensive, there are two main ways to play golf. The first one is called the stroke play, where the player must hit the ball into a predetermined number of holes using as few strokes as possible. The other one is called match play and is played for the lowest score on the most individual holes. The stroke play is the more widespread one out of the two. 

The origins of modern golf are clearly traced to 15th century Scotland, but many think that it could have been inspired by a number of more ancient sports from Ancient Rome to China to Persia to France. 

First Appearance at 2016 Rio Olympics

Golf has a rather interesting history at the Olympics. It was first played, albeit not as an official medal event, at the tournament in Paris, France in 1900, the second edition of the Modern Games, and then again in St. Louis, United States in 1904.

After that the organizers tried to bring the sport back twice, in 1908 London and 1920 Antwerp Summer Olympics but the events were cancelled both times.

It wasn’t until 2009 that the International Olympic Committee decided to officially introduce golf as an Olympic sport. Golf made a comeback at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games and subsequently appeared in both 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Games. It has also been confirmed to be on the list for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.  

Currently, after having been played during three editions of the Olympic Games, the medal distribution for golf between National Olympic Committees is as shown below:

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Olympics Golf 2024: Schedule, Qualifications, And More

During the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games golf events were scheduled from 1 August to 10 August. Similar to the previous two editions, competition is only conducted in individual stroke play. Both preliminary and medal rounds were conducted at Le Golf National, an 18-hole golf course in Guyancourt. 

Two teams of 60 men and 60 women each played the same event that would last for four days over 72 holes. Men played from 1 to 4 August, while women played from 7 to 10 August. 

Olympics Golf 2024: Qualification Process

Qualification process for the 2024 Paris was based on the official world ranking by the International Golf Federation. The top 15 players among both men and women were selected keeping in mind the quota of 4 players per National Olympic Committee (NOC). The remaining spots were distributed among golfers ranking 16 or lower, with the quota being a maximum of two players per NOC.

France, as the host country, was guaranteed at least one golfer on the list, while the International Olympic Committee demanded that each of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania would be represented with at least one player.

As a result, 38 National Olympic Committees were eligible to participate in the tournament:

Among the men, the following golfers made the list after the final rankings on 17 June 2024:

Among the women, the following golfers made the list after the final rankings on 24 June 2024:

Olympics Golf 2024 Winners

As mentioned above, Olympic golf only admits individual stroke play for both men’s and women’s teams. Below you will find the names of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games golf winners.

Based on the number of medals won during the Games, the top five nation ranking is:

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