Sky Sports Golf pundit Richard Kauffman has said he would have preferred to see a male/female team at the Rio Olympics this summer rather than the current format.
Kauffman told Sky Sports : “South Korea is a country where a gold medal is such a big deal, whatever the sport. In fact, win a gold and one of the bonuses is you can skip the military service that has interrupted Sang-Moon Bae’s golf career over the last year. There is not a chance that any Korean golfer would turn down the opportunity to be in Rio this summer.
“That doesn’t mean Louis Oosthuizen, Adam Scott, Vijay Singh or any other player that turns down the Olympic Games is completely in the wrong. These are guys that grew up dreaming of winning the majors, not the Olympic gold. It’s a busy schedule and being in South America, there’s a lot of travel involved.
“But there’s a bigger picture here, a reason why the R&A and various golfing bodies and personalities took so much time and effort to get golf back into the Olympics. It’s about the global growth of the game and the future of the sport.
“Golf is an established sport in the UK, USA, Australia and South Africa, but there are various corners of the globe where it is an insignificance and the Olympics will go a long way to changing that. I wish the format was different. I’d love to see a combined male/female team – Spieth and Lexi, Rose and Hull etc. Maybe in the future?”
