DAVID ISAACSON | Olympics just doesn’t seem to swing it for highly-paid golfers

Another Olympics, another no-show by golfer Louis Oosthuizen.

Oosthuizen is playing some of the finest golf of his career, having finished runner-up in the last two Majors, and is threatening to break back into the top 10.

He is SA’s top-ranked golfer at the moment and would have given the country a genuine medal chance had he decided to go.

He’s earned  $4.958m (R71m) on the PGA Tour this year, exceeding the total allotment the SA Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) received from government this year, which was just under R12m. One can up that to more than R19m by including the additional R7.5m government gave towards the costs of sending the Olympic and Paralympic teams abroad.  

Oosthuizen, with career earnings in excess of $26.2m (R372m), could buy Sascoc if he wanted. 

He chose not to go to the last Games and he’s doing the same this time around. As disappointing as Oosthuizen’s decision is for Team SA, it highlights a few fundamental issues.

We like the medals. Fans get to cheer and politicians get to raise their profile by having photos taken with the medal-winners.

For one, golf is not a traditional Olympic sport, having returned to the Games programme at Rio 2016 after a break of more than a century.

As a sport golf has evolved into a billion-dollar industry where winning the Majors count as the greatest achievements. The Open, the oldest of them all, was first played in 1860, which predated the first modern Olympics by 36 years.

Even the US Open snuck in before Athens 1896, making its debut the year before.

The PGA Championship kicked off in 1916, the year Olympics didn’t happen because of World War 1, and the Masters is a relative whippersnapper with a 1934 birth date. 

That’s where you will find the pinnacle of golf. And then the Olympics came along, like a regular Johnny-come-lately.

It’s hard to believe that money and TV audiences were not central to the decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to include golf in the showpiece (and tennis, for that matter).

So the Olympics don’t fit into Oosthuizen’s career plans, apparently. On the one hand it is just a week of his life, but on the other hand, thinking with my tattered golfing cap on, I sort of see his point. It gives him a weeklong break before the five concluding tournaments of the PGA Tour get under way.

And that brings me to my next point. The Olympic golf tournament offers no prize money at all; the best a golfer can do is win a pesky gold medal worth some $570 (about R8,000).

Argentina’s Fabián Gómez and American Jimmy Walker, who finished joint last at the US Open on 19 over par, each pocketed $25,907 (R358,000) for their efforts.

There are probably many golfers who look at the word “Olympics” and the first thing they see is a big fat zero, but having said that, the Olympics does attract the tennis players.

Well, not always. If you recall, Kevin Anderson turned up his Olympic aspirations by not making himself available for the Davis Cup.

The third element behind Oosthuizen’s withdrawal — and this could be the most important aspect — is the stark lack of Olympic culture in SA.

From poor government investment down to fan excitement, the Olympics is simply something that happens every four years when we win a few medals.

We like the medals. Fans get to cheer and politicians get to raise their profile by having photos taken with the medal-winners.

And then everyone forgets about it for four years.

One reason for the lack of Olympic culture was SA’s isolation because of apartheid, which left the nation in the cold for seven Games, from 1964 to 1992.

Rio 2016 was SA’s seventh Games back, and it was no fluke that it was also SA’s most successful since readmission. Athletes, swimmers, rowers, triathletes and others have learnt what’s required to win on the world stage. 

Perhaps future golfers who were children watching key moments, like Chad le Clos beating Michael Phelps at London 2012, will see the Olympics differently. 

Unlike Oosthuizen, SA-born Justin Rose of England went to Rio. The difference is that Rose, who won the gold medal, grew up in a country where there is an immense Olympic culture. There is a thrill being part of a large team, competing alongside the swimmers, athletes, rowers and so on. It is a unique experience. 

Gary Player, the golf team manager in Rio, was critical of the players who withdrew, saying the large sums of money they earned skewed their perspective. 

Oosthuizen, like many South Africans, doesn’t get the Olympics, and so the Games won’t get him. He’s choosing to miss out on the Tokyo showpiece, and whether one approves of his choice or not, SA will miss him with his medal-winning potential.