Five Facts About Rio Olympic Golf
Five things about golf at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics: + Zika virus fears decimated the men's field as more than 20 golfers who could have come to Rio withdrew, including world number one Jason Day of Australia, second-ranked US Open champion Dustin Johnson, third-ranked Jordan Spieth and number four Rory McIlroy. Sweden's fifth-ranked Henrik Stenson, the British Open winner, is the highest-rated player in the 60-man Rio lineup with number six Bubba Watson, seventh-ranked fellow American Rickie Fowler, England's ninth-ranked Danny Willett and 11th-ranked Justin Rose and Spain's number 10 Sergio Garcia set to play in Brazil. On the women's side, most top players are in the field as New Zealand's top-ranked Lydia Ko, second-ranked Canadian teen Brooke Henderson and American Lexi Thompson leading the way. South Korea boasts six players in the top 12 and four of them give their nation the largest women's contingent in the Games. + Canada's George Lyon, born in 1858, won the 1904 St. Louis Olympic men's golf tournament even though he did not start playing the game until he was 38. He defeated Chandler Egan 3 and 2 in the final after being the only non-US golfer to qualify for the 32-player match play championship event. In his youth, Lyon played cricket for Canada before becoming an eight-time Canadian amateur golf champion. He was the 1906 US Amateur runner-up. Lyon went to London in 1908 to defend Olympic gold but English and Scottish representatives could not agree upon a format and the event was canceled. Lyon died in 1938 at age 79. Now, 112 years after Lyon won gold, golf returns to the Olympic lineup at Rio. + The Rio Olympics golf will be a 72-hole stroke-play format for men and women staged at a new venue built within the Marapendi Natural Reserve in Rio's Barra da Tijuca area. The Gil Hanse-designed course is a par-71 layout that plays 7,128 yards for men and 6,245 yards for women. After the Olympics it will become a public course. + Americans have won 10 of 13 Olympic golf medals. In 1900 at Paris, American Charles Sands fired an 82 and an 85 on the same day for a 167 to edge Britain's Walter Rutherford by a stroke for the first men's Olympic gold. David Robertson, like Rutherford a Scotsman, was third in a field of 12 on 175. Sands also tasted Olympic defeat in France, losing in the first round of tennis men's singles and doubles and mixed doubles. Americans swept the 1904 St. Louis men's team medals because only three US teams took part and took silver and two bronzes in individual competition. + Margaret Abbott, the first US woman to win any Olympic event, captured the only women's golf title so far with a 47 over nine holes to lead a US podium sweep at the 1900 Olympics in Paris. She received a porcelain bowl for the victory. Her mother, Mary Abbott, shared seventh, making it the only time in Olympic history a mother and daughter competed at the same time. Margaret went to France with her mother to study music and art and took lessons from artist Edgar Degas and sculptor Auguste Rodin.
