U.S. Olympian Matt Kuchar just found out how the Olympic golf tournament works
If you're wondering how seriously the world's best golfers are taking the upcoming and much-maligned Olympic golf tournament set to start a week from tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, here's a hilarious story from this week's Travelers Championship. Matt Kuchar is one of four Americans who will tee it up at the Reserva de Marapendi Golf Course - but he thought his score would be combined with a teammates.
Via Golf Digest:
"Now, I may be miss-informed or just don't know. You may have to help me. Is there no team format at all? When they first talked about it, if there were four Americans it was the two highest ranked and they were going to combine the scores for a team event.
There is no combined? No team event whatsoever? Just an individual? We did the same thing at World Cup: 72 hole stroke play. I played with Kevin Streelman. We never played together but we did represent the United States in a team format. That was my initial impression of what was happening with the Olympics, but I'm incorrect on that."
Whoops! Kuchar's impression would have made for an interesting format -combining the top scores of golfers from each country - but it would also heavily favor golf-rich countries like the U.S. and the U.K. Staging the tournament as a traditional stroke-play event at least gives relatively individual golfers a chance to snag a medal if they get hot for a few rounds.
