But who will get to play in the Olympic golf tournaments? How will the men and women making up the fields be selected? I thought it would fun, and instructive, to apply the selection criteria and format proposed by the International Golf Federation to the men's and women's world rankings at the time of the IOC's announcements, and thereby create the tournament fields that would result if today was the deadline for selecting the players to play in the Olympics.
In other words, if the Olympic fields were filled today, what would they look like? The answers are on the following pages - the resulting men's Olympic field on Page 2 of this article; the resulting women's field on Page 3 of this article.
First, a reminder about the IGF's proposed selection criteria: 60 golfers get in, and the Top 15 in the men's and women's world rankings qualify automatically, regardless of country. After that, we just continue down the world rankings, adding golfers from countries that do not already have two entrants in the field, passing over those from countries already represented by two golfers. Until we reach the 60th golfer to qualify - field size is limited to 60 golfers in each the men's and women's tournaments. (More in-depth info on the proposed format and field is available here.)
I used the world rankings current on the date of the IOC's announcement (Oct. 9, 2009) to create the following theoretical fields. The fields are presented in two formats each - golfers listed by country, and golfers listed from highest-ranked to lowest-ranked.
Now, turn the page to view the fields that would exist if they were selected on the date of the IOC's announcement.
