I can relate to the mental thing big time. I played golf competitively growing up. I got pretty good. The summer after my junior year at high school I won a couple tournaments that got some attention from a few in state unis/colleges. My senior year starts and I got the yips bad with chipping and putting. 5 putting from 4 feet bad. I remember one tournament a college golf coach was there watching my group for a few holes. I played so so bad that when the other guys in my group were asking who he was there to watch I didn’t even admit it was me. It was like my muscles and nerves were uncontrollable and misfiring. I was never a long hitter and was pretty reliant on chipping/putting so this was a complete disaster.
Needless to say I did not play college golf. I have putted left handed for 17 years now which has fixed the putting somehow but I still hosel and blade chips with the yips here and there.
So ya if she was going through anything like that it would be terrifying in that sport.
Because they don’t want the Olympic final to be Joe Schmo vs. John Doe. Same reason no one watches the finals of the World Match Play half the time. Match play on TV doesn’t work well with the bracket format.
I’ve thought the same thing too but match play makes for incredibly boring tv at the end. I suppose you could do an event like the WGC they play in Austin with pool play to start and then match play. But again Sunday afternoon with just 4 golfers playing isn’t great viewing. It’s not like the Ryder Cup with 12 matches out on the course at once on a Sunday afternoon.
WRT team play, the women have to play the same course starting on Tuesday so having a team and individual for both men and women could be a big time crunch and really tear apart the course towards the end of the play.
I get those arguments, but this is the Olympics. They could do pool play as cooler suggested as they do with sports like soccer, baseball, etc., and then go to a knockout round. And even if the top players or teams all get knocked out early (unlikely they all will), there’s still a lot of drama in an unlikely team or player competing for a medal.
With this format, it feels like just another tournament to me.
There are a million formats that would be better - the key being an actual team component. It needs to be match play. This is basically Bay Hill in Japan. Terrible.
I like watching this better. I like playing match play better. Funnily enough watching this just now Mrs cooler unprompted said to me “it’s kinda dumb they have this as stroke play and not something different”
Zac Stubbelty-Cook is quite a name. Just won the gold for Australia. Fun start for the swim races today. The italian in the 800m freestyle and the Dutch in the 200m breaststroke went with the tactics of going all out early and hoping they can some how hold on. Both got silver so it seems to work out quite well.
