BlogOlympics Preview and Picks

This week’s field includes:

So who is in the field?

This week it’s the men playing, while the woman will be playing the same course next week. Both contests comprise 60 players each off of the World Rankings and Rolex Woman’s ranking.

For the men there are 34 different countries represent, the United States has the most players with four players, who were in the top-15 of the World Rankings. Beyond the top-15 each country gets a maximum of two eligible players. 23 different countries have two players in the field.

This week’s field includes:

The field includes 30 of the top-100 players and 15 of the top 50 in the latest Official World Rankings.  Those in the field are #5 Henrik Stenson, #6 Bubba Watson, #8 Rickie Fowler, #9 Danny Willett, #11 Sergio Garcia, #12 Justin Rose, #14 Patrick Reed, #20 Matt Kuchar, #29 Rafael Cabrera Bello, #35 Byeong Hun An, #39 Emiliano Grillo, #43 Thongchai Jaidee, #44 Soren Kjeldsen, #45 Danny Lee, #50 Martin Kaymer, #52 David Lingmerth, #58 Bernd Wiesberger, #60 Kiradech Aphibarnrat, #64 Thomas Pieters, #66 Joost Luiten, #68 Thorbjorn Olesen, #69 Anirban Lahiri, #71 Jaco Van Zyl, #75 Jeunghun Wang, #78 Scott Hend, #79 Fabian Gomez, #80 Jhonattan Vegas, #90 Marcus Fraser, #95 Yuta Ikeda and #96 Brandon Stone.

The average ranking of all 60 players is 133; there are six players that are ranked above 300 with Jose-Filipe Lima of Portugal being the highest player in the field at 405.  There are about a dozen very obscure players that very few have ever heard of like Irishman Seamus Power who as a professional has only played on the Web.Com Tour.  But in 17 starts he has a victory at the United Leasing Championship and is 9th on the Web.Com Tour money list.  There are also about a dozen Asian Tour players like Bangladeshi Siddikur Rahman, who has yet to play on the PGA Tour but has been a member of the Asian Tour since 2009

What is the format?

It’s a 72 hole stroke play format, just like the rest of the tournaments around the world. Everybody has an opinion on how this could be better, from a team event to a match play to Stableford format. So for Thursday, Friday and Saturday there isn’t anything different in watching this competition than watching any other tournament week after week.

Still there is one important element that will spark people’s interest watching on Sunday. That is the format with only three prizes, a Gold medal, Silver medal and Bronze medal. It’s the closest event in which it’s all about winning and for three players they will achieve glory while the other 57 will go home with nothing to show for their week. That will make it worthwhile to watch.
It’s a mindset we don’t see much of in which only three players will get the prizes. For those players leading on Sunday, will they play conservatively? And for those going into the back nine two, three or four shots back they will have nothing to lose in shooting for the pins and trying to make as many birdies to get them back in contention. This will spell a lot of excitement, so Sunday will be some great theater especially if you have a bunch up leaderboard.

Another thing of interest, in the age in which someone plays in the Masters and misses the cut getting $10,000, or the U.S. Open and get $3,000, they will be playing for nothing but a medal. So in a regular tournament a player like Jim Furyk that is at the bottom of the leaderboard, a normal round would of meant winning around $14,000.  But with him shooting 58 he ended up finishing T-5th and winning $231,825.  But if this was the Olympics, Furyk would of had nothing to show, other than the great round if this happened on Olympic Sunday.

So if you shoot yourself out of the tournament on Thursday, it could be a hard next three days. Another aspect of this week, just like the Ryder Cup there is no prize money. Now for most of the athletes playing in the Olympics, their expenses are covered to go down to Brazil by their host country. That is up to a limit. For guys like Bubba Watson who are used to flying on private planes and staying in the best hotels, and eating at Ruth Chris every night I doubt very much that the organizing party is footing the bill for some of the expenses, so this could be an expensive week for players. They also have to play their caddies, so at the end of the day, some players could be out thousands of dollars just to play for their country.