The 2024 Olympics in Paris will see 60 women from the men’s game and an equal number from the women’s game compete at Le Golf National for the third successive Games after golf was reintroduced for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.
However, golf’s history with the games goes back much further than that, and made its debut way back in 1900, also in Paris.
It was a relatively short-lived venture and, following the 1904 Olympics in St Louis, it was not played again at the Games for 112 years.
That wasn’t the original plan. In fact, it was in the schedule for the 1908 London Olympics until two days beforehand but was ultimately cancelled after a dispute led to a boycott by all the host nation’s golfers.
Despite golf's limited history at the Olympics, there have been a total of 21 individual medal winners. Here's how they achieved it.
Olympic Golf Medal Winners Rio 2016
In the modern era, there have been a total of 12 medals handed to 11 golfing Olympians.
Even though golf didn’t make its long-awaited comeback until the 2016 games at Rio de Janeiro, it was given the green light at the International Olympic Committee session in 2009 after it recognized the expansion of the game throughout the world.
The format saw 120 players (60 men and 60 women) competing in separate 72-hole strokeplay tournaments with the top three on the leaderboard claiming the medals and a three-hole playoff to determine medal winners in the event of a tie - a format still used today.
Men's
In the men’s event at the specially built Olympic Golf Course, Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s Justin Rose held a one-shot lead over Sweden’s Henrik Stenson heading into the final round, and things couldn’t have been tighter as they headed to the 72nd hole, with the pair locked at 15-under for the tournament.
However, it all went wrong for Stenson after his third shot on the par 5 landed on the green but spun back from the pin to leave him a 20-footer for birdie. Rose fared better, landing his to within three feet.
Stenson eventually three-putted, while Rose holed his birdie putt to win by two. Earlier, US player Matt Kuchar rallied on the final day with a 63 to leave him three shots behind the winner and claim bronze.
Women's
A week later, it was the women’s turn. With seven-time Major winner Inbee Park representing South Korea, it was no surprise that she was in contention throughout, and by the final round, she held a two-shot lead over New Zealand’s Lydia Ko and US player Gerina Piller, despite Ko’s first career hole-in-one in the third round.
Ko notched a two-under 69 in the final round as Piller fell away with a 74, but Park never looked like losing her grip on the gold medal. She eventually won by five after a five-under 66, leaving Ko to settle for silver and China’s Shanshan Feng to claim bronze.
Olympic Golf Medal Winners Tokyo 2020
Even with golf firmly back on the Olympics radar, it took longer than anticipated before its next appearance, this time because the 2020 edition in Tokyo was postponed for a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Men's
When it got underway, the men’s tournament again went first at Kasumigaseki Country Club.
After the first round, the US’s Xander Schauffele was five shots behind Austria’s Sepp Straka, but by the end of the second round, he held a one-shot lead thanks to a 63.
Schauffele still had a lead by a single shot after the third round, this time over local hero Hideki Matsuyama, and that was the American’s ultimate margin of victory despite an incredible 10-under 61 from Slovakia’s Rory Sabbatini that handed him the silver medal. Chinese Taipei star CT Pan won the bronze after a seven-man sudden-death playoff.
Women's
At the women’s tournament, Nelly Korda made it two US gold medals following a solid performance throughout. She was one behind Sweden’s Madelene Sagstrom after the first round, but a stunning 62 in the second handed her a four-shot lead over three challengers.
Korda wasn’t as effective in the third round, but her two-under 69 was enough to give her a three-shot buffer heading into the final round. There, she shot another 69 and, despite pressure from Lydia Ko and Japan’s Mone Inami, she held on to win by one.
Her two nearest challengers went into a playoff to determine the silver and bronze medal winners, with Inami finishing on top. For Ko, she at least had the distinction of becoming the first golfer in history to win two medals with a bronze.
Olympic Golf Medal Winners - Paris 1900 And St Louis 1904
1900
The first golf ball at an Olympics was hit on 2 October 1900 when 12 men from four nations competed at Compiegne Golf Club in France in a 36-hole strokeplay format.
Rounds of 82 and 85 were enough to hand US player Charles Sands the gold medal by one over Great Britain player Walter Rutherford. Another player for Great Britain, David Robertson, won bronze, after finishing eight behind the winner.
The next day, what turned out to be the only women’s golf event at the Games for the next 116 years took place between 10 players and two nations – France and the US.
Unlike the men’s contest, this featured just nine holes of strokeplay, and it was a clean sweep for the US, with Margaret Abbott claiming gold after her 47, Pauline Whittier winning silver after a 49 and Abbie Pratt winning bronze thanks to her 53.
1904
If golf’s bow at the Olympics had been a case of dipping its toes into the water, by 1904 it was fully immersed, at least for the men’s game. There was no women’s tournament in 1904, but for the men, a radically different format to the 1900 edition must have been beyond grueling.
A 36-hole qualifying round got things started, which whittled down the number of “lucky” qualifiers to 32.
There then followed a five-round knockout match play tournament, with each consisting of 36 holes and played over five consecutive days! By the end of the sixth successive day of 36-hole golf, a (presumably shattered) George Lyon of Canada had claimed gold after a 3&2 win over American Chandler Egan. Both semi-final losers, Americans Burt McKinnie and Francis Newton, claimed bronze.
As a footnote, Lyon was offered a far easier way of winning another gold in 1908. Arguments over both the format and whether golf should have been in the Olympics at all led to a boycott by British players and it was cancelled with two days to go. That left Lyon as the only competitor, and he was offered a single round of golf before being awarded the gold medal by default, but he refused!
There was also a team event in 1904, but it didn’t go remotely to plan. Six teams entered, but only two – from the Western Golf Association and the Trans-Mississippi Golf Association in the US - showed up. Some more players (again, all US) were drafted from the individual event to bring the number up to 30, with the inevitable result that the US won gold, silver and bronze.
