Medal Play on Golf’s Agenda

In a proposal that immediately conjured up the notion of Tiger Woods driving for show and putting--well, not for dough but a gold medal--by the Great Wall of China, the International Olympic Committee confirmed Wednesday that golf officials have applied for inclusion in the 2008 Summer Games.

Gilbert Felli, the IOC’s sports director, said that the IOC had received an application from the World Amateur Golf Council for the 2008 Games. Consideration of the proposal will begin in September, he said.

The plan calls for men’s and women’s four-day, stroke-play tournaments with 50 players in each field.

“We think it’s an easy move because you don’t have to build any stadiums,” said Stephanie Parel, an official with the council, which represents the world’s national golfing federations.

“We’re all excited about it,” she added. “Golf teaches honor and discipline, and it’s something you can play your whole life. Which is not something you can say about every sport.”

The prospect of golf in the Games is about the same as a golfer winning four consecutive major championships--improbable, certainly, but now that Woods has done it, something that can’t be ruled out.

The council’s proposal renews an on-again, off-again interest by golf supporters in the Games. Atlanta’s Olympic chief, Billy Payne, proposed for the world’s best golfers to play during the 1996 Games at Augusta National, site of the Masters.

It didn’t happen--though it did mark one of Payne’s first confrontations with the IOC after the Games were awarded to Atlanta in 1990. Clued in to Augusta National’s history of racial and gender bias, the IOC’s policy-making executive board rejected the proposal.

Golf hasn’t been part of the Olympics since 1904.

The proposal also brings up yet again the ongoing debate about which sports should be played at the Games.

Last December, the IOC announced that, because of concerns about the swelling number of athletes at the Games, it would be limiting the program at the Summer Olympics in 2004, now set for Athens, to the same number as in Sydney last year--300 events, men’s and women’s, in 28 sports. That means about 10,500 athletes.

As a result, ballroom dancing, water skiing and other sports that have tried for years to be in the Games will not be part of the 2004 program.

“For 2008 the competition is open,” Felli said Wednesday.

The key, however, is that if golf--or water skiing, or whatever--is admitted into the Games schedule, something else has to go.

“If we add a new sport, we may have to make a decision to take something out,” Felli said.

Olympic officials--in particular, Belgium’s Jacques Rogge, a leading contender to be the IOC’s next president--have said repeatedly in recent months that the size and scope of the Games is nearing the limits of any city’s organizational capacity.

Beijing, Toronto and Paris are the leading contenders for the 2008 Games. Istanbul, Turkey, and Osaka, Japan, are also in the race, but an IOC Evaluation Commission report issued Tuesday all but consigned them to also-ran status, saying those two bids suffer from unacceptable risks, primarily financial.

On Wednesday, the IOC’s ruling Executive Board announced that Osaka and Istanbul would nonetheless remain in the race until July 13 in Moscow, when the IOC is due to select the 2008 site. Three days later, the IOC will elect a new president.

Meantime, Rogge said of the situation in Athens, “Things have improved dramatically.”

Rogge, the IOC’s point man in relations with the city, asserted Wednesday that the organizing committee in Athens has a “new dynamism” and that the Greek government, which is now responsible for dozens of major construction projects, has a “renewed sense of urgency.”

” . . . We have, of course, urged them to respect the construction deadlines.”