Teamless Team Play

If you watched any of the World Cup of Golf on GC Wednesday night time, you could have gotten a wonder. (The event is at Royal Melbourne in Australia this year, so Thursday "began early" there -- at the least, early for the East Coast of the us.)

Namely, the crew issue that has characterised the WCoG inside the past is a aspect of the beyond. To quote an AP article from ABCNEWS.Com:

The layout has been significantly modified this yr to make it ordinarily a stroke-play opposition and, in essence, a very early "check event" for the 2016 Olympics, in which golfing will make its return to this system. The World Golf Ranking turned into used because the deciding component in who plays this week at Royal Melbourne, and that and eligibility for numbers of players allowed from each country may also be used at Rio in 3 years. Rio might not function a team opposition, that's being retained right here as part of the original World Cup format.

As a result, there are both teams and individual golfers playing in the event this time since several countries didn't have two eligible players. The article says there are "25 two-man teams and eight to 10 individual golfers."

The "crew opposition" stated in the article is simply the blended total of the man or woman rankings of the two-guy teams from every us of a. It's nothing like the team play of past World Cups.

I can see the common sense at the back of this move. If golfing is to efficaciously survive its check look as an Olympic event, organizers need to find a good way to decide who will without a doubt compete. Will the OWGR supply the collaborating nations a truthful representation on the Games? It's better to find out now while there's still time to tweak the choice system, and that they can not use a regular Tour event considering the fact that participation there's a count of Tour membership.

Still, I omit the group play. We don't get to peer a great deal fourball or foursome play as it's miles, and the World Cup has been the main yearly occasion that offers it. From a viewer standpoint, now it is simply any other seventy two-hole stroke play event. Maybe they're go back it to the authentic group format as soon as the Olympic complications had been discovered.

I actually desire so. At least the players get international ranking factors this time... However I'm now not so certain they would not decide on a teammate to help examine the difficult veggies at Royal Melbourne.