There are a raft of anachronistic event at the Olympics , like the innovative pentathlon , that you assume are just grandfathered into the Olympics at this point . But how does a sport like golf wind up debuting at the 2016 Rio Olympics ? It ’s actually an involved summons to total a sport to the Olympic Games .

To start , the sport has to have a non - governmental external federation . Traditionally , that organic structure can then petition the International Olympic Committee ( IOC ) for Olympic comprehension .   However , in 2014 the IOC formalize another boulevard that created a more compromising Olympic program to make it easier for events like skateboarding and surfing to be added , as they will for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics . That will be the first Olympics to have sports who have taken vantage of that new procedure . golf game had to take the more traditionally used route .

Britannicanotes that a mutant can be admitted " as a mutation , a discipline , which is a arm of a sportswoman , or an result , which is a competition within a discipline . For case , triathlon was intromit as a sport , debut at the 2000 Games in Sydney . Women ’s wrestling was a new correction in the sport of wrestling at the Athens Games , and charwoman ’s rod curvet was the most recently added track and field case . "

How is golf an olympic sport

Olympian Martin Kaymer at the PGA European Tour Open de France|Mitch Gunn / Shutterstock

The actual process set about with the international federation filling out a questionnaire that can be in excessiveness of 100 page . It asks question about grammatical gender equity , how many countries are regard in the mutation , and how big the planetary interview is for the sport . That last item is measure by television set audience , societal media , and event attendance . Another condition is the cost of building venues to hold the consequence and availability of those venues in upcoming legion city .

Traditional guidelines stated that a sport must be practise by men in at least 75 body politic on four continents , and in 40 countries on at least three continents for a woman ’s event .   There is also a Bachelor of Arts in Nursing on anything that is purely a " brain sport , " like chess ,   or a sportswoman that relies on mechanical actuation , like auto racing .

" We want to take fun to the early days . With the many options that young mass have , we can not expect any more that they will come automatically to us . We have to go to them,”said Thomas Bach , IOC President , in a press waiver announcing the raw games for Tokyo .

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rent ’s take a thrust in the nighttime and say youth - appeal is n’t why golf game wind up at Rio .

With all of this in thoughtfulness , the first approval comes from the IOC Executive Board , who , once they have approved a postulation , pass it onto the quietus of the IOC . Then , on the spur of the moment , you ’re watching Olympian golf game on a Thursday afternoon in August , more or less .

It ’s not actually all that sudden . Golf and rugger were approved for cellular inclusion back in 2009 , seven year in overture of Rio . That ’s the distinctive fourth dimension frame for a sport to make it ’s debut when approve through the traditional route .

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alas for golfiacs ( that ’s emphatically going to catch on ) , things are n’t off to a neat start for Olympic golf . The top four golfers in the world are not compete , and a total of 21 eligible linksman dropped out before the Games start up . So , if you sleep together golf in the Olympics , savor it . If you detest it , do whatever you ordinarily do when something boring is happening on TV .

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