Alright, so I’m gonna walk you through my little side project, digging into the potential Australian Olympic Golf Team for 2024. It was a fun little dive, and here’s how it all went down.
First off, I started with the basics. I needed a list of potential players. I basically just googled “Australian golfers rankings” and started compiling a list of the top players, both men and women. I knew the Olympics only takes a few players per country, so I focused on the cream of the crop – the guys and gals consistently doing well on the PGA and LPGA tours.
Then came the data digging. This was the time-consuming part. I went through each player’s official website, their PGA/LPGA profile, and even some golf news sites to get a feel for their current form, any recent wins, and just general info on how they were playing. I wanted to see who was hot and who was not, leading up to the Olympic qualification period.
After I had a decent amount of info on each player, I started to build a simple spreadsheet. Nothing fancy, just names, world ranking (super important for Olympic selection!), recent performance highlights, and some notes on their strengths and weaknesses. This helped me visualize things and compare players directly.
Here’s where it got interesting. I started looking at potential team compositions. The Olympic golf tournament usually allows a maximum of four players per country, but only if they’re ranked within the top 15 in the world. Otherwise, it’s a limit of two players. So, I had to consider different scenarios based on the rankings at the time of Olympic selection.
I played around with different team combinations, factoring in things like course suitability (some players are better at links courses, others at parkland style), team chemistry (do they have a history of playing well together in team events?), and overall experience. I tried to balance experience with raw talent and current form.
After that I looked at a bunch of different “expert” predictions. I always take them with a grain of salt, but it’s good to see what other golf analysts are thinking. I compared their projected teams with my own and tried to understand why they might have made different choices. It was a good way to challenge my own assumptions.
The most important aspect: The world rankings are the final say. That’s how the teams are selected. I kept an eye on the Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) and the Rolex Rankings (for the women) to see how things were shifting. This was crucial because a player’s ranking could change dramatically based on a single good or bad tournament.
Finally, I put together my “final” projected team. Of course, this was just for fun, and the actual team could be completely different. But based on all the info I gathered, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of who the top contenders were and what the team might look like.
It was a cool experience. It really got me following golf more closely and appreciating the talent that Australia has to offer. I think golf is one of the best Olympic sports!
