This week has seen a lot of discussion about the significance of winning an Olympic gold medal over winning a major championship; now, Matt Fitzpatrick has weighed in ahead of his Team GB debut.
Matt Fitzpatrick, who weighed in on the debate ahead of this week’s men’s golf event in Paris, feels that taking home an Olympic gold medal is just as satisfying as winning one of the four major championships.
Fitzpatrick, along with fellow PGA Tour star Tommy Fleetwood, is playing for Team GB at Le Golf National this week for the first time. Only the third Olympic golf schedule since the 1904 Games has golf been included, with its return in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Since then, many have questioned the significance of the Olympic competition at the pinnacle of professional golf, particularly in light of the withdrawal of several well-known players, such as Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy, from the competition eight years ago.
But this week in Paris, it seems that the world’s best golfers are placing an increasing amount of value on the honor of winning a gold medal, and Englishman Fitzpatrick has voiced his opinion. He stated on Wednesday, “The four majors are at the top of every golfer’s list; the Gold Medal isn’t.”
“There is no question about it. However, I’d say it’s beneath that. I believe that you probably underestimated how big of an event the Olympics are before I came here and got a sense of how it is. Once you are here, though, and realize how important it is to everyone, not just athletes and golfers, you realize how special winning a gold medal would feel.
“So, it makes sense that you would like to try to win one. Growing up, therefore, is definitely higher on the list than I had anticipated.” Fitzpatrick’s Ryder Cup partner McIlroy was presumably among the most skeptics of the Olympic competition, but he too seems to have changed his mind this week.
Though he still thinks the four majors are the top awards in men’s professional golf, he is beginning to accept the possibility that Olympic gold may eventually rank very highly. “I’ve received a lot of questions about this,” the four-time major champion remarked on Tuesday.
“I probably won’t be able to answer that until everything is said and done, but where would an Olympic medal sit in sort of a hierarchy of my career achievements?I believe that golf will become more of— I’m not sure if anything will be able to sit alongside the majors— as it stays in the Olympics for a longer amount of time.
“Our four annual events are the highest caliber. However, I believe that this will eventually rank right up there with that.” Later this week, Fitzpatrick and McIlroy will begin their pursuit of an Olympic medal when the men’s golf competition opens at Le Golf National on Thursday.
Leave a Reply