Pro sounds out of place at Olympics: ‘It’s mind boggling’

Despite qualifying for the Olympics, Joost Luiten will not represent his country in Paris at the 2024 Games – but not by choice.

Instead, the National Olympic Committee of the Netherlands Sports Federation is refusing to send Luiten, the 148th-ranked golfer in the world and the 40th-ranked player in the Olympic qualifiers, and two other golfers to the games because they don’t believe the three have a chance of winning. medal.

Doug Ferguson of the Associated Press was the first to report that although four golfers, two men and two women, have qualified to represent the Netherlands in Paris based on the marks set by the International Olympic Committee, only the LPGA and the LET’s Anne van Dam will compete. at Le Golf National.

The National Olympic Committee of the Netherlands Sports Federation is the only NOC with additional eligibility rules for golfers in the Olympics. To represent a country in these games, you must be a top 100 player in the world or have won the top title in a sanctioned competition before the Olympics.

This is against the IOC standard of taking the top two eligible players (and up to four if they are all in the top-15 in the Official World Golf Ranking or Rolex Ranking) from each country until the field is filled to 60 players. both men and women.

Luiten, 38, has yet to finish better than T11 in his 13 DP World Tour starts this season. Both he and Darius van Driel are eligible to represent the Netherlands, but will not be making it. Neither will Dewi Weber in women’s employment.

Luiten slammed his country’s Olympic committee on social media Wednesday morning after the news broke.

“It worries us that they say I can’t finish top 8 at the @olympics, @nocnsf has no knowledge of golf,” Luiten wrote on Instagram on Wednesday. “And they changed the conditions in December 2023, if they had these methods from the beginning of June 2023, I would have won in 2 different events. That hurts even more for me!

“I just don’t get it! Generally in Holland, they only understand typical Dutch sports, clearly not golf. It is sad and painful.”

This is the second time that Luiten has been the victim of these additional qualifications. He competed at the 2016 Rio Games, golf’s return to the Summer Olympics after more than 100 years when he was ranked in the top 60 of the OWGR. In 2021, Luiten was excluded from the 2020 Summer Olympics because he was ranked outside the top 200 in the world.

The NOC’s reason for the additional qualification is that it filters out athletes who have not yet proven they can finish in the top-8 of the Olympic competition and compete for a medal.

Ironically, Rory Sabbatini was ranked 161st when he fired a final round of 61 to claim Silver at the 2020 Games while bronze medalist CT Pan was ranked 181st. Luiten and van Driel are expected to be replaced by Switzerland’s Joel Girrbach and Finland’s Tapio Pulkkanen, both ranked outside the OWGR top 350.

Jack Hirsh

Golf.com Editor

Jack Hirsh is an assistant editor at GOLF. A native of Pennsylvania, Jack is a 2020 graduate of Penn State University, earning degrees in broadcast journalism and political science. He was the captain of his high school golf team and recently returned to the program to serve as the head coach. Jack is also *still* trying to stay competitive with the local novices. Before joining GOLF, Jack spent two years working at a TV station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a reporter/multimedia reporter, but also producing, anchoring and presenting even the weather. He can be reached at jack.hirsh@golf.com.