The Last Great Amatuer Golfers to compete for Olympic Gold

As Golf returns the Olympics in Rio, it’s my honor to share story of the H. Chandler Egan and George Lyon, the last great amatuer golfers to compete for Olympic gold.

In today’s world, pro golfers are the epitome of honorable competitors and great wealth and resources. Other than a few choice events, such as the US Amateur, British Amatuer and NCAA Champion, the amatuer game is merely the the equivalent of Triple A ball.

To place yourself into the the time and place — it’s key to understand golf place in history in 1904 and the vaulted status of top Amatuer.

In 1904 the U.S. Amatuer was considered the pinnacle of american golf. It starts with 36 hole stroke play tournament with the top 64 qualifying for elimination bracket match play tournament — head to head — hole by hole so that all that matters is total holes “won” and not the total score (which impacts strategy and provides for more daring and bravado). The first 5 matches are 18 holes — except for the final round which is a 36 hole match. For the winners they’ve played 9 rounds of golf in a period of 6 days.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article will contain more parts shortly — I’m running an experiment.