Both the men’s and women’s fields for the Olympics in Paris have been confirmed in recent days, with 60 players in each tournament at Le Golf National having qualified via their respective world rankings.
However, as first reported by Doug Ferguson of AP News, the Netherlands will only be sending one player, LET star Anne van Dam, to the Games, rather than its full contingent of four because officials from the country are not convinced their world rankings, which are all beneath the top 100, are high enough to compete for medals.
The unlucky players are DP World Tour pros Darius van Driel and Joost Luiten, and women's World No.302 Dewi Weber, whose most recent LPGA Tour appearance came with a T52 at the ShopRite LPGA Classic.
The Netherlands Golf Federation (NGF) has released a statement explaining that it presented “extensive arguments and data” at a meeting with the Dutch committee that oversees the Olympics held on 14 June, which was attended by Luiten.
That was in a bid to convince the committee of the "specific aspects of golf" that warranted their appearances. However, that plea has fallen on deaf ears with the conclusion that there was “no reasonable chance of a top eight ranking during the Olympic Games.”
As a result, only women’s World No.108 Van Dam has been given the green light to appear thanks to her runner-up at the Andalucia Costa del Sol Open de Espana in November 2023.
That route came after a tweak to the rules that, according to the NGF statement, gave players a further chance to appear even if they were beneath the world's top 100 if they "finished in the top eight in a predetermined series of tournaments with a strong field of participants."
According to Ferguson, for the men, that meant any player finishing outside the top 27 in the Olympic ranking would need to finish in the top eight of an event that had either five players in the world’s top 50 or 10 from the world’s top 100. If that wasn’t the case, only a top-four finish would suffice.
Neither Luiten nor Van Driel have managed despite each having some success in recent times.
Van Driel is currently World No.242, but he claimed victory at February's Magical Kenya Open on the DP World Tour and, more recently, achieved a T8 at the Scandinavian Mixed.
Meanwhile, Luiten, who is ranked 148th in the world, has six DP World Tour wins, and achieved several top-three finishes and runner-up at the 2023 BMW International Open during the qualifying period. However, none of the tournaments appear to have met the criteria.
The NGL statement goes on to say that the players are "disappointed" by the decision.
It’s not the first time the Netherlands has prevented golfers competing at the Olympics, despite qualifying. Luiten also missed out on the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo as he wasn’t in the world’s top 100 at the end of qualifying, while Will Besseling was also denied the chance to compete for the same reason.
The 2024 Olympics will be Van Dam's second appearance after she finished 57th in 2016. Luiten also took part in that year's Games in Rio de Janeiro, where he finished T27.
